A series crossing provincial borders
According to contemporary Chinese reporting on the prosecution, Yang moved through rural areas of four neighboring provinces and committed repeated murders, robberies, sexual assaults and assaults over several years. The Luohe Intermediate People's Court record summarized by CCTV counted 26 criminal episodes, 67 people killed and 10 injured.
The geographic spread made the investigation unusually difficult. Separate attacks initially appeared in different jurisdictions, and the full scale of the series only became clear as police connected cases across provincial lines.
Arrest in Hebei
Yang was arrested in Cangzhou, Hebei Province, in November 2003. Contemporary reporting states that investigators linked him to crimes in Henan, Anhui, Shandong and Hebei. Police and prosecutors then consolidated the case for trial in Luohe, Henan.
Reports published before trial sometimes used lower provisional victim totals. The figure of 67 deaths is the one reflected in reporting of the final first-instance judgment and execution, so this file uses that adjudicated total rather than earlier investigative estimates.
Closed trial and convictions
The trial took place on February 1, 2004, at the Luohe City Intermediate People's Court. Because the prosecution included sexual offenses, the hearing was closed to protect the privacy of victims. The court convicted Yang of robbery, intentional homicide, rape and intentional injury.
China Daily reported 23 rapes in the prosecution record. The court imposed death sentences for the principal offenses and combined the penalties into a final sentence of death, lifetime deprivation of political rights and confiscation of personal property. Yang stated that he would not appeal.
Review and execution
After the appeal period expired without an appeal, the death judgment was reviewed and approved by the Henan High People's Court according to China News Service's account. Yang was executed in Luohe on February 14, 2004.
The prosecution was therefore completed within months of his arrest. The case remains one of the largest serial-murder prosecutions documented in modern China by number of victims.
Victims and responsible reporting
Contemporary coverage often emphasized the offender and the exceptional body count. A victim-aware account should also note that the 67 deaths represented many separate people and families across rural communities. Some victims of sexual violence were specifically protected by the closed trial, and this archive does not attempt to identify them from unofficial sources.
Graphic descriptions of individual attacks are unnecessary to understand the legal case and are omitted here. The central verified facts are the cross-province pattern, the scale established at trial, the arrest, convictions and final judicial outcome.
Timeline
1999: the series later adjudicated in the Yang Xinhai case begins.
1999–2003: crimes occur in rural areas of Henan, Anhui, Shandong and Hebei.
November 2003: Yang is arrested in Cangzhou, Hebei Province.
February 1, 2004: Luohe City Intermediate People's Court convicts him of robbery, intentional homicide, rape and intentional injury and imposes a death sentence.
February 2004: the appeal period passes without Yang filing an appeal; the death judgment is approved through the applicable provincial review.
February 14, 2004: Yang is executed in Luohe.
Current status
The case is solved and adjudicated. Yang Xinhai was convicted for the multi-province series, did not appeal, and was executed after judicial review in 2004. The published court-linked record supports 67 deaths across 26 criminal episodes; earlier or secondary reports with different preliminary totals should not be treated as replacing the final case record.