Man who sexually assaulted 184 people in 8 years, why didn't anyone know about his crime?

■ Broadcasting: FM 94.5 (06:40~06:55, 12:40~12:55, 19:40~19:55)
■ Broadcast Date: December 17, 2024 (Tue)
■ Host: Lawyer Jeong Tae-geun
■ Dialogue: Attorney Kim Hee-eun

* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information.

◇Jung Tae-geun: A, who used to work as a taxi driver, was a sweet father with a daughter and a son in his 20s and a good exemplary father with his wife. It was a middle-aged man who was so ordinary on the surface. A, who was a member of an early soccer club, used to go out early in the morning every day. But there was a secret that A could never tell anyone. And that secret has been hidden for eight years. What was the secret? The real identity of A, who seemed so ordinary, was a serial sexual assault. In eight years, there were 184 victims of A's crime alone. But I'm curious. How on earth did A commit this atrocity and not be found by the police for nearly 8 years? In today's case X file, we'll take a closer look at this case. Hello, I'm lawyer Jung Tae-geun of lawyer Lee Won-hwa's case X file. With lawyer Kim Hee-eun of Law Firm Roel. Welcome, lawyer.

◆ Kim Hee-eun: Hello, I'm lawyer Kim Hee-eun of Law Firm.

◇ Jeong Tae-geun: We often use the expression 'balbari' to refer to serial sexual assault. It is said that this incident was the beginning of this expression.

◆ Kim Hee-eun: The police, who were tracking down Lee Jung-gu, the culprit of today's case, nicknamed Valbari, a slang term for being quick and agile, with Lee Jung-gu running away even with a small size of 157 centimeters. Since then, the media has tended to give serial rapists the name Balbari. Because Lee Jung-gu committed the crime around Daejeon, he became a victim of Daejeon.

◇ Jung Tae-geun: So it happened in Daejeon?

◆Kim Hee-eun: In 1996, rumors began circulating in Daejeon that there were serial sex offenders targeting women living alone. A short man came after me late at night, a taxi driver followed me. The back was also heard a lot.

◇ Jung Tae-geun: Was that a rumor? Or is it something that actually happened?

◆Kim Hee-eun: On February 7, 1998, at 7:30 p.m., the criminal's first crime began in Wolpyeong-dong, Seo-gu, Daejeon. Lee Jung-gu was working as a taxi driver at the time, and the first crime was to rape a drunk female passenger. Lee Jung-gu committed dozens of crimes after he was not caught in these crimes. On October 22, 1999, Lee broke into a villa in Tanbang-dong, Seo-gu, Daejeon, at 8:10 a.m., saying he came to check the gas, and raped the victim after taking 100,000 won. On September 29, 2000, he broke into a house in Yongmun-dong, Seo-gu, Daejeon, bound four women, and took 210,000 won. It turns out that one person was raped and three others were forcibly molested.

◇ Jeong Tae-geun: It seems that he mainly targeted women who lived alone.

◆Kim Hee-eun: Because Lee Jung-gu operated a taxi, he targeted taxi passengers and mainly targeted women living alone in one-room villages. After searching for the location of the crime while exercising early in the morning, he mainly broke into the woman's house with the door open. He pretended to be a gas meter, a milkman, a boiler, or a repairman and tricked the victims into the house. The double-headed drum had an unusual method of cutting a towel in the house with a knife or scissors and tying the victim's fingers with it.

◇Jung Tae-geun: We often say that the first time is difficult, but two or three times is easy. I think he gained confidence after successfully committing the crime once or twice, but I heard that the crime became more and more serious.

◆ Kim Hee-eun: That's right. As he was not caught in the subsequent crimes, he continued to sexually assault and became a habit completely. A pregnant woman and a woman living with her parents-in-law's children did not hesitate to rape her, and tied the victim's boyfriend and raped her in front of her. There was also a crime of sexually assaulting a woman and then calling a friend of the victim.

