Grandfather, who was assaulted by a gunman at dawn, came to his senses and his granddaughter disappeared?

■ Broadcasting: FM 94.5 (06:40~06:55, 12:40~12:55, 19:40~19:55)
■ Air date: October 14, 2024 (Mon)
■ Host: Attorney Lee Won-hwa
■ Lawyer Ahn Soo-jin

* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information.
◆ Lawyer Lee Won-hwa (hereinafter referred to as Lee Won-hwa): This case, which I will introduce today, occurred in May 2008 at a farmhouse in Dalseong-gun, Daegu. Ms. A, who was not in good condition at the time, was living with her younger brother, Ms. B, at her grandfather's house. The two sisters fell into a sweet dreamland. But less than a few hours after I fell asleep, I started hearing something strange in my house. After A, who ran away without hesitation at the sound of her grandfather being assaulted by someone, her younger brother B ran out of the house and asked neighbors for help. When the police arrived at the scene after receiving a report, the grandfather was already seriously injured by the assault. And Ms. A had disappeared without a trace. Where on earth did Ms. A disappear? And who the hell were those people who were beating his grandfather? We'll go into more detail in today's case X file. Hello, I'm Lee Won-hwa, the case X file of lawyer Lee Won-hwa. Today, I'm with lawyer Ahn Soo-jin of Law Firm, Roel. Welcome, lawyer.

◇ Lawyer Ahn Soo-jin (hereinafter referred to as Ahn Soo-jin): Hello, I'm Ahn Soo-jin, a lawyer at LOEL Law Firm.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: It happened 16 years ago in 2008. The two sisters couldn't live with their parents due to family circumstances and were left at their grandfather's house.

◇Ahn Soo-jin: Yes, that's right. At that time in 2008, A was 11 years old and A's younger brother was 9 years old, very young children. It is known that the sisters A lived in an old detached house with a monthly rent of 50,000 won with their grandfather, separated from their parents due to difficulties in living, and the grandfather made a living by picking up empty bottles and waste paper.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: Then one day I think the sun would be up when I looked at the time, but I heard that there was a time when I heard a strange sound in my grandfather's room early in the morning and both sisters woke up.

◇Ahn Soo-jin: Around 4:10 a.m., which is very early, Ms. A, who was sleeping with her younger brother, was awakened by screams and dull noises coming from her grandfather's room. Surprised, A ran to her grandfather's room, and A's younger brother remained in the room where he was sleeping in fear. When Ms. A opened her grandfather's visit, Ms. A's grandfather was being assaulted by the gunman without mercy, and Ms. A said, 'What's wrong with you, old man? ’ He tries to hold onto the gunman who is angry with the gunmen so that he can't hit his grandfather.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: I think I was very brave even though I was young.

◇Ahn Soo-jin: Yes, that's right. At that time, the gunman used a very violent tone, such as "You should get hit once" by A's grandfather. I think it took a lot of courage for an elementary school student to try to stop the gunman while watching and listening to the scene of the grandfather being assaulted and the gunman's words. Meanwhile, Ms. A's younger brother explained the situation to her neighbor's house and asked for help.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: That's why the police were dispatched, right?

◇Ahn Soo-jin: Yes. After receiving a report from a neighbor's house, the police arrived at the scene, and a grandfather, the victim of the assault, and a bloody mop were placed at the scene, so at first glance, it seemed to be the scene of a typical assault incident. But the most important part, Miss A, disappeared from nowhere.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: Are you saying it's gone? Did you happen to be kidnapped?

◇Ahn Soo-jin: That's right. The gunman who was assaulting his grandfather kidnapped Ms. A. In response, the grandfather said that he would return the child if he begged the woman while receiving treatment the day after the incident, or that he was familiar with the initial investigation, as if he knew who the gunman kidnapped A was.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: I don't think it's that hard to find the culprit because the lawyer said that the grandfather's reaction was like someone who knew the criminal, but how was it?

◇Ahn Soo-jin: I wish I had been arrested as soon as possible, but the reality was different. The police conducted a closed-door investigation, presuming that A was the work of a person around her, considering that there was no particular sign of defiance when A was kidnapped, and his grandfather's initial statement. But I think my grandfather will recognize me when he sees my face soon. He reversed his statement, such as one man in his 50s and two men in his 30s, and no one clearly witnessed it, so the investigation was difficult.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: Why did you change your statement like this?

◇Ahn Soo-jin: In fact, some people at the time questioned whether the grandfather's statement was not consistent even though he was severely assaulted and his granddaughter was kidnapped, and whether it was a self-made play or a secret even though he knew the culprit.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: I think it's possible.

◇Ahn Soo-jin: However, profiler Kwon Il-yong, who later participated in the main investigation, cleared all speculation that his grandfather did not cover up the criminal, but rather did not know who he was, and did not even understand why he had come to this, so he remembered all the people who might have committed such crimes and that the statement was constantly changed.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: She said she was in the room, but was there anything in her statement that could help?

◇Ahn Soo-jin: It seems that A's younger brother was in the room with A and asked for help from a neighbor, so he couldn't see the victim's face properly, and there was no neighbor who witnessed the situation at the time, so the grandfather was actually the person involved in the assault and the only witness. However, my grandfather passed away on August 21, 2008, 84 days after the incident, due to worsening lung disease of the chronic disease.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: I think he died during the investigation, but I think it would have been more difficult as the only witness died, so how did the police investigation go after that?

