A police source said the flat at J Residence, a high-end block at 60 Johnston Road favoured by junior expatriate bankers, was “covered in blood’’.

The first victim, aged between 25 and 30, was found naked in the living room with knife wounds to her neck and buttocks. “Two cut wounds were found in her neck and her throat was slashed,” the source said.

CCTV footage showed the woman and the suspect, who has not been charged, had returned to the flat at around midnight.

About eight hours after the first body was found, the naked corpse of the second woman, thought to be Indonesian and aged 25, was discovered wrapped in a carpet inside a black suitcase on the flat’s balcony. “She was nearly decapitated and her hands and legs were bound with ropes,” the source said. Her passport was found at the scene.

An initial investigation found that the body in the suitcase had been there for three to four days and had started to decompose.

“We believe the woman had been dead for quite some time,” said Wan Siu-hung, Wan Chai assistant district commander for crime.

He said the time gap between the discovery of the bodies was because police had to follow strict procedures to collect the evidence in the living room before searching the balcony.

A small quantity of cocaine was found in the living room. “We are investigating whether [the suspect] was under the influence of illegal drugs at the time of the incident,” the source said.

A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London said: “We can confirm that a British national has been arrested in Hong Kong. We are in touch with the local police and stand ready to provide consular assistance.”

Security was tight at the 40-storey block last night. One person who has lived at J Residence for about a year said he had noticed an odd smell recently. “There was a stink in the building like a dead animal,” he said. “It was a shock because you would never expect something like this to happen in Hong Kong.”

He said the building’s occupants were mainly expatriates.

The murders are the latest in a series of shocking crimes the city has seen in recent months.

A police source said the scene of the murder in Wan Chai was among the grisliest seen since the so-called “milkshake murder” in 2003, when a high-flying American banker’s wife served him a strawberry milkshake full of sedatives before bludgeoning him to death.

‘The evil I have inflicted can never be remedied by me in words or actions’

• Jury finds Rurik Jutting guilty on two counts of murder and judge gives banker mandatory life sentence, rejecting his apology to victims’ families

By Jasmine Siu (Published on November 9, 2016)

A British investment banker who brutally slit the throats of two Indonesian women he paid for sex in 2014 was jailed for life after he was convicted of double murder by a Hong Kong jury yesterday.

Rurik Jutting, 31, appeared calm as the two unanimous verdicts were read out before a full house after four hours of deliberation by a nine-strong jury comprising four women and five men.

He said in a statement read out before sentencing in the High Court that he “cannot and will not” object to the verdict returned by what he described as “attentive” jurors as a life sentence was “a just and appropriate judgment” for what he did to Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26, and the acute pain he brought to their families.

“The evil I have inflicted can never be remedied by me in words or actions,” he penned on Monday night. “Nevertheless for whatever it may be worth, to Sumarti Ningsih’s family and friends, to Seneng Mujiasih’s family and friends, I am sorry. I am sorry beyond words.”

But that was not accepted by deputy judge Mr Justice Michael Stuart-Moore, who said: “Let no one be fooled by the defendant’s superficial charm. [He] has not shown a shred of remorse.”

The verdicts meant the jury had unanimously rejected Jutting’s claim of diminished responsibility induced by his alcohol and cocaine use - to the relief of the victims’ families.

Sumarti’s brother Suyitno said the judgment gave “the murderer what is due to him”.

“We feel relieved that there is a judgment after waiting for two years but the judgment will not bring my sister back,” he said.

Eni Lestari, head of the International Migrants Alliance, said the families were thankful for the result but were still at a loss, struggling financially while preparing a civil suit for compensation.

The Briton, meanwhile, is expected to make an application under the Transfer of Sentenced Persons Agreement signed with Britain to serve his sentence in his home country.

Stuart-Moore said he would make sure “the English authorities will know the exact type of person they will have to deal with” as he characterised the murders as “one of the most horrifying cases” tried in Hong Kong courts.

“There are insufficient superlatives to describe the cruelty he’s done to Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih,” the judge said.

The 10-day trial heard that Jutting, who then weighed 90kg, imprisoned Sumarti for three days in October 2014 and inflicted extreme torture before he killed the Indonesian - despite claiming that he loved her.

“She could put up no resistance even to his most depraved acts,” the judge said. “No wonder she was scared, she weighed 37kg.”

The experience, as Jutting later recounted to police, made him realise that the combination of alcohol and cocaine plus the physical torture of someone gave him an unprecedented sense of enjoyment that made him understand it was not going to be a one-off event.

Four days later, on October 31, he spent nearly HK$7,000 shopping for sex toys and hardware like a hammer, pliers and concrete nails, and picked up Seneng from a bar in Wan Chai in the hope of inflicting even more cruel torture.

But his attempts at recreating the imprisonment soon failed as Seneng started shouting and struggling until she was eventually overpowered by Jutting.

Both women died of cut wounds to the neck.

The judge said Jutting should have and could have exercised self-control over his alcohol and cocaine use but instead used them to fuel his sadistic sexual fantasies.

“He described himself as evil and a monster, and neither description is adequate,” the judge said. “No sex worker is safe if this defendant is free to indulge his craving.”