By Kang Shin-who
Is it the curse of a dead woman? All of her body has decayed but for her hands, which have been kept nearly intact for five years, leaving decisive clues to catch her murderer.
According to the Gangdong Police Station in Seoul, the woman’s remains were found by construction workers buried in a small hill in Seoul while they were building a park there last month.
Upon the report, when police looked into the remains of the woman — mostly bones — surprisingly, her two hands have been preserved relatively well enough for the police to be able to take fingerprints.
After identifying the woman who had been reported missing, police found that the woman lived together with a man, Shim, and the corpse was covered by a quilt, which the two used.
The 42-year-old man confessed to having strangled the woman, who was 12 years his elder, to death.
According to police, Shim had quarreled with the woman after she asked him to stop gambling and strangled her after hitting the woman with a blunt object.
He carried the corpse to the nearby hill and buried it. When the woman’s daughter was looking for her, Shim lied, “Your mother left home after arguing with me” and together they reported her to the police as missing.
“It is rare that a corpse has only the hands preserved as a mummy and the National Forensic Service has yet to find the reason. The two hands led to the solving of what otherwise would have remained an unresolved case,” said a policeman.