◇ Ahn Soo-jin: During a closed investigation, the police switched to an open investigation five days after the incident, issuing the Amber Alert, a missing child alert system, and asking local police for cooperation, while mobilizing all available personnel to find Ms. A, including distributing 17,000 flyers, setting a bounty of 5 million won, communication data from base stations, and analyzing CCTV.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: But in the case of kidnapping, there are many cases where they contact you later and ask for money or threaten you. Have you heard anything from the criminal?

◇Ahn Soo-jin: Yes, there wasn't any. In general, in child kidnapping cases, there are many cases where the economic purpose of extorting large amounts of money from the guardian is linked. In this case, the peculiar thing was that there was no contact from the criminal, including threats and requests for money and goods. In addition, the police took into account the possibility that A's case was the work of a person with a personal grudge against his grandfather, not a child, in the house, and that there was no economic benefit to acquire the kidnapping due to the lack of economic circumstances, as mentioned earlier. Contrary to everyone's wish to speed up the investigation through the conversion of the open investigation, to make matters worse, there was even a case that caused confusion in the investigation.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: What happened?

◇Ansujin: The very day after the open investigation, a middle school student living in the next neighborhood falsely reported that A called me three times on June 1 and 2 and asked me to take her because she was in town after being kidnapped. There was even a problem that the investigation manpower was dispersed as the police continued to search the Dongseong-ro area in Daegu to confirm the above report. In addition, there were reports that she saw Ms. A in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, and that an employee at a highway office witnessed a person similar to the suspect, but all of them turned out to be untrue.

◆ Lee Won-hwa: I need to be more strict with the law. That's what I think. I think this is a really formidable felony.

◇Ahn Soo-jin: That's right. I don't think it's an exaggeration to call kidnapping an innocent child a felony. While there was no special progress in the investigation, the police began a large-scale search for a 5km radius around A's house from June 9, and around 5 p.m. on June 12, 14 days after the incident, the police found A's body on a hillside about 2.3km away from her house.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: I hope it's not just that conclusion, but I didn't come back alive.

◇Ahn Soo-jin: Actually, I was so shocked to read various articles to prepare for the radio, and actually, I'm still feeling so heavy right now. Ms. A's body was found lying naked on a hillside 15 meters below the hill, especially the shape of her face and upper body was so serious that it was difficult to recognize. Meanwhile, the T-shirt and shorts worn by A cat were hung on a branch 300m below the site of the body, and A's high underwear was found 150m away from the spot. The police collected DNA samples such as hair and body hair from the body and requested a biopsy from the National Forensic Service.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: I think we can get a clue if we know the cause of death, but what was the result of the autopsy?

◇Ansujin: A's autopsy was conducted in a forensic class at Kyungpook National University, and according to a news briefing by the investigation process of Dalseong Police Station in Daegu on June 13, it is impossible to identify the cause of death and sexual assault due to the mild decay of the skin, the head and right arm torso are separated, and there are about 6cm of cracks in the head and right arm, but it is not known at what point it occurred. In conclusion, it was confirmed that it was A's body, but no special traces were found and no specific cause of death was revealed.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: No one was named as a suspect after all.

◇Ansu-jin: The police placed more than 60 people, including the people around A, and a major offender, on the suspect's list to investigate their whereabouts on the day of the incident, and even genetically identified the hair believed to belong to the suspect found around A's body, but found no clues. Meanwhile, a man who lived near the house where Ms. A lived was mentioned as a prime suspect, but when the police visited the man's house, the man's intellectual disability was not properly investigated and was excluded from the investigation.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: The initial police investigation was too poor at the time of the incident and to this day. There is a high level of criticism, what do you think about it from the lawyer's point of view? What part of it do you feel particularly sad about?

◇Ahn Soo-jin: Personally, even though a statement made by an elderly grandfather may have been distorted while being assaulted several times, there are times when it is necessary to focus particularly on the statement and leave all possibilities open to the part where the initial investigation was conducted and the investigation technique. However, it is a pity that A, who disappeared without wearing shoes at less than 5 a.m., even left open the possibility that she had run away from home. In particular, according to the National Police Agency, the probability of missing children not being found nationwide increases to 58% after 12 hours, 68% after 24 hours, and 89% after a week.

◆ Won-hwa Lee: But if we get decisive evidence even now, it's possible to punish the criminal in this case legally, right?

◇Ahn Soo-jin: Yes. The 2015 criminal procedure law amendment, so-called Taewani Act, abolished the statute of limitations for murder cases whose statute of limitations has not expired before the date of enforcement, so it seems that punishment can be carried out if the criminal is caught even now. In light of this law, which was in effect at the time, if a minor is kidnapped or lured, he or she is sentenced to death or life imprisonment. In particular, in the case of the suspect in this case, the crime is expected to be considered very serious in that she dumped A's body in the mountains, was a very young child only 11 years old at the time, and she ran away from the investigation network after that.

◆ Lee Won-hwa: Case X File Today, we looked at the kidnapping and murder of an elementary school student in Daegu, where A, who lived in a farmhouse in Daegu with his grandfather, was kidnapped and killed. Ms. A's younger brother, who was with her at the scene, carefully checked the records of the incident at the time as well as related articles to resolve her sister's unfair death after she became an adult. It's important to keep in mind that there is no statute of limitations for murder cases. That's all we've prepared for today. You are all worthy of change. Incident X file, thank you everyone.