This makes me wonder if these three were killed as part of feuding between drug gangs or as part of the government’s drug crackdown? I guess we will find out as more details become available:
Individuals identified as South Korean nationals were found dead on Tuesday in the Philippines, according to South Korean media. (UPI Photo/Jennifer S. Kimball/NVNS)
Three people, at least two of who were identified as South Korean nationals, were found dead near a small Philippine city on Tuesday.
All three individuals were found with gunshot wounds, with their wrists or legs bound with electric tape, South Korean news service Newsis reported on Thursday, local time.
The bodies were discovered in a sugar cane field near the city of Bacolor in Pampanga Province, about 50 miles from Manila, at around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
Of the victims, two men and a woman who were in their 40s and 50s, one man had had his legs tied with electric tape, and the woman’s wrists were bound.
No arrests have been made and the case is under investigation.
Violent deaths of South Korean nationals in the Philippines have been on the rise in 2016, with the death count up to 6 this year. [UPI]
This is just a horrible story coming out of Pocheon, north of Seoul:
A middle-aged couple was arrested Sunday for allegedly binding their 6-year-old adopted daughter with duct tape for 17 hours and, when she suffocated, burning her body on a mountain.
The couple denied intentionally killing the girl and said she was being punished for being “too gluttonous.”
Police requested a pre-trial detention warrant Monday for the 47-year-old man and his 30-year-old wife on charges of murder, physical abuse, as well as the mutilation and abandonment of a dead body.
A 19-year-old woman living with the couple in Pocheon, Gyeonggi, was also apprehended on the same charges. Police identified the teenager as a daughter of the father’s close friend, who allegedly took some – if not equal – part in the crime.
The three suspects said during police questioning that they habitually struck the child with their bare hands or a fly swatter because she didn’t obey orders.
Last Wednesday night, they allegedly bound the girl up with duct tape and left home, returning 17 hours later to find her struggling to breathe.
The adoptive mother claimed she performed CPR on the child before she took her last breath. The three moved the body to the couple’s car Friday and drove to a nearby mountain. They allegedly burned the body to hide the evidence. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more of the details at the link, to include how the police determined the adopted parents killed the girl.
Tragic story out of Daegu involving the search for a 11-year old boy after his mother was found dead in the Nakdong River and his 26-year old sister was found dead at a park:
Police in Daegu have started a search for an 11-year-old boy who went missing after leaving his apartment with his mother on Sept. 15.
The mother, 56, surnamed Cho, was found dead in the Nakdong River earlier this week, as was his 26-year-old sister, whose body was found at their apartment.
On Friday, the police released three photos of the boy nationwide, Ryu Jeong-min, caught by surveillance cameras.
Taken at three different locations, the photos captured the 11-year-old leaving the apartment building, leaving an elevator and picking up groceries at a supermarket. He was last seen at his apartment lobby as he was leaving with his mother.
Police said the boy is estimated to be 140 centimeters tall and wearing a white T-shirt with blue sleeves, dark pants and a cap.
Finding him is crucial to unraveling the mysterious deaths of his sister and mother, but the police said they don’t rule out that the boy might have killed himself. [Korea Times]
American citizen Arthur Patterson (C), accused of murdering a South Korean college student in 1997, is taken away by prison officials at the Seoul High Court on Sept. 13, 2016, after the court convicted him of stabbing a college student multiple times at a Burger King in the foreigner-friendly Itaewon Ward in central Seoul. He was sentenced to 20 years in jail, which is the severest possible penalty for the defendant who was then an adolescent. (Yonhap)
Here is a horrible story about the decapitation of a 25 year old woman in Siheung, Gyeongi province by her own family that claimed that she was possessed by an evil spirit:
On Friday at around 6:30 a.m., the mother, son and daughter were in their living room, having spent the whole night awake chatting, said police. The son is 26 years old and works for a company. The daughter was 25 and unemployed.
The suspects claimed they had eaten nothing for four days, without saying why.
