Body of 2nd Murdered Schoolgirl Presumed Found

Police yesterday found a dismembered body that appears to be that of Woo Ye-seul, one of two schoolgirls murdered late last year, in a stream in the southern Seoul suburb of Shiheung.

Gyeonggi Province police said they found two arms, a left leg and the upper body of a child around the stream. The body parts were sent to the National Institute of Scientific Investigation for identification.

Police conducted a search with the 39-year-old suspect identified only as Jeong. He has confessed to killing schoolgirls Woo and Lee Hye-jin in neighboring Anyang on Dec. 25 last year.

Some 300 police officers and members of the Marine Corps Veterans Association searched Gunja Stream, where Jeong said he dumped Woo’s body.

Two water pumps were used to drain the meter-deep stream. A body part was first found 250 meters up a bridge at the bottom of the stream.

A Marine veteran was the first to discover the severed limb. “I was walking along Gunja Stream with five others while kicking the stream bed,” he said. “Then an object that seemed to be an arm floated to the surface about two meters in front of me. When I looked at it closely, I realized that it was the arm of a child.”

The arm was badly decomposed because it had been submerged for a long time.

Additional body parts were also found some 100 meters downstream.

Police sought an arrest warrant for Jeong on charges of murder and abandonment of dead bodies.

Jeong said, “I cut up the bodies of the two children at home and dumped them in Suwon and Shiheung. I threw their body parts away in a vacant lot near my house.”

A DNA test was pending on the blood traces found in the toilet of Jeong’s house. Police also found a double-bladed saw with a handle in his home, but with no blood.

In interrogations, the suspect did not mention a motive for his crime and continually changed his details of the murders and what he did on Dec. 25, according to police.

A police official said Jeong testified that he killed them in a car accident that occurred around 9 p.m. on Dec. 25 while driving a rental car.

Police, however, found that he took out the rental car around 9:50 p.m. that day and came up with no evidence of a car accident on Lee’s body or the car.

Jeong might also be the culprit in the 2004 disappearance of a 44-year-old call girl. The woman went missing while working for an adult telephone room, or “jeonhwabang.”

The owner of the shop reported her disappearance to police. Police in the southern Seoul suburb of Gunpo checked her phone records and found that her last phone call made on the day of her disappearance was to Jeong at 11:43 p.m.

Jeong was named a prime suspect in the case based on circumstantial evidence. He was cleared, however, after police failed to secure evidence despite searching his home and car and conducting a forensic investigation.

“We will reopen the investigation because Jeong is likely responsible for the kidnapping and murder of the elementary school students in Anyang,” a Gunpo police official said.