A deranged South Korean true crime fan who told police she savagely stabbed and slaughtered an English teacher “out of curiosity” (while pretending to be a high school student) has been sentenced to life in prison.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Jung Yoo-jung, 23, but she asked the court for leniency, claiming she suffered from hallucinations and a host of mental health problems, BBC News reported.
The Busan District Court spared Jung’s life but rejected his claims that the monstrous murder was caused by mental illness, as the crime had been “carefully planned and executed,” presiding judge Kim Tae-eob said.
Jung was convicted of murder, desecration and abandonment of a corpse, five months after being accused of brutally killing and dismembering a 26-year-old woman she met through an app in May.
Prosecutors argued that Jung was obsessed with true crime books and television shows and decided to kill someone in real life to satisfy her curiosity about the murder.
South Korean true crime fan Jung Yoo-jung, 23, has been sentenced to life in prison for a savage murder. Busan Metropolitan Police Agency
The convicted murderer, who was described as an unemployed recluse who lived with her grandfather, had used her cell phone and checked out books from a library to research how to hide a body, Busan police said.
Jung spent months searching for potential victims through an app that connects parents with guardians, and contacted more than 50 people, mostly women, before finding one who lived alone and offered home lessons.
Posing as the mother of a ninth grader who needed help with English, Jung arranged for her fake daughter to go to the tutor’s house for a study session.
He then put on a school uniform he bought online, went to the unsuspecting woman’s address and stabbed her to death more than 100 times in a frenzied attack, delivering blows even after the victim had died, officials said, as reported Korea JoonAng Daily.
Jung stabbed an innocent guardian more than 100 times, cut up her body and disposed of the remains in a suitcase, as seen in a screenshot from a CCTV video.
Jung left the murdered tutor’s house to buy garbage bags and bleach before returning to dismember the body, even cutting off her fingers in an attempt to make it harder to identify her by her fingerprints.
The 23-year-old then packed the remains into a suitcase and took a taxi to the Nakdong River, where she disposed of the gruesome evidence in a secluded park.
“To make it appear that the victim had disappeared, Jung kept the victim’s cell phone, ID card and wallet, attempting to commit a perfect crime,” police said.
But Jung’s plot unraveled when the taxi driver became suspicious and called the police because his passenger had dumped a blood-stained suitcase in a remote area by the river.
Jung pleaded for leniency, claiming that he had suffered from hallucinations and mental health disorders. K.B.
After Jung was arrested, he initially told police that he had only moved the victim’s body after someone else killed her.
Later, he claimed that he had accidentally killed the tutor during an argument.
In the end, he confessed to the heinous murder and blamed it on his interest in the true crime genre.
On Friday, the judge who sentenced Jung said the murder had “spread fear in society that one can become a victim for no reason” and “incited widespread distrust.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn