Triple murder suspect nabbed
Footage from a surveillance camera installed in an elevator shows Kim visiting his girlfriend’s apartment with a bouquet of flowers, Monday. Later, he allegedly killed her, her daughter and her mother in a span of two hours in the apartment. / Yonhap
By Lee Kyung-min
Police have apprehended a man who has confessed to murdering three women, including a teenage girl, in an apartment in Gwangju on Monday.
The 34-year-old, surnamed Kim, apparently killed his 41-year-old girlfriend, surnamed Kwon, her 14-year-old daughter and Kwon’s mother, 86, over a span of two hours.
Police had been pursuing Kim after finding the women’s bodies in Kwon’s apartment in Chipyeong-dong on Tuesday.
Police are trying to establish a motive for the killing spree.
According to police, Kim said that the murder was not premeditated.
Surveillance camera footage showed Kim, wearing a cap with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, riding in an elevator at the apartment at 6:08 p.m.
Kim said that he visited Kwon to “talk things out,” but ended up choking her to death because she gave him a cold shoulder.
After about an hour, Kwon’s handicapped mother, who lived across the apartment building, visited her. Kim allegedly killed her, too, by hitting her on the back of the head with a blunt object.
An hour later Kwon’s daughter came home school. Kim allegedly also choked her to death.
After arriving home, the distraught daughter called her friend in tears at around 8:20 p.m., “I’m terrified. There’s someone in the bathroom.”
Kim used plastic wrapping to kill the victims to death, police said.
The girl’s teacher filed a missing persons report after visiting her student’s home on Tuesday at 2:20 p.m.
Upon receiving this report, the police left a text message for the girl, but there was no response.
They then tracked the girl’s cell phone by using a global positioning system, and found that the phone’s signal was coming from Kwon’s apartment.
Later that day, police visited Kwon’s apartment, and heard TV noises and a cell phone ringing, but no one answered the door.
That evening, with the help of 112 workers, detectives broke the door open, and found the three dead ― Jeon and Kwon in one room, Kwon’s mother in another.
Kim said that he tried to commit suicide by leaving the car engine running with all the windows closed, but could not.