British banker Jutting jailed for life over horrific Hong Kong murders

Hong Kong: British banker Rurik Jutting was found guilty of the horrifying murder of two Indonesian women at his upscale Hong Kong apartment and jailed for life on Tuesday, in a case the judge said was "sickening in the extreme".

Cambridge graduate Jutting, 31, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih two years ago on the grounds of diminished responsibility, but a jury at Hong Kong's High Court returned unanimous guilty verdicts.

"This must rank as one of the more horrifying murder case ever to come to court in Hong Kong," judge Michael Stuart-Moore told the court, describing Jutting's actions as "sickening in the extreme and beyond a normal person's imagination".

"You go to prison for life," he said, at the conclusion of a case that shocked the city.

Murder in Hong Kong comes with a mandatory life sentence.

Jutting remained almost expressionless, breathing out heavily as he left the dock.

In a gruelling 10-day trial the jury heard how Jutting became obsessed with slavery, rape and torture and played out those fantasies with his first victim, Ningsih.

Fuelled by cocaine and alcohol, he tortured her for three days and recorded parts of her torment on his iPhone -- footage the jury had to watch.

Jutting killed Ningsih by slashing her throat in his bathroom and then stuffed her body into a suitcase which he stored on his balcony.

The court heard that he had cut her neck with a serrated knife in the shower after forcing her to lick a toilet bowl.

In hours of self-recorded ranting on his iPhone after that murder, Jutting described his attacks on Ningsih using pliers, sex toys and a belt.

Days later he murdered Mujiasih, slashing her throat in his living room.

He had prepared to torture her but killed her quickly when she began to scream after spotting a rope gag by his sofa.

Both women were found dead in Jutting's flat in the early hours of November 1, 2014, after he called police.

Jutting cut Mujiasih's throat hours after he had met her at a bar near his home in Wanchai on October 31.

Ningsih and Mujiasih were in their 20s and had gone to Jutting's apartment after he offered them money for sex.

In a letter read out to the court by defence counsel Tim Owen Tuesday after the verdicts, Jutting said he was "haunted" by what he had done.

"The evil that I've inflicted cannot be remedied by me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry beyond words," the letter said.

But Stuart-Moore dismissed the apology. "It's the first mention of saying sorry about what he had done and I don't accept it," he told the court.

He described Jutting as an "archetypal sexual predator" who presented an extreme danger to women.

Jutting's defence argued that his control had been impaired by his heavy use of cocaine and alcohol, combined with narcissistic personality and sexual sadism disorders. But the prosecution argued he had been able to make controlled decisions.