The perpetrator of the "Sinjeong-dong serial killings" has been identified after 20 years. However, the person has already died and cannot be brought to court.
The Detective Mobile Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Violent Crime Investigation Division said on the 21st that it had identified the suspect in the Sinjeong-dong serial killings as a person surnamed Jeong, who was in their 60s at the time of the crimes. The person was the manager of Y Building, where the crimes took place.
The location of Jeong's crimes was Y Building. On June 6, 2005, Jeong is accused of luring a woman, identified as A, who had visited Y Building in Sinjeong-dong and was about to go home, to the basement level 1 storage room under the pretense of guiding her to the exit, robbing her of valuables and sexually assaulting her, then strangling her to death. Jeong is also accused of loading the body into a personal sedan and abandoning it later that night in a parking lot near an elementary school in Yangcheon-gu.
Jeong is also accused of dragging a woman in her 40s, identified as B, to the basement storage room of the same building on Nov. 20 of the same year, sexually assaulting her, and then strangling her to death. The body was found at dawn the next day in a parking lot near a residential area in Sinjeong-dong.
In February 2006, Jeong attempted another sex crime using a similar method and was arrested in the act. Jeong served time until 2009. However, the two earlier serial killings could not be linked at the time due to limitations in DNA analysis technology.
With no leads, the case was reclassified as a cold case in 2013. Then in 2016, the cold case team of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency reopened the investigation. After reviewing tips and case records, police confirmed through National Forensic Service analysis that the killings of A and B were committed by the same person.
Investigators selected a total of 231,897 people, including residents and related persons around the scenes, as subjects of inquiry and compared the DNA of 1,514 among them, but found no matches. They even conducted international joint investigations, comparing with Chinese national databases and others, but could not find the perpetrator.
Police expanded the pool to include deceased individuals. While analyzing 56 people with possible connections to the case, they found a specimen from Jeong that had been stored at a hospital. According to National Forensic Service analysis, Jeong's DNA matched the DNA recovered from evidence in both cases. Jeong was reported to have died of cancer in July 2015.
Because Jeong has already died, the case is expected to be closed without referral on the grounds of no right to institute public action. A police official said, "With the resolve to 'track a murderer to the afterlife,' we will get to the bottom of long-term cold cases regardless of whether the perpetrator is alive or dead."
By identifying Jeong as the suspect, police also clarified that the case is unrelated to the "Bizarre Rabbit case," which had been mistaken as the work of the same offender. The Bizarre Rabbit case was named after a woman in May 2006 said she had been dragged into a semi-basement studio in Sinjeong-dong, escaped narrowly, and saw a Bizarre Rabbit sticker posted inside the building.
Based on the commonality that victims were kidnapped and assaulted around the same time and area, a broadcaster raised the possibility of the same offender, and suspicion spread. However, police concluded there was no connection because Jeong was already incarcerated when the Bizarre Rabbit case occurred.