The blood of a person in the winter season? A murder without a body. The motive for the crime is...

■ Broadcasting: FM 94.5 (06:40~06:55, 12:40~12:55, 19:40~19:55)
■ Broadcast Date: December 12, 2024 (Thursday)
■ Host: Lawyer Lee Won-hwa
■ Dialogue: Attorney Seo Chang-gon

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

◇Lee Won-hwa: In February 2015, a very mysterious incident occurred in Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, in which a woman in her 60s disappeared without a trace. The police then started searching for A's house. The house where Mr. A lived consisted of the main body and a small detached house next to it, and a tenant, Mr. B, lived in this separate house. Mr. B, the tenant, kept delaying and delaying the schedule, saying he was busy with the police's request for cooperation. But the police couldn't wait any longer. The day of such a promise has come. However, on the same day that the police decided to search for B's house due to difficulties, a call came in saying that B's house was on fire. But B's attitude was suspicious. The police said they felt it at this time. Mr. B, who was forced to postpone his inspection, and the fire that suddenly broke out on the day of the inspection, emerged as a prime suspect in Mr. A's disappearance. What was the truth? Let's take a closer look at this case in today's case X file. Hello, I'm Lee Won-hwa, the case X file of lawyer Lee Won-hwa. Today, we are also with lawyer Seo Chang-gon of Law Firm Roel. Welcome, lawyer.

◆ Seo Chang-gon: Yes, hello. I'm lawyer Seo Chang-gon of Law Firm.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: I think everyone will sympathize with this broadcast today, but it's a very cruel and terrible incident. First of all, it started with the disappearance of a woman A in a village in Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do.

◆Seo Chang-gon: Yes, on February 4, 2015, a woman A went missing while returning from an evening service in a remote village in Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do. A, who was usually a devout Christian, had a deep religious life, attending early morning services without exception. When A did not come to church the day after A went missing, the church officials in the village wondered about it, and a member of the same village who was supposed to go to the hospital came to A's house that morning, but A was nowhere to be seen. After that, when he could not contact A continuously, A's son, who was suspicious of it, reported him missing to the police around 7:20 p.m.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: Was there any story that A could disappear or disappear?

◆Seo Chang-gon: Yes, Mr. A was living alone at home after leaving his husband first about five months before he disappeared. Mr. A didn't enjoy traveling and didn't go out much other than going to church, so Mr. A wasn't a person who could suddenly disappear from his usual lifestyle. Four days after A's disappearance, the police, who launched an investigation, started searching A's house first, where he stayed for the last time. When the police visited A's house to identify him, there was tenant B, who had been renting it for 15 years in a separate house located on the side of A's yard.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: There was a tenant.

◆Seo Chang-gon: Yes. Following the main body where A stayed, the police tried to search the detached house where B lived, but B did not cooperate and asked for a delay in the inspection, making an excuse that he was busy. However, the police could no longer postpone the investigation, so they notified B that they would search the detached house on February 9, the next day. However, around 2:50 p.m. on February 9, when the police announced the search, a fire suddenly broke out in B's detached house. The police, searching the nearby paddy field, found it and ran to see it, but the entire house was already in flames and could not be used, and part of the main body and the entire detached house where Mr. B lived were burned down.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: There seems to be something that doesn't make sense to be a coincidence.

◆Seo Chang-gon: That's right. The fire broke out on the same day that the police, who received the missing report, notified them that they would search the detached house where Mr. B lived. At that time, B appeared about an hour after the fire broke out. The police assumed that the cause of the fire was arson and questioned B, but B calmly explained that the fire broke out while leaving the gas heater on. However, as a result of the fire detection on the detached house, flammable substances were detected, and nearby CCTV showed B coming out of the detached house at 2:47 p.m. on the 9th, about two minutes before the fire broke out. In addition, on the evening of February 8, when the police first visited B, when it was revealed that B had requested an acquaintance to format his computer hard disk, the police became convinced that B had committed arson to remove evidence related to A's disappearance.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: Then did the police think that A's disappearance was not just a disappearance, but kidnapping or even murder in the worst case?

◆Seo Chang-gon: After that, the police judged A's case as a violent case such as murder, not a simple disappearance, and handed it over from the female youth investigation team to the violent team. After arresting B for arson, the police decided to find out the charges, including murder, against A, and arrested B on the 12th and immediately arrested him. However, Mr. B had been consistent with his ignorance. Focusing on tracking B's whereabouts, the police began to turn back CCTV near the village several times. CCTV installed at the entrance of the alley heading to A's house showed the last scene of A getting off the church bus and heading straight home just before he disappeared, and about an hour before that, B was seen driving a white truck home. And the next morning, Mr. B appeared on the same CCTV screen. Mr. B was driving his truck out of the house when he saw a box in the back seat of the truck that was not visible the day before. Not only that, but there was also a machine in the truck's luggage compartment whose purpose was unknown. After that, B headed to a factory run by a nearby acquaintance. After arriving, Mr. B got off the machine from the truck's luggage compartment and went into the factory with it, and when Mr. B came out of the factory again, he was empty-handed. And the police soon confirmed that the machine was a meat season.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: Six seasons? You mean the machine used to cut meat at a butcher's shop, right?

