Zhang Jun  張君

Zhang Jun, known as the No. 1 brutal villain in China, was caught by police in September 2000. Zhang and 13 of his gang members were sentenced to death on Apr. 21, 2001 and executed one month later. Zhang, born into a poor farmer's family in 1966 in Anxiang, Changde City of Hunan, went off the rails when he was still a teenager.

Between June 1991 and September 2000, Zhang, together with his men, including his mistresses, committed over ten armed robberies in several provincial regions across southern China, such as Chongqing, Hunan, Hubei, Yunnan and Guangxi, killing at least 28 people and injuring 22 others.

The gang grabbed cash, gold and anything else they could get their hands on by robbing citizens, banks and large-scale shopping malls. Their loot came to a total worth of more than 6 million yuan (US$725,000). To gather enough weapons, the gang purchased several dozens of guns and several thousands of bullets illegally, and even forcibly seized arms from police officers during a cash-in-transit robbery in Changde, Hunan on Sept. 1, 2000.