The 2004 murder of the secretary of the Yeongwol County Farmers' Association in Gangwon has fallen back into mystery. Prosecutors indicted a man last year—20 years after the crime—who had been identified as a prime suspect when the case occurred, but the court ultimately found that it is difficult to identify the killer based on footprint analysis alone without fingerprint or DNA evidence.
The Supreme Court's Third Division (Presiding Justice Lee Suk-yeon) on the 11th affirmed a lower court ruling acquitting a man in his 60s, identified as A, finding that indirect evidence and circumstances alone did not provide proof sufficient to recognize that the defendant killed the victim.
The Yeongwol Farmers' Association secretary murder occurred on Aug. 9, 2004, at the office of the Farmers' Association in Yeongwol-eup, Yeongwol County. At the time, B, then 41, a secretary at an agricultural corporation, was killed with a weapon. A, then 39, became a suspect early in the investigation, but told police that at the time of the crime he was on vacation with his family at the Misari Valley in Yeongwol and submitted water-play photos taken that day. Police deemed the alibi proven, and the case went unsolved for a long period.
Police reexamined the bloodstained footprint. In 2020, the National Forensic Service notified investigators that 17 distinctive points between the footprint and A's sandals matched 99.9%. Police referred the case to prosecutors, and prosecutors in July last year indicted A on murder charges. Prosecutors concluded A committed the crime after a woman with whom A was having an affair said she "liked" B.
The first trial sentenced A to life in prison. The court found the motive established and judged that the footprint found at the scene was sufficiently likely to be A's.
However, the appeals court acquitted A. It noted that of the five footprint analyses conducted from the investigative stage through the appeal, only three found a "match," while two concluded there were "no individual distinctive points to recognize identity between the two footprints." It also found the indirect evidence submitted by investigators insufficient.
The appellate panel said, "Even in the three analyses that found the footprints the same, the distinctive points appear to differ," adding, "In a situation where there is only footprint analysis without other corroboration such as fingerprints or DNA, the footprint analysis alone appears insufficient to deem the defendant the perpetrator in this case."
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, saying the appellate acquittal contained no error in light of the law and the record.