The Raincoat Killer: Chasing a Predator in Korea

For a long time, I couldn't get the scene out of my head.

The scenes of the victims…

dismembered, how they would have suffered.

It was incredibly difficult. It's still difficult.

This was the first serial killer I personally interviewed.

I was very motivated.

He took pride in feeling

that he was in control of the profiler.

So, it was like psychological warfare.

Yes, you could say that.

As soon as I met him,

it was obvious that he was proud of how he was talked about by the press.

I could tell from his facial expressions and his tone of voice.

I asked him why he marked the site where the victims were buried,

and he said it was because he didn't want to dig the same place twice…

as he had to continuously bury his future victims.

He put markers that only he'd be able to recognize.

I've never again heard such cruel words in my life.

What I realized then was

that to understand criminals,

one has to take a walk inside their minds.

The experience was so devastating

that I believed I would never be the same person again.

A MAN OF RELIGION

I was once a deeply religious man.

I have no idea how I came to walk…

such a devious path.

The body of a Hwanghak-dong vendor was found burnt in his van…

His body was burnt.

His entire body was burnt to a crisp. That's how he died.

I was extremely upset by that among many other things.

The police suspected his brothers.

It might sound out of place for me to say this,

but the level of police in this country was that bad.

This was the case that motivated the police to do better.

The police didn’t know the victim’s identity

as everything was burned.

There was nothing that could be identified.

They wanted to find the fingerprints, but they couldn't

because everything was burned.

I held onto the wrist and prayed.

"Please help me.

Please wait a little longer.

We'll catch him soon."

Even now, it breaks my heart just thinking about it.

From the time I turned 30,

all I had left in me was hatred and anger.

Numerous cases have remained unsolved,

causing the public to grow even more anxious.

It's now a battle of wits between the forensics team and the criminals.

These cases had the entire nation in an uproar.

All the cases I'm telling you about,

I still see them in a panoramic view before my eyes.

I believe that I may have

a few drops of crazy blood flowing through my body.

Let me tell you about the series of murders

that targeted wealthy individuals in Seoul.

My daily routine

consists of meeting with and interviewing criminals

who are in prison or in holding cells.

I'd produce analytical reports

based on the interviews I had conducted.

When the first case occurred,

that's what I was doing in my office.

I stopped what I was doing

and headed out to the crime scene when the dispatch call came in.

I didn't think that day would be any special

since there are a lot of murders in Seoul.

OCTOBER 9, 2003

KCSI

We received a dispatch request.

"There has been a murder. We need you on the site."

We hurried to the scene when the call came in.

Before me,

all of the CSI staff on-site were men.

At that time, I was the first woman to be dispatched to the scene.

I got a call that there had been a murder.

I usually tend to stay within our area of jurisdiction.

At the time, it was one of the wealthiest areas in Korea.

GUGI-DONG

The victim’s husband reported the crime after he returned home from work,

so the body was found in the evening.

DO NOT CROSS UNDER INVESTIGATION

I went to all the murders that took place in Seoul.

There was a certain feeling

that I got from that particular scene.

An ominous air or sorts…

It was spine-chilling.

That's how it made me feel.

I still can't forget that feeling even to this day.

It wasn't just me.

The senior investigators who were at the scene felt it, too.

You'd know if you were there,

but the atmosphere there was difficult to describe in words.

When you first enter, you see the entrance of the bathroom.

That's where the grandmother was lying on the floor.

As you went in further, there was a kitchen,

and there was an aquarium in front of the kitchen.

And further inside, the daughter-in-law lay collapsed

on the floor in front of the kitchen sink.

Her skull was dented so badly

that I couldn't tell what the assailant had used to do this.

We had to go up to the second floor, but we were overcome with fear…

when we saw the entire flight of stairs covered in blood.

We even thought that the assailant might still be hiding upstairs.

It made us feel as if the assailant

was hiding upstairs with his weapon in hand.

It struck me with fear and sent a chill down my spine.

As we went up the stairs and around the corner,

we found the body of the son who seemed to have been attacked on his way down.

His head was struck so many times that his brain was scattered everywhere.

His head had burst and his brain was scattered all over the place.

It was extremely gruesome.

When we go to the crime site, we would place blocks to step on

and approach the main areas

so as not to contaminate the scene.

But there was so much blood

that we couldn't find the room to place the blocks.

Since the assailant's feet had to touch the ground

in order for him to get around,

there was bound to be evidence no matter how hard he'd try to remove it.

We ended up

collecting two very faint footprints.

First, we checked to see if it was from the shoes worn by a family member.

If not, it would belong to the assailant.

We weren't able to identify the assailant, but it would help in the investigation.

What didn't make sense was

that there were no signs of the victims fighting back.

It seemed very one-sided.

So I wondered

how such a thing could have happened in broad daylight.

Naturally, we had no choice

but to investigate the husband and the people around him.

Ko Jung-won was a relatively successful businessman.

Mr. Ko Jung-won and I developed a special relationship.

I have known him for more than 10 years. It's almost been 14 years.

And at first, we met as a documentary director

and as the main character.

But later, I became his godson.

As a journalist, I have the responsibility to leave a record of the people I film.

He is very hardworking and humble.

He knows how to be considerate to others.

He is a very gentle person.

That's why it came as such a shock to many people who knew him.

He suddenly lost his mother, wife, and son.

But in the case of such a cruel murder,

who would the police suspect first?

Mr. Koh, who was a husband, a father and a son,

was the first to be suspected.

Not everyone believed that he was innocent,

especially the police.

We investigated everyone who had anything to do with him.

What Ko Jung-won did that day,

and whether anyone held any resentment toward him?

Or if he had any extra-marital relations,

or what other problems he may have faced leading to his bankruptcy.

He kept asking us, "Why are you doing this to me when my family is dead?"

But it was all a part of the investigation process.

He said he was sorry to his wife, mother, and son.

He was sorry that he couldn't protect them.

He said that repeatedly as he cried.

So he kept asking the fish these questions as if he had gone mad.

"Didn't you see who it was?

Who was it? Why did they do it?

How did they die?"

And…

that was very heart-wrenching for me to hear.

He was deeply grieving the loss of his family,

so it was difficult for us to identify him as the killer.

We didn't find anyone who held a particular grudge against him.

He wasn't the type of person to incur resentment from others.

While I was wondering why such a murder had happened,

I noticed a few strange folks coming and going around the neighborhood.

So I asked our detectives,

"Who are those people? Aren't they suspicious?"

I told them to look into it,

and it turned out they were detectives from the Gangnam Police Station.

GUGI-DONG

I asked why detectives from Gangnam were here,

and they told me that there had been

a similar case in Sinsa-dong, and that's why they were here.

At the time, we didn't know about the Sinsa-dong case.

When I was the Chief of the Gangnam Police,

I was in charge of South Korea's number one economic district.

That gave me a sense of pride and the motivation

to do my best.

CHIEF, GANGNAM POLICE STATION DURING THE YOO YOUNG-CHUL CASE

I had caught many murder suspects.

It allowed my staff to be promoted.

We apprehended them with ease.

We had a large investigation team consisting of 200 people.

When there was a murder at the time, you had to consider

that all cases were connected.

The Gugi-dong case was almost identical to the Sinsa-dong case.

OCTOBER 9, 2003

SEPTEMBER 24, 2003 2 WEEKS EARLIER

GUGI-DONG

SINSA-DONG

It's completely changed.

Everything's changed.