BEIJING - Police in southwest China have captured a man suspected of murdering his parents and four other relatives after he escaped from a mental hospital, state press said Tuesday.

Chen Wenfa was captured by police on Monday in a dense forest in a mountainous region of Yunnan province not far from the site of the killings, the China News Service said.

Chen, 21, is suspected of killing his parents, an aunt and uncle, grandmother and a cousin, by bludgeoning them to death with a blunt object, previous reports said.

He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in August this year and suffered from hallucinations. He escaped from a mental hospital earlier this month, the China News Service said.

The public security office in Yunnan's Wumeng township had offered a 50,000 yuan (7,300 dollar) reward for Chen's arrest and had used 3,000 police officers to track him down, reports said.

The news comes just three days after police in southern China captured a man suspected of hacking to death his parents, wife, sons and sister in Beijing earlier this month.

Li Lei was apprehended on Saturday in Sanya, a resort city in the southern tropical island of Hainan, the Beijing public security bureau said in a statement.