Tension escalated swiftly when their poodle, which they have had for five years, started barking loudly for no reason, the mother claimed.
Assuming it was possessed by a demon, the three took turns stabbing the dog with a knife and striking it with a baseball bat, eventually killing it.
When the three moved to a bathroom to clean up, the daughter’s hands started shaking. She moved toward the mother as if to strangle her, said the son. Thinking that the demon had exited the poodle and taken over the daughter, the mother and son forced her to lie down on the bathroom floor.
The mother stabbed her daughter’s neck with a kitchen knife, while the son beat his sister’s midriff and head with a hammer. Autopsy results indicated that the victim died due to neck and head injuries.
The son called his father, a 54-year-old shoe repairman who was working at the time, to confess the murder. The father called the police hours later and told them the suspects would turn themselves in.
When police arrived at the scene, the victim’s head was found detached from her body. Police are investigating when that occurred. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if drugs or alcohol were not involved in this in some way.
Here is a horrible story of murderous firefighter in Anseong:
A 50-year-old firefighter was arrested on Wednesday after attempting to rob a house to pay back his gambling debts, only to be caught by the two homeowners, who he then murdered before burning their house to cover his tracks.
According to the police in Anseong, Gyeonggi, the firefighter broke into a two-story house located around Dangwang-dong, Anseong, at around 3 p.m. on Aug. 1, where a 64-year-old man and his 57-year-old wife were living.
The firefighter was not listed as a usual suspect by police at the time, but his crimes were revealed when he attempted to commit suicide by drinking herbicide and throwing himself off from the rooftop of an apartment at around 4:50 p.m on Wednesday. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
A 75-year-old woman in Wonju, Gangwon, was arrested for allegedly killing her husband of 56 years with a hammer.
The suspect admitted the crime, according to police, saying she couldn’t stand her husband’s verbal and physical abuse any longer.
Wonju police filed a pre-trial detention warrant for the suspect. A local court will review it as early as today.
The alleged murder took place around 6 a.m. Wednesday, police said, after the 74-year-old victim fell off a chair while changing a lightbulb in a bathroom in the couple’s house.
The suspect heard a loud thump and went to check on her husband, and he allegedly berated her, saying, “It’s all because of you!” The woman told police during questioning that her husband’s head was bleeding and his eyes had rolled back.
The wife said she feared he would have to be hospitalized for a long period, which might prove expensive. She said she didn’t want to have to be his caregiver.
“I’ve put up with him all my life,” she said according to police. “I have even had to go to the hospital several times after he hit me.”
She left the bathroom, found a hammer and returned to finish him off. Autopsy results indicated she had hit him in about 20 different areas all over his body, including his face and neck. The direct cause of the victim’s death was “multiple injuries.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Via a reader tip comes this horrible story out of Japan where once again the mass killer had a history of mental trouble:
Nineteen residents have been killed in a knife attack at a care centre for people with mental disabilities in the Japanese city of Sagamihara.
Such attacks are extremely rare in Japan – the incident is the worst mass killing in decades.
Police have arrested a man who worked at the centre until February, and who turned himself into police after the attack.
He reportedly said he wanted people with disabilities to “disappear”.
The brutal killings have shocked Japan, one of the safest countries in the world.
The suspect has been named as 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu.
He sent letters to politicians in February in which he threatened to kill hundreds of disabled people during a night shift, Kyodo news agency reports.
“My goal is a world in which the severely disabled can be euthanised, with their guardians’ consent, if they are unable to live at home and be active in society,” Uematsu wrote in a letter to the speaker of the lower house of parliament, obtained by Kyodo.
He was kept in hospital for almost two weeks before being released. [BBC]
You can read more at the link, but along with mental health the other thing that causes these mass killings that few talk about to include the BBC is the glorification in the media that allows these killers to act out their fantasies. I do like how the BBC did find space to throw this line into the article though:
Mass killings are extremely rare in Japan, in part because strict gun control laws means almost no-one has access to a firearm.
