The Daebudo torso murder case (大阜島-屍身殺人事件) was a case in which Jo Seong-ho (age 30 at the time of the crime) killed a coworker with whom he lived, dismembered the body, and dumped it on Daebudo in Ansan.
Incident
Overview
On May 1, 2016, at 3:50 p.m., the lower half of a body wrapped in a sack was found in a drainage ditch near the entrance to the Buldo Embankment on Daebudo, in Danwon District, Ansan, Gyeonggi Province. Then, on May 3 at 2:00 p.m., the upper half of the body was found on the shore of Lake Shihwa near the Bangameori Pier at the northern tip of Daebudo, where numerous knife wounds and fractures were observed.1 The police set up an investigative headquarters, deployed more than 120 detectives and 900 officers from 10 companies, and combed the Daebudo area thoroughly with drones. Four days after the large-scale investigation began, on May 5, they identified the victim's residence, a studio apartment in Yeonsu District, Incheon, by examining the phone records of the victim, Choi (age 40 at the time), and by interviewing people around her. When they visited the apartment, they found scattered bloodstains on the walls. Based on this evidence, they questioned Jo Seong-ho (age 30), who confessed to the entire crime. He was taken into emergency custody at 1:47 p.m.2
Development
The suspect, Jo Seong-ho, was a junior of the victim, Choi, whom he had met through work at a motel front desk in Incheon in January of that year. To save on living expenses, he lived with her in the studio apartment. He was dissatisfied that she made him do the cleaning and belittled him for being young, despite being ten years younger than her. After a quarrel, between the evening of late March and early April, he killed her on impulse with a knife he found in the house. Over the following ten-odd days, he mutilated the body in the bathroom of the apartment. Between 11:30 p.m. on April 26 and about 2:30 a.m. the next day, he used a rental car to dump the dismembered body around the Daebudo area. He stated this account, and the National Forensic Service's autopsy found that the primary cause of death was head trauma caused by an external force.34 Meanwhile, on the afternoon of May 5, when Jo was taken into emergency custody, the police held a meeting of a committee on disclosing personal information, chaired by Lee Jae-hong, the head of the Ansan Danwon Police Station who served as the investigative headquarters' chief. The committee judged, given that "the method of the crime was brutal and resulted in the serious outcome of death," that the suspect fell under the category subject to disclosure of personal information. Based on Article 8, Paragraph 2 (Disclosure of the Suspect's Face, etc.) of the Special Act on Punishment of Specific Violent Crimes, which was newly enacted in April 2010 after the Kang Ho-sun serial murder case (2009), they decided to disclose the suspect's face and real name once an arrest warrant was issued, in order to guarantee the public's right to know and to serve the public interest, including crime prevention.5 On May 7, however, when Jo was taken from Danwon Police Station to attend the pre-indictment hearing (warrant review hearing) at the Suwon District Court Ansan Branch, he was in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans with an unshaven face. Without any measures such as putting a mask on him, he was moved in a way that effectively exposed his face. He told reporters, "I am sorry for what I did." When asked about his state of mind at the time of the crime, he said, "I was scared." When asked why he posted his life plans on social media (SNS) after the crime, he said, "I wanted to live hard."6
In response, a police official said, "Since this is before the arrest warrant was issued, the police cannot officially disclose Mr. Jo's face or name or other personal information yet," adding, "However, we did not take measures such as putting a mask on Mr. Jo. We will leave the disclosure of Mr. Jo's face to the judgment of each media outlet."7 In connection with this, media outlets published photos from the suspect's Facebook account. This meant that his identity was effectively revealed before the arrest warrant was issued, regardless of the police's intention. There has been criticism that the committee on disclosing personal information, which is led by the police station chief, has a high likelihood of having disclosure requirements determined arbitrarily by investigative agencies. Controversy has also arisen because the case is compared with the "Won-yeong case" from January of that year, in which a father repeatedly beat his young son, killed him, dismembered the body, and stored it in a freezer, as well as a case in which a stepparent abused and killed a child from a previous marriage and buried the body. As Jo Seong-ho's personal details and whereabouts spread rapidly through SNS, his acquaintances were also harmed, and his Facebook account was eventually shut down.8
Afterward, Kang Ji-seong, the duty judge at the Suwon District Court Ansan Branch, issued an arrest warrant for Jo Seong-ho, whose warrant had been requested on charges including murder, stating that "there is a risk of flight." The police then officially disclosed the suspect's real name, age, and other personal information through the media.
