Episode 157:
Two Masked Men Snatched 6 Women Off the Street for One Reason
At about 12:10 a.m. on August 17, 2011, a high school student walking home from a study room called the Gwonseon Police Station in Suwon, South Korea. In front of the Gwonseon Cathedral, she said, she had just watched two masked men kidnap a woman. A black Avante had stopped hard in the alley across the street. Two men got out, walked straight up to a middle-aged woman in glasses, grabbed her by the hair, slammed her head down, and loaded her unconscious into the car. It was over in seconds. The student was too stunned to scream, but she memorized the license plate as the car pulled away.
The plate had been reported stolen. Road cameras followed the Avante toward the neighboring city of Hwaseong, where it disappeared. The speed of the attack and the stolen plate told detectives they were dealing with people who had done this before.
A Pair of Glasses
Back at the scene, officers found a pair of glasses on the ground. Most frames carry a small engraved serial number, and opticians usually record it with the customer's details, so police went from one optician's shop to the next across Suwon until they found a match. The glasses belonged to Ms. Kang, 49, a single mother who worked at a supermarket. Her phone had been off since 12:05 a.m. and she had not come home. She had no enemies, which pointed to a random victim and a motive of money. Her bank records confirmed it: at 3:09 a.m., about $3,100, everything in her account, was withdrawn at a convenience store ATM in Hyangnam, Hwaseong. The camera there showed a man in a mask and hat in midsummer, who then got into a white Sonata, not the black Avante.
The Plates Left in the Trunk
The Sonata was a rental registered in Osan. Its owner remembered the job. A tow truck driver had called before dawn about a car stuck near a construction site, he had delivered the white Sonata there, and a black Avante sunk in mud had been sent to a repair shop. In the Avante's back seat police found Ms. Kang's ID photo. The Sonata had already been returned and was about to be washed when officers stopped it. It was caked in mud, and the trunk held the hat and tracksuit from the ATM footage along with four stolen license plates. Detectives reasoned that men who depended on stolen plates would come back for them, and staked out the rental office. Early on August 18, a man walked in and asked to look at the Sonata because he had left something inside. Officers waited until he opened the trunk and took the plates, then arrested him. A second man keeping watch outside ran. The man in custody was a 35-year-old with two robbery convictions, referred to by the alias Songmin Lee. Asked where Ms. Kang was, he gagged and said nothing, until he finally shouted that he had only done what he was told and that they should ask Yang Gi-sam.
Six Women in Fifteen Days
Yang Gi-sam, 40, had a long record for rape, assault, and robbery. He and Lee had shared a cell at Cheongju Prison, and after their release they opened an internet cafe on Jeju Island, promising each other to go straight. It closed in 2011, leaving Yang about $100,000 in debt and Lee about $28,500. Yang proposed abducting middle-aged women, who they thought would be easy to overpower and likely to carry cash. They stole license plates and worked their way through several cities, starting in Daegu fifteen days before the Suwon abduction. Ms. Kang was their sixth victim. The first five had been released after Yang photographed their ID cards and told them he could find them whenever he wanted, and none had gone to the police. With Ms. Kang it went differently. According to Lee, Yang had him pull over in a deserted industrial park and sexually assaulted her, then forced her to give up her PIN. When the Avante got stuck in mud, Yang held her silent in a rice field while the rental car was delivered. After the withdrawal he told Lee she had seen their faces. They drove to a deserted street in Cheongju, where Lee held her hands and Yang strangled her, and they left her body on a nearby mountain.
Final Thoughts
Police released Yang's name and face. A tip that he had tried to borrow a car in Cheongju sent detectives to the rental agencies, where they found he had rented one with his own ID. Its GPS showed twelve hours of erratic driving that ended in Namhae, on the southern coast. On the night of August 21, a report of a stolen license plate came in there, and at 11:20 p.m. he was arrested nearby. He fought until officers told him Lee had confessed. In January 2012, Yang was sentenced to life in prison and Lee to 25 years. At trial Yang wept and said Ms. Kang appeared in his dreams every night. The earlier abductions had been handled by separate police districts as unconnected robberies. The run ended because a student kept her head long enough to read a license plate, and because detectives guessed correctly that the men would come back for what they had left in a trunk.
Five women were abducted across several cities in two weeks, but each police district treated its case as an isolated robbery and the victims were too frightened to come forward. What would have had to work differently, in how police share information or how victims are protected, for the pattern to be caught before the sixth abduction?
WE DOCUMENT.
YOU DECIDE.
Our interpretation is only one possible perspective.
