Como muchos de uds. sabran este fue un caso de la vida real, he aquí el artículo del KOREA TIMES acerca de estos crimenes sin resolver.
Legendary Serial Murder Case Remains Unsolved
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
It was more than 20 years ago when local police found the body of a 71-year-old woman, raped and murdered, in a ditch in a rice field in Hwasong, Kyonggi Province.
Little did they know back then that she would be the first victim of a serial murder case that remains one of Korea’s most notorious unsolved criminal cases.
Ten women, mostly in their teens and early 20s, were brutally raped and murdered between 1986 and 1991 in the neighboring areas, with investigators failing to confirm the killer to this day.
Although police authorities are pressing ahead with their investigation and continue to study the evidentiary details of the murders, the window of opportunity could be closing quickly.
Under Korean law, the statute of limitation for murder or homicide lasts 15 years. The body of the ninth Hwasong victim, a 13-year-old girl, was found Nov. 15, 1990, making Monday the deadline for law enforcement authorities to bring the culprit to court.
DNA evidence suggests that the attacker of the tenth murder in April 1991, whose victim was a 69-year-old woman, differed from the culprit of the previous murders. This means that it would be impossible to prosecute the suspected serial attacker responsible for the deaths of the earlier victims under the current law.
Police authorities are reluctant to let the serial killer walk away as they continue to re-examine the unsolved murder cases. However, the likelihood of them obtaining any more evidence is diminishing as time passes.
``Regardless of the statute of limitation, we will continue our investigation to find the real killer. We do not believe in the concept of the perfect crime,’’ said Choi Won-il, who heads the Hwasong Police Station.
The police concluded that the murders were linked after studying the body of the fourth victim who was found in December, 1986, and had been tracking the suspected serial attacker ever since. However, they only succeeded in finding the culprit of the eighth murder that occurred in September of 1988, which turned out to be an independent case.
From 1986 to 1988, more than 2 thousand detectives were deployed annually to Hwasong to investigate the serial killings. More than 21,000 people were investigated as suspects and more than 40,000 people had their fingerprints checked. A total of 570 people were DNA tested, a process law enforcement authorities introduced in 1988.
Despite such efforts, it seems the murders were so carefully planned they provided only the scantiest of evidence. Currently, the only direct evidence linking the suspected serial attacker are traces of his fingerprints, pieces of hair and semen found in the body of the ninth suspect.
The regional development of the area in the past two decades is also making it hard for the police to push ahead their investigation. The bodies of most of the victims, with the exception of the seventh victim found in 1988, were found within the grass yards and rice fields within 3 kilometers of a road that crossed through the Taean district of the area.
However, the area is barely recognizable as it was redeveloped into an apartment complex a few years ago.
Most of the detectives and police officers that investigated the killings are now retired. The investigation is now reduced to a four-man unit of the Hwasong Police Station.
Some critics argue that it is time for Korea to revise the law and extend the statute of limitation on murder cases. The statute of limitation on murder or homicide is 25 years in Japan and 30 years in Germany in comparison. The United States does not have a statute of limitation on such crimes.
Lawmaker Moon Byung-ho of the ruling Uri Party submitted a bill in August to extend the statute of limitation on crimes punishable by death penalty from the current 15 years to 20 years.
``The statute of limitation on crimes is a recognition that it becomes harder to preserve evidence as time goes by, which makes it difficult to prosecute the culprit. However, this does not count in the advancement in investigation methods,’’ said Ha Chang-woo, a lawyer from the Korean Bar Association.
``The 15-year statue of limitation on capital punishment crimes was based on the principles of the Japanese law. However, Japan has now increased the statute of limitation on such crimes to 25 years now,’’ he said.
Saludos
