Hong Kong police have charged a British investment banker who worked for Bank of America with the gruesome slaying of two women, including one whose body was found "near-decapitated" and stuffed into a suitcase on the balcony of the man's luxury apartment.

The suspect has been identified as Rurik Jutting, 29, a Cambridge University graduate who had been working as a Bank of America Merrill Lynch trader in Hong Kong until he reportedly suddenly quit his job last week.

(Photo Credit: Apple Daily Action News)

Police have identified the victims as Indonesian nationals who frequented the red light district establishments in the seedy but quickly gentrifying neighborhood of Wan Chai. Hong Kong media have reported the two women were sex workers.

In the early hours Saturday, after much of Wan Chai's crowd began going home after a night of Halloween revelry, Hong Kong police answered a call to Jutting's 31 st floor apartment in the upscale J-Residence complex, a popular address for foreign expatriate bankers.

Jutting had called the police himself.

(Photo Credit: Vincent Yu/AP Photo)

According to the police, they walked in to find Jutting in a blood-spattered living room standing over an unconscious naked female with knife wounds to her throat and buttocks. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

A knife was seized in the apartment along with sex toys and cocaine, police said. Jutting was immediately taken into custody.

It wasn't until eight hours later, until the police had searched the entire interior of Jutting's apartment, that they noticed a suitcase on his balcony, officials said.

To their horror, the police said, they opened it to find the contorted naked corpse of the other female victim who has since been identified by the police as 25-year-old Sumarti Ningsih.

Ningsih's body had already begun to decompose, police said. Police said that believed Ningsih's body had been left there outside in Hong Kong's heat and humidity for at least three or four days before it was discovered.

The exterior of the J Residence building in Hong Kong is pictured. (Photo Credit: APTN)

Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper reported the police discovered at least 2,000 images and videos of the two victims on Jutting's phones. They reportedly include videos of Jutting's carnal encounters with the women and also morbid selfies with an already-deceased Ningsih.

Jutting appeared today in a Hong Kong court where the magistrates heard that police declined Jutting's requests to contact the British consulate-general and the lawyer he wanted. Police said he has to choose from a listed of provided lawyers.

Jutting did not enter a plea and the court has been adjourned until next Monday to give the police ample time to reconstruct the events of that night. Jutting will remain in police custody until then.

The slayings have sent shockwaves through the Asian financial hub and drawn immediate comparisons to Bret Easton Ellis's book "American Psycho" in which the titular psycho Patrick Bateman is a Wall Street investment banker who moonlighted as a serial killer.

The 2000 movie adaptation starring Christian Bale as Bateman depicts the character killing two prostitutes.

The exterior of the J Residence building in Hong Kong is pictured. (Photo Credit: APTN)

The 7 million residents of Hong Kong live in one of the safest cities in the world despite being one of the most densely populated. According to government statistics, there were only 14 homicides this year between January and June.

That said, the Southern Chinese territory is no stranger to sensational gruesome slayings.

Last year, Henry Chau Hoi-leung and a friend allegedly killed, dismembered, salted and cooked Chau's parents. Police later found the dismembered bodies of the parents along with their heads and organs inside two refrigerators. The details of the killings where so gruesome that two jurors dropped out during the initial trial. A new trial is scheduled for early 2015.

The infamous 1999 "Hello Kitty" murder also shocked Hong Kong when a nightclub hostess was kidnapped, tortured and eventually died in custody. In an effort to hide the body, the kidnappers tried to hide the victim's head inside a Hello Kitty doll.

The latest slayings are the highest profile case involving foreigners in Hong Kong since the 2003 "milkshake murder" in which American Nancy Kissel spiked the milkshake of her Merrill Lynch investment banker husband Robert Kissel and bludgeoned him to death.