There’s a newscast after the jump that reveals a lot of interesting details on Zhou Kehua’s final days, some of which I’ll curate here. (It also features a silly animation of the police shootout on Tuesday that killed him, which I won’t comment on.) China Daily has whipped up a good story as well, noting that Zhou was actually spotted in a shopping mall on Saturday, but police failed to capture him. (Give Zhou this: he’s got balls of brass to walk through a public mall while a manhunt is on for his capture.)
We learn from the newscast that Zhou, who never used a cell phone, was constantly on a phone in his final days. Every night, he spoke with the woman pictured above, who police have since apprehended and identified as his girlfriend. She was likely the person who drove Zhou, via motorbike, to the Bank of China last Friday, when he killed a woman and injured two others. Zhou reportedly told her he didn’t get much money that day, and was planning another heist on the 14th — the day he was gunned down.
The newscaster reveals that eight years ago, Zhou pulled a heist that netted 500,000 yuan, but only 60,000 of that was recovered. Where did all the money go? Supposedly to his family. The John Dillinger comparison just gets better and better. If only he’d been shot outside the movie theater — remember, two cinema tickets were found in his pocket; on Sunday and Monday, he apparently went to see Lockout and The Silent War.
More details as they become available.
Just a polite comment on the John Dillinger connection with an admittedly casual fascination with him and his era. It doesn’t hold up. His escapades occurred during the Great Depression which China isnt yet going through. He had a network of other gangsters who helped with his heists and his gf at the time , the “Lady in Red” who was actually dressed in an orange skirt and white blouse and who sold him out as they left the theater was a Hungarian or Bulgarian whore house madame, not the “half French beauty” in the awful Gangs of NY movie. I recommend the book.
I also doubt that China’s urban legends will include that Zhou’s incredibly long Richard has been severed and preserved in whatever equivalent Beijing has as the Smithsonian in DC.
Still, it’s a fascinating topic for debate, as they say. Carry on.
If that urban legend doesn’t exist yet, I think we can make it happen. It’d play well in China.
Bonnie and Clyde is a very slightly more apt comparison if you’re still going to push the theory, though Zhou’s “Bonnie” is still alive as far as we know.