Police narrowly missed serial-killer suspect 25 years ago

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

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Mon, October 2, 2023 | 09:38

Law & Crime

Police narrowly missed serial-killer suspect 25 years ago

Posted : 2019-09-20 17:33

Updated : 2019-09-20 17:41

Police officers examine the site where the body of a 19-year-old victim of a serial killer was found in this January 1987 photo. / Korea Times file

By Lee Suh-yoon

Authorities recently identified Lee Chun-jae, a 56-year-old prisoner in Busan Detention Center, as the culprit behind the unsolved deaths of at least nine women in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, from 1986 to 1991.

But they could have caught him sooner.

Long before the statute of limitations expired in 2006, and before prison officers swabbed Lee's mouth and added him to the DNA database created in 2010, Hwaseong police once tried to question Lee 25 years ago, according to the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times, Friday.

Lee was arrested in 1994 after raping and killing his sister-in-law in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. At the time the Cheongju police brought a hand-cuffed Lee back to his former home in Hwaseong to search for additional evidence regarding the killing of his sister-in-law.

Hwaseong was Lee's hometown where he lived until he moved to Cheongju in 1993. Six of the nine murders took place within a 3-kilometer radius of his former home.

Photo of 'Hwaseong serial killer' revealed

2019-09-26 14:55 | Law & Crime

Hwaseong police stopped by while the Cheongju police had Lee at his former home. Noting parallels between Lee's killing of his sister-in-law and the still unsolved serial killer cases in Hwaseong, they requested the Cheongju police bring him to the local police station for questioning.

The Cheongju police refused, telling the Hwaseong police to come to Cheongju if they wanted to question him. For unknown reasons, there was no follow-up or cooperation between the two police authorities.

So Lee was tried only for the murder of his sister-in-law, for which he received a life sentence. And the Hwaseong murders, which resulted in nine deaths in less than five years, remained unsolved until recent DNA tests on evidence from three of these murders pointed to Lee.

Lee, who has been separated from the other inmates since the findings, has flatly denied the new charges, according to Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency. Police are waiting on DNA test results for evidence found at other murder scenes as well.

The roadside near where the fifth victim was found in 1987, Thursday. The victim used to walk here on her way to school. / Korea Times photo by Oh Ji-hye

"Hwaseong murder" dominated newspaper headlines through the late 1980s and early 1990s. The case gripped the public for many years following the last murder in April 1991.

The killings followed a well-rehearsed pattern. Women were snatched from dark paths through rice paddies or mountains, raped and strangled to death with their own clothes. Victims ranged from a 71-year-old woman returning from her daughter's home to a 14-year-old girl walking home from school. The gagged bodies were later found under branches or piles of hay. An additional murder, the only one that took place inside a residence, was found to be the work of a copycat killer. It happened after the seventh murder.

Desperate as the body count rose, police resorted to inhumane interrogation methods. A factory worker in his 30s jumped in front of a train after being beaten up by police officers during questioning.

In 2003, the story was recounted in the film "Memories of Murder" by award-winning director Bong Joon-ho.

The government maintains a DNA database of 230,000 felons in the country. Though it has proven useful at resolving cold cases like the Hwaseong murders, the Constitutional Court last year ruled it unconstitutional for authorities to collect and keep convicts' DNA information without a special warrant or an objection procedure. To continue running the DNA database, legislative amendments that meet these concerns must be put in place by the end of this year.

sylee@koreatimes.co.kr