Comment: There has been yet another fatal multiple stabbing incident reported in China today (May 10):

Eight killed in stabbing spree in East China

Zhou allegedly killed his 10-year-old daughter Zhou Xiaomin at home first, before stabbing his 80-year-old mother despite the woman's pleas for mercy, media reported.

He then broke into a neighbor's home and allegedly killed his wife, 36-year-old Kang Qiuying, their neighbor Hu Dongsheng and Hu's 83-year-old mother, Wu Xiu.

Two other villagers, Ye Wen'e and Zhou Nian Mei, tried running away from the scene of the attack to seek help from the police. But Zhou allegedly stabbed them to death as well. A man, Zuo Huasheng, reportedly became Zhou's eight victim when he ran into the suspect in the street.

Local villagers considered Zhou to be a genial person before the attacks, the village's Party chief, surnamed Gao, told China Daily.

Zhou and his wife also have a 5-year-old son. The family's financial status is reportedly not good and Zhou sometimes went to cities to do odd jobs while his wife farmed at home.

"There has never been such a serious case in the village. The villagers are now very nervous," Gao said.

Update There has been yet another multiple stabbing at a kindergarten in China today (May 12):

Man Hacked 7 Children and 2 Adults in Latest Attack at School

An attacker with a cleaver hacked to death seven children and two adults at a kindergarten in northwest China on Wednesday, the latest in a string of savage assaults on the country's schools. Eleven other children were wounded.

The killer, 48-year-old Wu Huanming, returned home after the attack on the outskirts of the city of Hanzhong and committed suicide, the local government reported. A motive wasn't known, although reports indicated he and the school administrator may have known each other. [...]

The attack began at about 8:20 a.m., as children were arriving at the private Shengshui Temple Kindergarten in Hanzhong's Nanzheng county, the government statement said. The area is on the city's rural outskirts in a relatively poor part of the country.

Wu killed the school's administrator Wu Hongying and a student on the spot, then hacked at 18 others, the statement said. Six students and Wu Hongying's mother later died in hospital, it said. [...]

"I saw him (the attacker) before and he looked quite normal," said the man, who would identify himself only by his surname, Li. [...]

Early reports on Wednesday's attack were removed from Chinese Web sites or moved from the home page to inside sections, an apparent attempt to play down the incident. There was no mention of it on state television's national noon news report. [...]

State media has also steered clear of examining what might be motivating school attackers, preferring to focus on increases in security.

Comment: Addendum:

Sometimes following the thread of an event leads to unexpected, interesting connections. In this case, the event was the only successful hijacking of an airplane in the U.S. By successful, we mean that the person who hijacked the plane managed to not only collect ransom money, but also managed to get off the plane, with the money, within U.S. borders without being caught or identified.

This particular thread lead us back to Jim Humble via the Wandering Bishops.

The hijacker identified himself by the alias Dan Cooper--later misreported in the press as D. B. Cooper--boarded a 727 in Portland on November 24, 1971. He slipped a note to a flight attendant that read, "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked." He demanded $200,000 and two parachutes, both of which were delivered to him when the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Once the demands were met to Cooper's satisfaction, the plane took off with orders to fly to Mexico City at the low speed of 170 knots.

Shortly after takeoff, Cooper opened one of the exit doors of the plane and parachuted to freedom. The FBI, unable to solve the case, declared that they did not believe Cooper had survived the jump.

One very likely suspect was named in the case, however--a man by the name of William Gossett. He was a decorated veteran of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, a survivalist and an experienced parachutist. He spoke often of D. B. Cooper, once telling his wife that he could "write the epitaph for D.B. Cooper," and had told all three of his children definitively that he was the hijacker. He even walked into the office of a Salt Lake City judge and confessed to the crime, who told him to shut up and never talk about it again.

Gossett was a man continually strapped for cash, due at least in part to a gambling addiction. He eventually became a private detective, specializing in money fraud, cults and missing persons. He even assisted the FBI in rescuing a woman from an alleged cult.

And then, in 1988, Gossett changed his name from William to Wolfgang and became a priest of Christ Catholic Church, a church claiming the same "apostolic lineage" that Jim Humble claims. Interestingly, given the fact that this man was a confessed hijacker with a gambling problem, his title was The Very Rev. William Wolfgang Gossett. Also interesting is that while his address in the church directory was listed as DePoe Bay, Oregon, his phone number has a 415 area code: San Francisco.