Killer's girlfriend on trial for helping lover

The girlfriend of Zhou Kehua, China's most wanted criminal before he was shot dead in August, stood trial at a local court in Chongqing on Tuesday, in a hearing in which more details of Zhou's life were revealed.

Zhang Guiying, a 20-year-old resident of Yibin city, Sichuan province and Zhou Kehua's girlfriend, is accused by the procuratorate in Chongqing of helping hide her boyfriend when he was on the run and helping conceal money he robbed. The hearing was held at the people's court of Shapingba district.

Wang Min, wife of Liao Deying, one of the victims of serial killer Zhou Kehua, waits for the trial result outside a court in Chongqing on Tuesday. [Fan Fan/For China Daily]

Prosecutors asked that she receive a four- to seven-year prison sentence and be fined.

Zhou Kehua, a native of Shapingba district in Chongqing and the prime suspect in 10 murders in Chongqing, Nanjing, and Changsha over eight years, was shot dead by two police in a residential alleyway in the Shapingba district of Chongqing on Aug 14.

Four days earlier, he allegedly robbed and killed two people in front of a bank. He robbed a handbag from a woman and injured a security guard who tried to chase him. He also shot and killed a rail police officer that day.

Zhou usually targeted people withdrawing money from banks and was adept at dodging police manhunts.

The indictment by prosecutors at Tuesday's hearing said Zhang met Zhou in her hometown Yibin in 2012.

Zhang was working at a massage parlor in Yibin when Zhou met her, Huaxi Metropolis Daily in Chengdu reported. Zhou later became Zhang's regular customer at the massage parlor.

Prosecutors told the court that Zhang and Zhou started living together and Zhang followed her boyfriend to Chongqing in July 2012 to make money. Zhou also promised to pay the medical bills to cure her epilepsia, a brain disorder in which the sufferer experiences motor epileptic seizures, a condition Zhang has had since childhood.