Woman suspected of killing husband and lover arrested in Korea

August 1, 2014
A woman suspected of killing two men is transported inside the Pocheon police station. (Yonhap)

A woman suspected of killing two men is transported inside the Pocheon police station. (Yonhap)

By Tae Hong

A woman suspected of killing two men was arrested Friday at a Pocheon dormitory located north of Seoul, according to Yonhap News.

She was identified only as a woman in her 50s with the surname Lee. She had been on the run for two days following the discovery of two bodies inside a rubber container inside her house.

Lee told police one of the men was her husband and the other her lover. She confessed to killing her lover by strangulation and said she found her husband already dead, police said.

Pocheon police found her hiding in the kitchen of a factory dormitory around 11 a.m., wearing the same clothes in which she was last seen on a CCTV — a red shirt and striped shorts.

Crying, Lee told police that “the two bodies are my husband and a foreign man” and that she “had done wrong.”

Her husband, known as 51-year-old Park, and her lover — a 49-year-old work colleague, not a foreigner — were found wrapped in blankets on Tuesday. Their identities were confirmed through fingerprints on Thursday and Friday.

The colleague was reportedly fired from his job last October after his relationship with Lee was uncovered.

Police said Lee is currently giving unclear statements. She told them she brought home a foreign man after meeting him on the street and engaged in a physical fight with him in the living room. She then strangled him with a scarf and put his body inside the same rubber container holding her husband’s body, she reportedly told police.

She initially told police she killed her husband, but later changed her story and said she found his dead body on the veranda of their home.

Police are not ruling out the possibility of an accomplice based on her cellphone records, which show her close relationships with men from foreign countries. They said it would have been difficult for her to strangle an adult man to death by herself.

A Sri Lankan man at the dormitory led police to Lee after initially denying his acquaintance with her but caving after being shown phone records of their late-night calls.

Lee told police she acted alone.

On Tuesday, police found two male bodies wrapped in blankets and inside a closed rubber container around 9:40 p.m. at Lee’s Pocheon villa.

The container, measuring 80 cm by 84 cm, held one body underneath linoleum and the other with a 2-meter scarf around his neck and his face wrapped in plastic.

Judging by the bodies’ decomposition, they had been inside the container at least two weeks, police said.

A malnourished 8-year-old who was found crying in front of a TV in the house Tuesday was confirmed to be the son of Lee and a Bangladeshi man.

Police reported that the house was filled with trash and the stench of rotting bodies.

The boy was transported to the hospital, where he was reported uninjured. He is now resting in a psychiatry hospital.