Why did he kill daughter's friend?

Reporters question a man surnamed Lee, who is suspected to have murdered his daugther's friend and abandoned the body, as he leaves the Seoul Jungnang Police Station on Sunday. Lee was publicized a decade earlier for his devoted care of his daugther who suffers from a rare disease that he also has. / Yonhap

By Kim Bo-eun

Police on Sunday resumed questioning a man surnamed Lee who is suspected to have murdered his daughter’s friend and abandoned the body last month.

The Seoul Jungnang-gu police arrested Lee, 35, in Seoul on Thursday but had to suspend the questioning because he took an excessive amount of sleeping pills, along with his daughter, in an alleged suicide attempt. On Sunday morning, Lee was taken from a hospital room back to the interrogation room.

Lee and his daughter suffer a rare disease and his devoted fights have been featured on TV and in a book. He said he also suffers depression and epilepsy.

Lee faces charges of killing a 14-year-old friend of his daughter on Sept. 30 and abandoning her body on a hill in Yeongwol, Gangwon Province.

Upon his arrest, Lee told police where she had been buried but denied having killed the girl, stating she accidentally took the sleeping pills he had prepared for himself to commit suicide.

Footage of surveillance cameras in Lee’s neighborhood in Mangu-dong, eastern Seoul, showed his daughter and the friend entering his home on Sept. 5. The footage also showed Lee and his daughter loading a large black bag into his car the following day and highway records showed the vehicle passing the Yeongwol toll gate the same day.

The mystery surrounding the murder allegation deepened because it happened immediately after his wife took her own life.

Lee’s wife committed suicide on Sept. 5 after filing sexual assault charges against her mother-in-law’s partner. According to the Gangwon Yeongwol Police Station, Lee and his wife submitted the complaint on Sept. 1. Lee claimed he had attempted to commit suicide due to the grief of losing his wife.

Lee’s wife claimed she had been sexually assaulted multiple times over eight years since 2009. She and her ill daughter were staying with her mother-in-law in Yeongwol at that time, as Lee was in the U.S. for fundraising for his daughter’s medical expenses.

A separate investigation is underway into the wife’s suicide.

Allegations against the husband have raised many eyebrows, as people remember him as a resilient, loving father.

He and his daughter were suffering a rare disease, known as gigantiform cementoma which involves dental tumors growing on the jaw.

Lee was shown taking devoted care of his daughter and actively raising funds for her medical expenses. He even published a book outlining the story of his daughter and him suffering the rare disease.

During a TV show aired in 2006, he in particular moved many viewers, earning the nickname of “molar dad” because he had only one molar left among his teeth due to repeated surgeries.