E Channel ‘Brave Detectives 5’

On ‘Brave Detectives 5’, the full story of a murder case surrounding a famous web novel author was revealed.

Episode 3 of tcast E Channel’s ‘Brave Detectives 5’ (directed by Lee Ji-seon), which aired on the 10th, featured Inspector Lee Dong-hee of the Busanjin Police Station Phishing Crime Investigation Team, Inspector Seo Bu-hee of Violent Crimes Team 4, and from the Forensic Science Division (KCSI) former Senior Superintendent-General Yoon Woe-chul and Officer Kim Jin-su, who presented investigation journals from cases they personally solved.

Before introducing the case, Gwak Sun-young said, “It turned out the victim was a famous web novel author who had uploaded multiple works online,” adding, “This is truly a heartbreaking and distressing case.” The case began in 2019 when a woman called to report, “A close older friend is unreachable and has not gone to work,” asking the police to accompany her to the friend’s home.

The older friend’s home was a luxury apartment with a rigorous security system. When officers opened the door and entered, they found the victim dead, hanging in the bathtub of the master bathroom. However, the condition of the body made it difficult to regard as a simple suicide. There were bruises all over the body and injuries on the knees. The investigative team began to suspect homicide. The victim was a woman in her 30s who had recently moved into the apartment to live with and care for her parents. The caller said she found it strange that the door code, which the victim had never changed, had been altered. It was also confirmed that the day before the incident the victim had posted a sofa for sale on a secondhand marketplace, and contact with her ceased after a final message from a buyer saying they were in front of her home.

Apartment visitor logs showed that on the day of the victim’s last communication, an unidentified man in his 20s visited her home, and it was revealed that the same man had also visited the apartment both the day before the deal and on the day itself.

CCTV analysis captured the man receiving a car on a road near the victim’s home. Based on the vehicle color, authorities tracked its movements through the local government control center and the traffic control room, discovering that it was a rental car. The renter was a 21-year-old Mr. Kim (alias) with two prior convictions, and he was arrested using the rental car’s GPS records. In the bag he was carrying, investigators found the victim’s mobile phone, a card key, and the apartment contract. Hearing this, Ahn Jung-hwan said in anger, “He’s out of his mind.” Kim, however, claimed he did not know why the victim’s phone was in his bag and said he had taken the apartment contract to use as a memo pad.

Kim later admitted to the crime, stating that the sofa had been listed at $1,725 (2,300,000 KRW) and he asked to have it reduced to $1,350 (1,800,000 KRW). He said the victim suddenly disparaged his parents, which enraged him, so he assaulted her, and when his anger did not subside, he stepped on her neck, causing her death. Yet before the supposed deal, the suspect’s account balance was only $30 (40,000 KRW), indicating he had no intention of buying the sofa. From the victim’s home, Kim made four transfers of $750 (1,000,000 KRW) each, and thereafter either transferred or obtained cash advances totaling $24,000 (32,000,000 KRW).

What shocked many was Kim’s conduct immediately after the crime. He went on a date with his girlfriend, treated her parents to a meal, and even went to a luxury outlet. Kim had been unemployed for two months, had squandered his savings, and had borrowed only $7,500 (10,000,000 KRW) from more than ten private lenders. He was ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment for robbery-murder. Kim’s older sister retained a lawyer and deposited a settlement for the bereaved family, but this money, too, turned out to have been transferred from the victim’s account, provoking public outrage.

The next case introduced by KCSI began in 2014 when a man in his 60s came to a police station to file a missing-person report, saying his older brother in his 70s, who lived alone, was unreachable and even had his mobile phone turned off. The missing man had been living alone after a divorce two months earlier and had been in contact with his younger brother almost daily. After contact was cut off, he could not be found at his residence.

Investigators then found a self-defense products dealership phone number in the missing man’s notebook. The younger brother said his older brother had been constantly anxious since being kidnapped ten months earlier. In the past, the missing man had been suddenly abducted while walking and forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital; his younger brother filed suit and won a discharge ruling three months later. Behind that incident was the missing man’s wife. Claiming her husband suffered from morbid jealousy and mental illness, she had him committed, and the two later divorced. Suspicion deepened when, after his discharge, a house under the missing man’s name was signed over and his individual taxi license was revoked while he was hospitalized. He also owned a building worth about $1,875,000 (2,500,000,000 KRW), but at his wife’s request he had transferred that title as well.

The wife was questioned as a witness, and her alibi around the time the missing man’s phone was turned off was airtight. She claimed her husband habitually assaulted her when drunk, and their children said the same. Investigators sought a warrant to seize her communications and financial records, but it was denied for lack of evidence. Door-to-door canvassing continued, but no witnesses emerged.

One year after the incident, an important tip came in to the police violent crimes unit from someone who asked whether they knew about the disappearance of the man in his 70s and said he knew details of the case. The informant said that while incarcerated he had heard fellow inmates describe how the crime was carried out and, after release, he happened to see a news article and realized it was the same real case. The inmates were suspects who had already been investigated multiple times for abductions, and they denied the crime.

After a standoff, one accomplice as an accessory claimed the principal offender had taken the contract and that he himself only carried out the abduction. To find who had commissioned them, investigators seized a mobile phone from stored personal effects and sent it for forensic analysis, finding several photos taken around the missing man’s home and a contact with whom calls were frequent before and after the abduction. That contact was an employee of a private ambulance center who had ties to the wife. When the missing man was forcibly committed to the psychiatric hospital, the ambulance center employee had been involved, and it was confirmed that $15,000 (20,000,000 KRW) had been paid.

The missing man’s wife then acknowledged paying $37,500 (50,000,000 KRW) for the commission but denied ordering a killing, claiming what she had requested was to put her husband somewhere he could never come out of. The ambulance employee, however, interpreted this as a murder-for-hire, passed the order to the contractors, and the victim was killed two hours after the abduction. The wife blamed past domestic violence and refused to explain why she had transferred property titles. The body was found in a wooded hill, and a National Forensic Service examination confirmed it was the missing man.

The wife and the ambulance center employee were each sentenced to 15 years in prison, and additional crimes by the hired perpetrators were uncovered during trial. They had injected a sleep-inducing drug into a man in his 40s who was being discharged after alcohol-dependence treatment, murdered him, and secretly buried the body. It was revealed they had planned crimes targeting psychiatric patients who appeared to have no family ties but had assets. The principal offender received life imprisonment, and the accessory was sentenced to 24 years.

‘Brave Detectives 5’ airs every Friday at 9:50 p.m. and is also available on major OTT platforms such as Netflix, Tving, and Wavve. Viewers can find up-to-date news and videos about the program on E Channel’s official YouTube and Instagram. In addition, the E Channel original web variety series ‘Detectives’ Chatter’, which expands the ‘Brave Detectives’ universe, covers detectives’ behind-the-scenes investigation stories, the backstories of major violent crimes, and true accounts of death-row inmates in South Korea whose executions were actually carried out, and it is released every Friday at 7 p.m. on the YouTube channel ‘Detectives’ Chatter’.