Lee-Ho-seong, Mass Murderer

[stejay]

OMG!
That is a heavy story man. What people do, heh?

[Brian McKenna]

Lee-Ho-seong, Mass Murderer

Lee-Ho-seong was born in South Korea in 1967. He attended and played baseball at Gwangju Jeil High School and Yonsei University. He also competed in numerous international competitions and matches.

After college in 1990 Lee, an outfielder, joined the Haitai (now Kia) Tigers of the Korean Baseball League. The team was based in Lee’s hometown of Gwangju in southwestern South Korea.

As a rookie, Lee batted .304 to finish seventh in the league. In 1991 he posted career highs with 21 home runs, 84 RBI and 98 runs.

Haitai became the top Korean team of the 1990s, winning the championship in 1991, 1993 and 1996-97. During the team’s latter two championships, Lee was the club’s clanup hitter. He was named captain in 1999, a post he held until accepting the presidency of the league’s players’ union, the Korean Professional Baseball Association in 2001. Lee retired from baseball after the 2001 season.

AFTER BASEBALL

After retiring from baseball, Lee started a wedding business in Gwangju which went bankrupt in 2005. Two years later, he was arrested for investment fraud involving a real estate venture. He spent two months in jail before being released on bail. The resulting upheaval fueled a separation from his wife and son.

Lee then tried to get a gambling business off the ground, a virtual horse racing arcade. He was also known to frequent the race track, probably racking up extensive debts.

In 2006 Lee became involved with Kim Yeon-suk, a 44-year-old sushi restaurant owner. She had a husband and three girls: Jeong Seon-ah, 18, Jin-ah, 17 and Hae-ah, 11.

MURDER

Lee became heavily indebted due to his business and legal troubles and probable gambling losses. He began to borrow money from Kim, perhaps as much as $250,000. Lee, Kim and family decided to take a vacation in the middle of February 2008. Lee somehow talked Kim into loaning him $177,000 in the middle of the month. She may have been pressing for its return, because on the night of February 18 Lee strangled Kim and her two younger daughters to death in their Seoul apartment. He also bashed in the oldest daughter’s skull.

Lee then packed them into large, black travel suitcases and buried them on the 19th. He gave some laborers $200 to dig a pit next to his father’s cemetery tomb on the pretext that he was relocating a headstone. Lee then put the women into the pit and covered them.

The family was not reported missing until March 3 because Lee had orchestrated their murders at the onset of the family vacation.

INVESTIGATION

Police found witnesses stating that Lee was seen on the night of February 18 hauling large suitcases out of the apartment. They also located a video tape of him doing the same. Late on March 9, police released Lee’s name and photo to the press and offered a reward of $3,108 for information leading to his arrest.

In the afternoon of March 10 Lee, in a dark suit and no apparent injuries, swam into Han River and drowned, committing suicide. He had previously sent a letter to his brother asking him to care for his son and to the head of the baseball federation apologizing.

That day after the news circulated, a man came forward after realizing that it was Lee who asked his coworkers to build the pit in the cemetery. The bodies were quickly found.

The police then opened two more investigations:
1) Into the death of a man named Cho, a former business partner of Lee’s. Cho, last seen with Lee, had disappeared in August 2005 but at the time it was suspected that he merely went into hiding after serious financial losses.
2) Into the death of Kim’s husband in February 2007 which had been previously ruled a suicide