Training ensures that crime does not pay

Bai arguably received the most sympathy from people who follow such criminals online. One reason might be his motive: revenge against what he considered an unfair society.

One of five children in a single-parent family, Bai did not get into a primary school until he was 13 years old. He quit three years later.

He started stealing at the age of 25 and within a year had been caught taking clothes from his neighbors' home. He has sentenced to four years in prison.

While he was serving his time, authorities learned that he had once stolen a bag of corn to feed pigeons and assaulted the owner, fracturing his skull. As a result, his sentence was increased to 14 years.

Bai believed the punishment was too harsh and was determined to take revenge when he was finally released.

He spent 13 years in a prison in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and was released a year early. Police later learned he had killed two inmates in prison.

"I didn't mean to commit a crime when I was released in 1996," Bai told a court in March 1998, when he was sentenced to death. "I had set two paths in front of me: If I can live a normal life, I will never commit a crime again. If I can't, I'll rob again."

After being released, Bai struggled to do the small business he set up to support his family floundered.

Chen Guojun, director of the TV series that featured Bai's story, once told an interviewer for Chinese and Foreign Digest that Bai had encountered many troubles from the chengguan, urban enforcement officers, when he was a vendor.

Just a month after his release, Bai again sought revenge. He started by hitting an armed police officer with an iron rod and taking his rifle.

From March 31 to year-end in 1996, he committed eight crimes, killing five people and injuring nine in the process of taking their weapons or money.

Zhang Jun was caught in 2000 after leading a vicious gang of thieves and killers for almost a decade. The story of their exploits later inspired a serial TV drama that aired on CCTV. [Liu Guoqin / for China Daily]