Episode 172:
The Serial Killer Exposed by a Dying Woman’s Final Words
At 3:10 p.m. on October 8, 2013, a rainy autumn afternoon, paramedics from the Boryeong Fire Department in South Korea raced to a rural church after a report of a stabbing. In the rectory beside it, blood covered the floor and walls. A flowerpot lay shattered near the door, beside a 17-centimeter paring knife and footprints in blood. Inside, they found the pastor's wife, 52, whom we will call Young-sook Hwang, collapsed and covered in blood.
She had a 5-centimeter gash beside her mouth, deep stab wounds to her chest and abdomen, and a bleeding injury to the back of her head. Any one of them could have killed her, yet she was still conscious. Before she was taken into emergency surgery, she managed to tell police and her daughter what had happened.
The Visitor in the Raincoat
At 3:05 p.m. she was alone in the rectory when someone knocked. There was no service that day, but she opened the door. A stranger in a khaki raincoat asked whether he could get some counseling. Her husband was out, but she could not leave him standing in the rain. She let him in, left the door unlocked because she thought he would not stay long, and went to boil water for something warm to drink. As she turned, he pulled out a knife and attacked her. She tried to reach the door, and he smashed a flowerpot over her head. Realizing she could not escape, and that if she died no one would know who had done it, she told him she would not report him and that a guest was about to arrive. He flinched, ran out, and rode off on a red motorcycle parked under a tree in the yard. Pressing on her wounds, she called emergency services and her husband herself. In surgery, doctors found she had been stabbed 22 times, with damage to her heart, lungs and liver. She died on the operating table at 10:10 that night. People who knew her said she could not bring herself to hang up even on a telemarketer and never argued with anyone.
The Red Motorcycle
Nothing had been taken, and he had attacked the moment he was inside, so police thought the only motive was to kill. Questioning residents about the red motorcycle, they found it abandoned nearby with some clothes and a hiking bag. Trace DNA from them was run against the database South Korea had built since its 2010 DNA Act, and the result was a 99 percent match: Min-deok Yoon, 41, who had been staying near the church. People who knew him said he had been a violent child, found religion in middle school and became gentler, stayed active in a church youth group, and married a woman his pastor introduced him to. On July 8, 2000, at 28, he strangled a girlfriend with a necktie during an argument. By his account she was jealous, threatened to kill herself with a knife, cursed his parents and cut his forearm when he tried to take the knife. He tidied the house, bound her body, packed it in a suitcase, took a taxi at 4 a.m. to a remote mountain in Osan and covered it with dirt and branches. Then he turned himself in. He was sentenced to fifteen years in January 2001, reduced on appeal five months later to ten because the court saw an impulsive first offense, a confession and sincere Christian remorse. He was released in August 2010. The only account of that day was his own.
The Fugitive in Disguise
Yoon was already wanted. In February 2013 he had begun dating a new girlfriend, and seven months later, at a gathering with her friend A and A's husband, A remarked on his shaky finances and her husband joked that he could have introduced her to a great guy. Yoon told his girlfriend he would kill them, bought a knife and gloves, and at 11:20 p.m. on September 8 turned up unannounced at their home in Cheongyang County. He sat glaring at A, fiddling with his gloves. When her husband offered tea, he said he would be going, then stabbed the husband repeatedly in the chest. The husband fought back until the blade snapped, and Yoon fled; the husband survived. For a month Yoon hid in churches around Buyeo, Cheongyang and Boryeong, stealing clothes from washing lines, wearing wigs, a hat and a mask, and layering clothes so he could shed one disguise for another. He committed nine thefts in that time, mostly from churches, taking about $5,500. After the murder, police issued a wanted poster with his photo, his description, a picture of him in disguise and a warning that he was always armed. Sightings poured in. He had visited churches asking for counseling while glancing around, backing off when more than one person was there, and at one church peeled an apple with his own paring knife while staring at the pastor. Congregations stopped attending dawn prayers and locked their doors in daylight. On October 27, a woman in floral gloves and a mask handed a note to the ticket clerk at the Boryeong Intercity Bus Terminal asking for a ticket to Gwangcheon. The clerk noticed the hair looked like a wig and called police, who found the passenger on the bus. Under the mask, wig and makeup was Min-deok Yoon, nineteen days after the murder.
Final Thoughts
In the interrogation room he was meek and apologetic. He said he had only wanted a glass of water, dropped his paring knife while taking off his raincoat, and panicked and stabbed her when she screamed. He did not know she had lived long enough to tell police that he attacked without warning as she turned to make tea, and he had been wearing gloves when he walked in. Why he killed her has never been explained. Prosecutors believed he came for money to keep running and fled when she said a guest was coming. In April 2014 the trial court found no evidence of an attempt to rob her, since he had not demanded money or searched the house, and sentenced him to thirty years for murder and attempted murder. Prosecutors appealed, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Without the red motorcycle, the case might have gone cold. She remembered it, and she stayed alive long enough to tell police.
In 2001 an appeals court cut Min-deok Yoon's sentence for strangling his girlfriend from fifteen years to ten, citing his confession and apparent remorse. Three years after his release he attacked one man and killed a stranger. How much weight should courts give to a confession and signs of repentance when the only account of the first killing comes from the killer himself?
WE DOCUMENT.
YOU DECIDE.
Our interpretation is only one possible perspective.