◇ Jeong Tae-geun: But I'm very curious about why we couldn't catch a corporation to make the situation this bad. How was it possible?

◆ Kim Hee-eun: Lee Jung-gu tried to confuse the police investigation in his own way. After the crime, he continued to commit intelligent crimes, such as bathing the victim to erase his traces and hiding the victim's cell phone to prevent reporting. I made the victims engage in perverted sexual behavior beyond imagination, but I decided that I wouldn't dare to report it because of shame. As Lee planned, some victims were reluctant to report, and the police investigation was just as difficult. Police collected semen and body fluids from the suspect at the scene of the crime and conducted genetic identification, and confirmed that dozens of sexual assault cases were the same person. However, he was not able to identify the suspect. The police catch a strong clue by analyzing the Gwangju incident on January 4, 2004, and the Nonsan incident on June 17, 2005. It was confirmed that the same vehicle was parked near the scene of the two incidents, which are believed to have been committed by the same criminal.

◇Jung Tae-geun: This wasn't just a crime in Daejeon, was it?

◆ Kim Hee-eun: That's right. Lee Jung-gu committed crimes nationwide. Since July 2003, it has expanded its crime areas across the country, including Daejeon, Cheongju, Gumi, Jeonju, and Yongin. He was trying to evade police tracking and confuse them. The police were even able to secure the vehicle number through CCTV. The police went to the name's house through a license plate inquiry. Until then, the police were not convinced that Lee Jung-gu was the culprit.

◇ Jung Tae-geun: Were you home?

◆Kim Hee-eun: Lee, who happened to be barefoot outside, said he would come out in socks when he saw the police and ran away through the window. The police said they were convinced that Lee Jung-gu was the culprit at this time.

◇ Jung Tae-geun: Right? There is no way that the thief will run away even though he is not the criminal.

◆ Kim Hee-eun: That's right. Police raided Lee Jung-gu's house, secured the cigarette butt that his son threw away, requested a DNA test, and will receive the results of the National Forensic Service's evaluation that it is the same as the DNA of the body fluid secured at the scene of the incident so far. Accordingly, on January 13, 2006, nearly eight years after the first incident, the police finally wanted Lee Jung-gu nationwide and devoted all their efforts to arrest Lee Jung-gu.

◇ Jung Tae-geun: I've identified the suspect with a lot of difficulty, but I'm worried that I might miss it like this. How did it go?

◆Kim Hee-eun: Three days after the criminal was identified, the local media reported on him, and whether Lee Jung-gu was arrested or not has emerged as a concern of the whole nation. The police also felt burdened. We produced a wanted leaflet containing pictures of Lee Jung-gu's face, clothes, and 5 million won in bounties, distributed it to police departments across the country, and asked for a joint investigation. The police decided to produce 20,000 wanted flyers and distribute them to multi-use facilities such as stations, terminals, and department stores across the country, and induce citizens to report. Meanwhile, on January 18, 2006, the police found out that Lee Jung-gu called his wife in Daejeon from Seoul, and dispatched about 20 detectives to Seoul to find out where they were, and found that Lee Jung-gu stole his acquaintance's ID and was playing an Internet game. The police finally arrest Lee at a PC room in Cheonho-dong, Gangdong-gu, Seoul, around 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 19.

◇ Jung Tae-geun: It's been 8 years since we caught a serial rapist, and it's easy to think of a very scary and rough image when we're a serial rapist. But I heard you were a very ordinary and very small man.

◆Kim Hee-eun: Lee Jung-gu was a small, 157-cm-tall breadwinner with a daughter and a son in her 20s, enjoying early soccer. In addition, the taxi company people who worked for Lee remembered him as a sincere person.

◇ Jung Tae-geun: It seems that the family didn't know at all, so why did they do that anyway?

