"Stone until the thigh necropsy..." Before the bizarre assault in the SUV,

[YTN Radio lawyer Lee Won-hwa's case X file]
■ Broadcasting: FM 94.5 (06:40~06:55, 12:40~12:55, 19:40~19:55)
■ Broadcast Date: 09/10/2024 (Tue)
■ Host: Lee Won-hwa Lawyer
■ Dialogue: Attorney Kim Soo-min

* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information.

◆ Lawyer Lee Won-hwa (hereinafter referred to as Yi Won-hwa): It was one day in mid-July when the heat had just started. There was a very unique report call on 112. The content was that a car was parked in a residential area in Jeollanam-do, and two men were walking around with a rotten smell vibrating and limping around it. This guy who lied to the police and then called someone and instructed them to move the car right away. Why did this man do this? What's surprising is that about 10 days after this happened, there was a terrible incident in which one person was found dead and one seriously injured in the vehicle. And a man who was found seriously injured stated that the incident occurred while they were playing games and exchanging violence with each other. This case is somehow sloppy and suspicious. What the hell happened? Let's take a closer look at this case in today's case X file. Hello, I'm Lee Won-ah, the case X file of lawyer Lee Won-hwa. Today, we are joined by lawyer Kim Soo-min of Law Firm Roel. Welcome, lawyer.

◇ Attorney Kim Soo-min (hereinafter referred to as Kim Soo-min): Hello, I'm lawyer Kim Soo-min. Nice to meet you.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: It is also a case where the results of the first trial have recently been released. What happened?

◇ Kim Soo-min: A 112 report was received from Yeosu Police Station in Jeollanam-do at around 11:40 a.m. on July 29 last year that a person was dead in an SUV parked at a sleepy rest area on the motorway in Sora-myeon, Yeosu. At the time of the police dispatch, the car passenger A was already dead, and the driver B was taken to the hospital because of his breath, but his life was in critical condition due to excessive bleeding due to skin necrosis.

◆ Lee Won-hwa: Both of them did not go to the hospital even though their injuries were serious. I didn't get any treatment. This is the part that I don't understand well in common sense.

◇ Kim Soo-min: Not only this, but the man who was seriously injured at the time made an incomprehensible statement at the beginning of the investigation. The man, who died, and he were both day laborers in their 30s, found out through Internet games around 2020, and decided to settle the debt through an end-of-life argument that he would not return home and sleep from the end of June 2023 after exchanging cash with game money. They said they slapped each other or punched each other when they fell asleep, but then hit their thighs with stones when they fell asleep, and then the other reported it when one died at around 11:40 a.m. on July 29.

◆ Lee Won-hwa: We had a discussion and decided to give a penalty of hitting the thigh with a stone when the opponent falls asleep. I don't know that two adult men agreed on this. Am I the only one who doesn't understand?

◇ Kim Soo-min: However, a memorandum named "Acknowledgement of Damage" was found in the vehicle to make the surviving man's statement believe, and at first, it seemed like an incident simply caused by a fight between the two of them. So at first, the police suspected that the two were in a bond-debt relationship, and they thought they hit each other with a stony blunt instrument, so they investigated on charges of injury and death. At that time, he also told the media that police officials believed the possibility of murder by a third party was small.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: It's a contract, what was the result of the autopsy?

◇ Kim Soo-min: Autopsy showed that the cause of death was sepsis and excessive bleeding from thigh wounds hit with blunt force. The police, who were investigating, judged that the surviving man's statements were not credible in view of the autopsy results, skin, and necrosis traces, so they persistently analyzed data such as vehicle black boxes, phone calls, CCTV, and testimony from nearby apartments. The result revealed a shocking twist in this case.

◆Binary: Shocking twist, what kind of twist was it?

◇ Kim Soo-min: The police investigated the possibility of a third party's involvement. A close look at CCTV and black box highlighted the third person, Mr. C, and this person turned out to be psychologically dominating the two people found in the vehicle, commonly referred to as gaslighting. It turns out that he was manipulated by psychological domination and extorted money and goods.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: But he wasn't a child, he was an adult male. I don't understand easily that you're so completely manipulated that you don't mention a third person even when you're caught by the police that you're killing someone, but who was the third person anyway?

◇Kim Soo-min: The third person is now the true criminal. The true criminal was a debt collector who had a history of being a lawyer's office manager and posed as a local maintenance while working as a volunteer organization executive, but in reality, the lawyer-related job was cut after only two weeks, and the bond collection agency was only 19-20 years, and the average monthly income was between 1 million won and 1.5 million won when he worked. He also told his acquaintances that he had taken the bar exam and the police civil service exam, but he was so good at lying that it was all false. The true criminal threatened A and B to pay back the money by making various false debts, including lawyer fees, and made them threatening to take criminal action if they didn't pay back the money, and stole money by making A and B blindly trust them and psychologically depend on them.

◆ Lee Won-hwa: How did you end up with nearly 900 million won in debt?

