High-risk psychopaths… Higher than child sex offender Cho Doo-soon and serial killer Kang Ho-soon
A man in his 40s who brutally murdered his 60-year-old cohabitant after being punished twice for the murder of his ex-wife and the mother of a Vietnamese adulterous woman has been permanently isolated from society.
The third division of the Supreme Court (Presiding Judge Ahn Cheol-sang) announced on the 17th that it had dismissed all appeals of Mr. Lee (48), who was charged with murder on the 30th of last month, and confirmed the life imprisonment sentenced by the lower court.
▲ The Supreme Court in Seocho-dong, Seoul. (Newsis)
According to the court and prosecutors, on May 5 of last year, Lee was suspected of killing A, a woman living with him in his 60s, with a weapon in Donghae, Gangwon Province. In April of last year, Mr. Lee drank with Mr. A and fell in love with him, so he lived with him. On the day of the crime, suspecting that Mr. A was dating another man, she committed her crime during an argument. When Lee broke her weapon in the process of killing her, it was investigated that she brutally murdered her, such as bringing her another weapon back and wielding it.
He had already been convicted of murder twice.
Mr. Lee was sentenced to 8 years in prison in January of the following year for the murder of his ex-wife in 2001 for ‘let’s break up’ and served his sentence. Released on parole in February 2009 before his sentence expired, he went to Vietnam in 2012 and committed another murder.
He remarried to a Vietnamese woman, but developed an affair with another Vietnamese woman and tried to marry him, but when the woman’s mother objected to the affair, he brandished a weapon. In this incident, the mother of a Vietnamese adulterous woman was killed, and her family members were also injured.
A Vietnamese court sentenced Lee to 14 years in prison, and after serving about 8 years and 5 months, he was released from prison in 2020 and deported to South Korea.
After returning like this, Lee committed another murder after two years.
In the course of the trial, Mr. Lee said, “I can’t remember the crime well because I was drunk.” I am sorry to the victim, and there is only so much I can say.” However, both the first and second trial courts did not accept this argument.
The Supreme Court also ruled, “It cannot be said that it is extremely unjust for the lower court to retain the verdict of the first trial, which sentenced the accused to life imprisonment,” and “with the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court judges involved, all appeals are dismissed.”
According to the legal community, Lee was found to be a ‘high-risk psychopath (antisocial personality disorder)’. I received a score of 32 on the PCL-R test. Among well-known psychopathic criminals, Yoo Young-cheol scored 38 points, close to 40 points. Child sex offender Jo Doo-soon received 29 points and serial killer Kang Ho-soon 27 points.
Reporter Park Il-kyung ekpark@