THE British banker who is being investigated for the murder of two women in Hong Kong is said to be a history and law graduate from Cambridge University who is known for his brains and his salary, and who calls himself "an insane psychopath."
The 29-year-old, identified in the media as Rurik Jutting from Cobham in Surrey, recently resigned from his job at Bank of America Merill Lynch in Hong Kong, said reports.
A spokesman told Reuters that the US bank had, until recently, an employee bearing the same name as a man whom local media have described as the chief suspect in the double murder case in Hong Kong. But the spokesman would not give more details or clarify when the person had left the bank.
The Telegraph, however, quoted a colleague as saying that Jutting vanished from his place of work around a week ago.
He talked very loudly and was known for his brains and his salary, according to the newspaper which quoted Jutting's colleagues.
"He's very smart," said a colleague who declined to be named. "The money he is making is as much as an MD (managing director). He does business in multiple areas."
Jutting attended Winchester College, an independent boys school in Hampshire, before reading history and law at Cambridge University, where he was a member of the rowing club and secretary of the history society, according to The Telegraph.
The newspaper said he worked for Barclays in London between 2008 and 2010 before moving to the United States to work for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which seconded him to Hong Kong in 2013.
Bloomberg News reported that an automated email reply from the Bank of America Corp. account of Jutting said he was out of the office "indefinitely" and recommended contacting someone who's not "an insane psychopath."
The automated reply also said: "For escalation please contact God, though suspect the devil will have custody. (Last line only really worked if I had followed through..)"
Bloomberg News said it was not able to determine if the automated reply from Jutting's account had been written by him, or whether Bank of America's Jutting is the same person who is the reported suspect in the case.
Police said the suspect will appear in court on Monday to face two counts of murder after authorities found the bodies of two women, believed to be prostitutes, in his apartment in upmarket Wan Chai district, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
One of the bodies was hidden in a suitcase on the balcony, said AFP. Police believed the victim may have been dead for up to five days. The other naked body, found in the living room, had knife wounds on the neck and buttock.
Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper reported that the suspect had taken about 2,000 photographs and some video footage of the victims after the killings, including close-ups of their wounds.
The suspect was arrested after he called police to his flat on the 31st floor of the residential block in the popular expatriate district of Wanchai in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The Telegraph said Jutting's father Graham, 53, is an engineer, and his mother Helen, 52, is a teacher. They live in a large detached property on the outskirts of Cobham.
The picturesque manor, which is set behind wrought iron gates and surrounded by woodland, was built in 1861 and was the inspiration for Ernest Shepard's illustration of Kenneth Grahame's children's classic The Wind in the Willows, according to The Telegraph.
Media reports said a man thought to be Jutting's father looked shattered as he told reporters at the gate: "Please respect our privacy".
The couple are reportedly keen beekeepers and have an older son Auryn, 27, who attended Oxford Brookes University and is believed to live in Brighton.