◆Seo Chang-gon: Yes, that's right. The machine carried in B's truck luggage compartment was a meat season with a height of 60 centimeters and a weight of 40 kilograms used in butcher shops. Since then, the police have searched both the truck used by B and the factory visited by B. Blood was found in both the back of the truck where B carried the mysterious box and the factory where he put down the meat season, and A's DNA was found as a result of an emergency evaluation by the National Forensic Service. In other words, it was revealed that B murdered A. However, I couldn't find the meat season that B seems to have used.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: If it's a murder case, this meat season becomes a crime tool, so it's very important to find it, right?

◆Seo Chang-gon: Yes, that's right. Since then, the police have arrested B urgently and conducted an intensive investigation. However, B denied the allegations without blinking at all. B was able to stick out his flippers like this because A's body was not found. Since it is not easy to prove guilty without a body even if murder is suspected, the police put a large amount of manpower into the river, which is believed to be the place where A's body was abandoned, but it did not produce any results. In this situation, the police's last hope was to find a suspected six-season weapon as a crime tool. However, the problem was that B couldn't know where he threw away the meat season. Mr. B's whereabouts were confirmed, but the area was so large that it was not possible to search all sections. However, the police analyzed B's movements with the intention of catching straws and investigated Uiwang City and Suwon City as potential abandoned places. And finally, we found a 165-cm-long band saw near Cheonggye Mountain in Uiwang-si, Gyeonggi-do, that appeared to have been inserted during the six seasons. Of course, A's DNA was also detected here. In addition, the police decided that the most natural place to abandon the six seasons was a junk shop, so they turned the direction of the investigation to a junk shop.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: But there wouldn't be one or two junk shops, and Mr. B might not have thrown away the meat season at the junk shop. I think it must have been a really tough job.

◆ Seo Chang-gon: Yes, that's right. However, in order to prove Mr. B's allegations, he had to find the six-season season, so the police began to search all the junk shops in Suwon and Hwaseong. And eventually, around February 24, 20 days after the incident, the boss is found at a junk shop in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, just about to dismantle the meat season that is familiar to the eyes. Detectives searching the nearby site at the time ran into the junk shop screaming at the sight, and managed to stop the junk shop owner from trying to dismantle the meat season, which is the crime tool.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: I don't think I can do it even if I ask you to do it on purpose, but the timing was amazing.

◆ Seo Chang-gon: Yes, that's right. At the time, the owner of the junk shop said that someone left the machine in front of the junk shop door two weeks ago, so I was waiting for the owner and was just starting to dismantle it for disposal, so if it had been a little late, the case could have been completely twisted. Since then, about 90 human tissues matching A's DNA have been found in the meat season. In addition, a thorough examination of the drain pipe of the separate bathroom where B lived also found A's DNA and blood, and it was confirmed that B first dismembered the body at his home and used a six-season machine.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: I hope not, but in the end, it was a murder case.

◆Seo Chang-gon: That's right. In the end, the police's expectations came true.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: Why on earth did you do that? Did you have a motive?

◆Seo Chang-gon: As for the motive of the crime, Mr. B continued to remain silent and unanswered. Therefore, the police had no choice but to estimate the motive of the crime based on the circumstances revealed during the investigation. Mr. B usually expressed his affection to Mr. A unilaterally, and when Mr. A's husband died, Mr. B expressed his feelings more explicitly. It was actually stalking. As a result, Mr. A continued to express his refusal, and eventually asked Mr. B to leave the house. And at the end of January of the same year, A received 260 million won as compensation for the land incorporated into the road. Considering these circumstances, the police believed that B, who was declared bankrupt at the time and desperately needed money, planned to kill A out of spite when A, who received land compensation, asked him to leave.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: It means that money was involved in a wrong love issue, but of course, it would have been put on trial. My concern is that the body hasn't come out anyway. And the suspect and the defendant, who continued to come to trial, continued to deny it.

◆Seo Chang-gon: Yes, the prosecution charged Mr. B with murder, arson, and abandonment of the body. Nevertheless, B continued to deny the allegations. He pleaded innocence by saying that he did not know that A was missing, that he did not set fire or kill A, and that he was investigated after being arrested by the police and charged with murder and abandonment of the body. At the time, Mr. B's lawyer pleaded not guilty, pointing out that all the prosecution presented was indirect evidence, such as blood from the six seasons, and that the possibility of a third party's crime should be considered because the method and location of the murder were not specified.

◇ Won-Won-Won: What was the result?

◆Seo Chang-gon: B was sentenced to life imprisonment in the first trial and appealed to the Supreme Court, but nothing changed. At that time, the first trial found B guilty of being in a separate house at the estimated time of A's death, loading several boxes into the truck the next day, A's blood was detected in the back of B's truck, and A's blood and human tissue were found in the six-season body and band saw purchased by B. In addition, a digital forensic analysis of the computer that B tried to format showed that B downloaded a human anatomy and searched for six seasons and bandsaws on the Internet, which was used as evidence of B's guilty plea.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: Case X File Today, we took a look at the murder of the six-season in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi-do, in 2015. It was the case with any other case, but above all, the police's investigative power shone. I think it's a praiseworthy part of the tenacity to find the main evidence, the six-season season, by walking tens of kilometers in person and checking them one by one in a situation where no bodies have been found. That's all we've prepared for today. You all deserve to be defended. Incident X file, thank you everyone.