DNA Points to a Jailed Inmate in South Korea's Hwaseong Serial Murders After 30 Years
Police said DNA from the ninth killing matched a 56-year-old man serving life for a 1994 murder. He denied involvement and cannot be prosecuted for the killings.
Published
For more than 30 years the Hwaseong murders were the case South Korea could not close. On the night of Wednesday, September 18, 2019, police in southern Gyeonggi Province announced that they had finally identified a suspect, and that he had been behind bars the whole time.
Between 1986 and 1991, ten women, the youngest 13 and the oldest 71, were raped and killed in and around the farming villages of Hwaseong, south of Seoul. The killer worked the fields and rural paths, waiting for women walking home late at night or at dawn, and most were strangled with their own stockings or socks. The case shook the country and became the basis for Bong Joon-ho's 2003 film Memories of Murder.
The break came from evidence that had been tested before. In July, a cold-case team at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency sent part of the Hwaseong evidence to the national forensic service for fresh DNA analysis. "We've learned that detecting DNA was possible in some cases after the passage of a long time even if DNA was not detected in the first place," Ban Ki-soo, a senior officer at the agency, told a briefing in Suwon the next day.
The results matched DNA taken from the underwear of the victim in the ninth killing to a 56-year-old man serving life in prison for the 1994 rape and murder of his wife's sister. Police said his DNA had also turned up in evidence from two other cases, but would not say more, and Ban said further investigation was needed before the man could be tied to the other deaths. Police did not name him. Korean media identified him tentatively as Lee Chun-jae.
Questioned by police, he denied any part in the Hwaseong killings.
He could not be tried for them in any case. The statute of limitations on the Hwaseong murders ran out in April 2006, and when the National Assembly abolished the limit for murder in 2015, the change did not reach back to cover them. Police said they were still analyzing other evidence in an effort to establish what had happened.
Sources
- South Korean police identify prime suspect in infamous serial killer cold case, UPI
- Korea's most notorious serial killer identified, Asia Times