◆ Kim Hee-eun: Lee Jung-gu claimed that he was a victim of the first crime, and that he was insulted by the taxi driver throwing the taxi fare saying that he didn't know the way well, and that he was a boiler repairman, and then broke in and sexually assaulted him. When the woman who insulted her showed fear asking for her help, she felt joy as if she had become a king. When he was not caught in these crimes, he continued by doing it one more time, and it became a complete habit. It is said that when threatening women, he was deluded as if he had become a king. He went into a two-room where seven women lived together and raped three people, and the other four were forcibly molested, and he visited the woman who once sexually assaulted her again in three months, and mocked the police by saying, "The police will not catch me even if I wake up after death."

◇ Jeong Tae-geun: You solved your perverse desires in a way that you should never do.

◆ Kim Hee-eun: Lee Jung-gu was born in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province in 1960 as the youngest of five sons and one daughter. When he lost his parents in the fifth grade of elementary school and was assaulted by a brother who replaced his parents, he dropped out of school and ran out of the house and came to Seoul recklessly. He has been cleaning shoes, roller skating center employees, and delivering newspapers in Cheonho-dong, and in his adolescence, he went to a juvenile center for theft and was a criminal of two special thefts. He returned to his hometown in his early 20s and opened a small stationery store with the money he had saved, and since 1990 he has worked as a taxi driver. Of course, the crime cannot be justified on the grounds that childhood is disadvantageous.

◇ Jung Tae-geun: Of course. He'd be put on trial, wouldn't he?

◆ Kim Hee-eun: Lee Jung-gu committed a series of sexual assaults for about eight years from February 1998 to October 2005. As many as 184 victims were identified. Eventually, he was arrested and charged with sexual assault, robbery, and theft, and the prosecution sought the death penalty, the highest court sentence. However, the first trial court recognized only 127 victims and sentenced them to life in prison. I heard that Lee committed sexual violence and robbery crimes, but he did not murder and did not seriously harm the victim. Lee Jung-gu appealed against it, but the second trial court made the same judgment, and the sentence was confirmed as neither side appealed.

◇ Jeong Tae-geun: You said there are 184 victims in total, but I think there may be more victims who have not been caught in the investigation.

◆ Kim Hee-eun: That's right. There were 184 people in total, including 77 confirmed cases by DNA tests and 30 cases revealed after arrest. Among them, he couldn't remember how many crimes he had committed. When the police mentioned the number of victims identified by DNA identification, they said, "Did I commit so many sexual assaults? ” He said he was surprised. And there is another unique thing about this case. What was it? It's an extraordinary obsession with money. Lee Jung-gu stole money and valuables from the victims while committing the crime, but he saved the money he took from the victims regularly without wasting it on entertainment expenses. Even at the time of arrest, 700,000 won was left out of 1 million won in escape funds. After Lee Jung-gu was arrested, he had a minimum opportunity to reduce his sentence by using 140 million won in savings from the victim as a settlement. Lee Jung-gu, who was obsessed with money, refused to even agree with the victim, saying he would receive 20 years in prison rather than give him 140 million won.

◇ Jung Tae-geun: Even if you give me a settlement, the victim won't receive it, but he refused this?

◆Kim Hee-eun: Yes, she said she rejected the agreement. Even if it is distributed to 184 victims, it is only about 760,000 won per person. Nevertheless, he refused to agree. In the end, Lee Jung-gu was sentenced to life imprisonment, let alone 20 years in prison, and has been imprisoned until now.

◇ Jeong Tae-geun: Case X File Today, we looked at the case of Daejeon Balbari, a serial sexual assault criminal who committed crimes for about eight years from 1998 to 2005. Lee Jung-gu, the criminal in this case, lied that he was homeless and from an orphanage to confuse the investigation at the time of the crime, and acted as if he had an accomplice. But like everything else, if you have a long tail, you'll catch it someday. In the next year, he will serve 20 years in prison, so he could be subject to parole arithmetically, but it doesn't seem easy given that he is a serious offender and the recent parole for sex offenders is getting heavier. I also think it's not enough to reflect on my crimes yet. That's all we've prepared for today. You all deserve to be defended. Incident X file, thank you everyone.