Jo Seong-ho, who had earlier said he killed the victim on impulse, was asked about the scars found on the victim's right arm, right lung, and a wound about 5 to 6 cm deep on her right buttock during an investigation on May 8, right after the arrest warrant was issued. He said, "I did an experiment to see whether I could cut up the body before I mutilated it." He stated that after the murder, he stabbed or cut parts of the body with a knife found in the house to test whether the body could be mutilated with it.9 He also said, "Since late March, Choi had been severely insulting me and my parents, saying, 'The parents who raised a brat like you are even bigger bastards than you. You don't clean, you don't listen, and it's obvious what your parents are like, given how you live.' On the night of the 13th, at about 12:30 a.m., when she came home and kicked me and cursed at me, I held a grudge. On April 12, when I left work, I took a hammer from the office, prepared it, and brought it home, planning to kill her. I waited about thirty minutes until she fell asleep, and when she started snoring, I hit her head several times, making this a premeditated crime." However, this differed from his earlier statement that he had killed her between late March and early April. He changed his account to say he killed her "in the early morning of April 13, the day of the 20th National Assembly election." He said, "After the crime, I kept the body in the bathroom, about one pyeong in size, for 13 days. Since there was not enough room to lay the body down, I rested its legs against the wall, and I used the toilet or showered next to it, leaving the body there. Two days later, I spent a night at my family home in Uijeongbu and came back to find the apartment stinking from the smell of the decomposing body. Fearing discovery, I decided to mutilate the body starting on the 17th. Two weeks after mutilating the body, on the 27th, I put it in a sack and threw it away in Daebudo." He also claimed he knew nothing about the investigation. There are many points that are hard to believe, such as these statements. In addition, Jo stayed at the crime scene after the crime and watched TV movies he usually enjoyed, showing abnormal behavior. Regarding this, the police said, "We have deployed a criminal psychology analyst, analyzed financial accounts and phone records, and conducted a polygraph test in parallel. On the 8th, we deployed a profiler to investigate whether Jo is a psychopath."10
On May 9, in a police interview, Jo Seong-ho stated, "While mutilating the victim's body, I removed some internal organs and skin tissue from the back to reduce the weight. I put them in trash bags along with the victim's clothes and threw them in front of my house between May 20 and May 22, and some were flushed down the shower drain."11 Based on this, experts said Jo is likely not a psychopath who is impulsive and expresses his emotions extremely, but rather a sociopath who appears ordinary, gentle, and kind, yet shows a callousness in using any means to achieve his goals.12 In fact, the criminal psychology analyst from the police investigated and found that Jo Seong-ho is not a psychopath and has a normal level of intelligence.13
Between November 2015 and February 2016, the CEO of an entertainment company where Jo worked as a manager and actor, identified as A, said, "I had known him for three years, and we even lived together." Describing Jo, A said, "He really liked bars and liked a fun atmosphere. We weren't dating or anything, and I wasn't even especially fond of him, but we got along like an older brother I knew." A also said that Daebudo in Ansan, where Jo disposed of the body, was a main filming location for the company. About three months before the crime, around January 2016, while riding the subway with a coworker who had also worked as an actor at the company toward Incheon, the conversation turned to martial arts, and Jo asked, "How can you kill a person in one blow?" A added that Jo "also asked how to easily kill a person." Other coworkers said Jo was "calculating, and had a tenacity to always achieve what he planned." They said, "When he got off the prison van after saying 'I'm sorry,' and walked away with his head down, you know, if he were really sorry, he wouldn't make that face. We know that face. That face is a smile." The consistent claims of his coworkers suggest that the act was not impulsive. However, there is criticism that although the police had deployed a criminal psychology analyst and already suspected a premeditated crime, they neglected to investigate people around him, including former coworkers, to verify this, and instead relied on Jo's statements, showing limitations in the interrogation.14
At 8:40 a.m. on May 10, as Jo Seong-ho left Ansan Danwon Police Station for an on-site reenactment of this case, he told reporters once again, emphasizing, "It was an impulsive act after I heard insults about my parents," and added, "I tried to turn myself in, but I was too scared and didn't." When asked why he mutilated the body, he said, "After April 17, the body began to smell of decay, so I decided to dispose of it. It was too heavy for me to carry alone, so to reduce the weight of the body, I cut it up with a knife from the kitchen. I removed some internal organs and flesh; I flushed the organs down the drain and threw the flesh in trash bags." He also said to the bereaved family, "I think it's sorry that things turned out this way. It wasn't planned." Immediately after again insisting that the crime was impulsive, he was led by detectives to the crime scene, a villa studio apartment in Yeonsu District, Incheon, and then to Daebudo. From 9:30 a.m. to 10:20 a.m., for about 50 minutes, he reenacted the overall crime, including killing Choi with a hammer, cutting the waist area of the body, and removing some of the internal organs. The reenactment was conducted in private.15
Based on Jo's statements, the police investigated waste collection companies in an attempt to recover even part of the body. However, because the collected waste was processed at a landfill on the same day, they found no meaningful evidence. Psychological analysis found that he had no history of mental illness and no psychopathic tendencies, and that although his self-esteem and self-confidence were low, he had a normal level of intelligence.16 Nonetheless, he showed a self-centered tendency to think the case was over once the body was no longer visible to him. The police said he showed "a thinking trait of not seeing the whole picture and focusing only on parts, and lacked problem-solving ability." They added, "In the psychological analysis, Jo Seong-ho was found to have no mental illness and no psychopathic tendencies, but he is judged to have a 'lack of insight,' such as arbitrarily interpreting situations and focusing only on limited information to generalize."17
On May 13, the Gyeonggi Ansan Danwon Police Station held a briefing on the investigation results, and charged Jo Seong-ho (30) with murder, mutilation of a corpse, and abandonment of a corpse, and sent the case to the prosecution.
Footnotes