◇ Kim Soo-min: There wasn't actually a 900 million won debt. After learning about the victims while working as a lawyer's office manager or debt collector, Jin claimed to be a fixer, deceiving the victims as if a civil execution case involving victims who were not spending money on behalf of the victims' debts and resolving related disputes was underway, and making them believe that the victims had to pay subrogation payments and lawyer appointments to the true offender.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: As you know better than anyone else, the process so far is inevitably very complicated if you haven't filed a lawsuit, and if you proceed with nine cases, you'll have 900 million won in debt. In fact, from the perspective of a lawyer's office and a law firm, they seem to have been cases that required a lot of time and labor, and in the process of carrying out the lawsuit, they communicate a lot, such as finding out the facts from the parties to the lawsuit and receiving evidence as a way of proof. When we work, we don't have any of those processes in this case. Nevertheless, it's absurd that A and B fell for it.

◇ Kim Soo-min: Yes, I wish I had gone to another law firm or lawyer to see if there was a lawsuit going on and asked for help, and asked for advice on whether it was a case worth 900 million won for the lawyer's appointment. I'm sorry that I wouldn't have been deceived by such a ridiculous lie. In that way, the true criminal stole a total of 290 million won over four years and nine months, including gaslighting against A and B and making them hit each other in the car, stealing a total of 290 million won over four years and nine months, especially using difficult legal terms, such as his son's civil suit, and using difficult legal terms such as the fact that the victim was a bad credit, he said that his son would remain a bad credit if he did not do what I told him to do now.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: You even touched your family. Money is like that, but what's hard to understand until now is the part where we lived by taking pictures of each other's thighs with stones in the car.

◇ Kim Soo-min: The true offender instructed A and B to live together in a vehicle and exchange assault with each other, and during their nearly month in the vehicle, they assaulted and threatened each other with blunt instruments in case they ran away. And they said they left the victims alone even though they knew they were in serious condition.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: Anyway, was there anyone who reported to the police about living like this?

◇ Kim Soo-min: Nine days before A's death, they had their vehicles anchored in a nearby apartment. Several apartment residents reported to the police as they caught the damage. At that time, the police questioned the real culprit, who was registered as a car owner, and explained that he had just lent the car, avoiding instant doubts. The true criminal also pretends that A and B stayed in the vehicle and exchanged assault on each other to prevent his crime from being revealed, and even received a memorandum from A and B saying that they would not be held responsible for anyone's injury, and the surviving man B stated in a police investigation that we exchanged assault by agreeing with each other three days ago to end the debt relationship and beating them when they fell asleep, but the police investigation found that the true criminal also forced and ordered them in advance.

◆ Lee Won-hwa: Can you imagine following someone's instructions without saying anything even though it's not common sense for anyone to be under such psychological control?

◇Kim Soo-min: It is said that the true criminal gave advice on criminal cases and rehabilitation bankruptcy proceedings to the victims who were credit delinquents for many years, and put the victims in a psychological state of control based on the trust he gained by making the victims use his account. And after that, he dominated not only the mind but also the body by making abnormal living rules so that victims could protect them, and in case of violating one's rules, he reported to the true offender and struck the other's thigh with a stone as a penalty. As I live alone in a dense space called a vehicle, I think I forgot about common sense and rules used in the general society for a while and became immersed in the abnormal living rules made by the true criminal. Also, if you break the rules, you may have had no choice but to show the rules because you were hit with a blunt instrument immediately by the defendant or another victim.

◆ Lee Won-hwa: I think the victims created a relationship where each other monitored each other and committed acts of harm. Did the perpetrator himself admit to the charges? There are also comments that the prosecution has changed the indictment.

◇ Kim Soo-min: The perpetrator insisted on his innocence until four days before the trial, and later finally admitted all charges of murder and imprisonment. As you said, the prosecution applied for permission to change the indictment for murder of A as a robbery murder, and for B as a robbery injury and special imprisonment, and additionally charged him with violating the Act on Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes and Scam Racketeering for stealing about 1 billion won from the victims and their mother.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: If you compare before and after the change of the indictment, there is a slight difference in sentence.

◇ Kim Soo-min: I think so. In the case of murder, it is more than five years in prison, while in the case of robbery murder, the person who committed the crime of robbery is sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for asking for guilt for the crime of murder. In addition, heavy incarceration is subject to up to seven years in prison, and in the case of robbery, more than seven years in prison, resulting in a different result from heavy incarceration.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: The results of the first trial came out recently. What happened?

◇Kim Soo-min: The perpetrator was sentenced to life imprisonment on August 30, 2024, in the first trial held at the Suncheon Branch of the Gwangju District Court.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: You might think he's a suitable brother, but he's a first-time offender, so it's very unusual that he's been sentenced to this level.

◇ Kim Soo-min: The four judges explained the reason for the sentencing, saying that the accused exploited the victims mentally and physically, and it seems that the sentence was very unusually high considering the fact that the perpetrator was a first-time offender but repeated various behaviors over a considerable period of time, the fact that he did not recover the damage to the victims at all, and the situation that the victim is also demanding severe punishment.

◆ Lee Won-hwa: Case X File Today, we looked at the murder case of stone-spinning at a sleepy rest area in Yeosu. That's all we've prepared for today. You all deserve to be defended. Incident X file, thank you everyone.