Via a reader tip comes this unusual murder story involving two Korean businessman in California. Was it a suicide or murder, that is what a jury had to decide:
Beong Kwun Cho becomes emotional while testifying at his trial. Cho said Yeon Woo Lee wanted to die but wanted to spare his family of the social stigma and trauma of suicide. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Cho’s two daughters grew up considering Lee an uncle, he said. Their families vacationed together. The two men did business together.
Then a few months ago, Lee asked Cho for a favour he wasn’t sure he could do, even for his closest friend, he told the detective.
Lee’s motel business in Korea was foundering. His marriage was falling apart. Lee told Cho he wanted to die, but didn’t want to burden his family with the trauma and social stigma that comes with suicide, Cho said.
Lee tried to hire people he’d met at nearby casinos to kill him and make it look like a random crime, Cho said, but they demanded payment ahead of time and he didn’t trust them to go through with it. Ultimately, he turned to his best friend.
“He said there is no other way – this is the only way,” he told Trapp.
His friend orchestrated the entire scenario, Cho told police. It was Lee who procured the gun and a box of ammunition. Lee drove around scouting out possible sites, choosing a couple spots near bodies of water because he was superstitious. Lee arranged for them to go to a gun range together for target practice, and took Cho to a Wal-Mart where he bought black knit gloves and size 13 shoes – props to make his death look like a robbery.
Lee then chose the date for the deed, Cho said: his wife’s birthday. It would be his last gift.
After dinner that night, they each drove their cars to the first spot Lee had picked out, between Anaheim Lake and a basin, only to find that there were crews working there late into the night. They drove to a second location nearby, a quiet stretch of Miraloma Avenue.
Lee flattened the tyre, ransacked the glove compartment of his rental car and smoked a final cigarette. He handed Cho the revolver wrapped in a T-shirt before dropping to his knees with his back to his friend, Cho said.
“Keep talking to me so that I won’t know when I’m being shot. And while I’m talking … shoot me in the middle of our conversation,” his friend implored, Cho told the detective. [Sydney Morning Herald]
As it turns out the jury agreed with Cho that this was not murder and convicted him of voluntary manslaughter:
A man who shot his friend of more than three decades in the back of his head in an industrial area of east Anaheim is guilty of voluntary manslaughter, not murder, an Orange County jury found Thursday.
Beong Kwun Cho, 56, admitted to police that he shot his friend, Yeon Woo Lee, and left him abandoned on the side of a road near a basin along Miraloma Avenue. But Cho insisted it was at the request of Lee, who wanted to die but didn’t want to burden his family with the social stigma and trauma associated with suicide. [LA Times]
Here is yet another example of a mass shooter with possible mental issues:
For six years starting in 2009, Johnson served in the Army Reserve as a private first class with a specialty in carpentry and masonry, the military said.
In May 2014, six months into his Afghanistan tour, he was accused of sexual harassment by a female soldier. The Army sent him stateside, recommending an “other than honorable discharge,” said Bradford Glendening, the military lawyer who represented him.
That recommendation was “highly unusual,” Bradford said, since counseling is usually ordered before more drastic steps are taken.
“In his case, it was apparently so egregious, it was not just the act itself,” Glendening told The Associated Press. “I’m sure that this guy was the black sheep of his unit.”
According to a court filing Glendening read over the phone Friday, the victim said she wanted Johnson to “receive mental help,” while also seeking a protective order to keep him away from her and her family, wherever they went. Johnson was ordered to avoid all contact with her.
Glendening said Johnson was set to be removed from the Army in September 2014 because of the incident, but instead got an honorable discharge months later — for reasons he can’t understand.
“Someone really screwed up,” he said. “But to my client’s benefit.” [Associated Press]
You can read more at the link, but just like the Orlando shooting it appears a guy with mental issues influenced by radical hate spread through mainstream and social media decided to take action at the urging of others.
