1 Case 1: The Raincoat Killer
"Women should not be sluts, and the rich should know what they have done," were the infamous words of one of South Korea's most infamous serial killer, Yoo Young Chul.
The case of the presently fifty-one-year-old serial killer involving a string of serial murders between the years 2003 and 2004 has forced many people to think and realise how a person's childhood can particularly affect their future and also become the cause of the murders committed by them.
Yoo Young Chul was born on 18 April 1970 to a poor family. His childhood was unfortunate and there were many financial problems in his family. Yoo was raised along with his siblings by his grandmother for a few years until they moved in with their father in the Mapo district of Seoul. Yoo's father was an alcoholic and his parents divorced when he was only seven years old due to his father's violent habits and addictions.
His poverty was one of the reasons why he was made great fun of in school. Lack of money and financial support and bullying from schoolmates led to his deep hatred or dislike for the wealthy. Also, Yoo's father passed away when he was only fifteen.
Yoo had a special interest in arts and loved painting and drawing. He played the guitar, sang and read poetry through elementary school, and found himself enamoured with arts so much that he applied to a high school specialising in them. He was denied admission though and enrolled in a technical school.
YooYoung Chul's troubles and history of crime started from his very young age. When he was in high school, Yoo Young Chul was often charged with burglary and was caught stealing from a neighbourhood. He spent a lot of his time in juvenile detention for thievery. He did so to provide for his poor, young family. Even during his adulthood, he continued stealing cash and cameras to cars. He spent time in and out of jail throughout the 90s.
Yoo Young Chul then got married in the year 1991 and also had a son in the year 1994 which was, unfortunately, the same year when his blind older brother committed suicide and passed away due to depression and his disability.
However, his marriage did not last for long mainly due to his multiple committed acts of theft and burglary along with his crime of raping a fifteen-year-old adolescent in the year 2000 that not only led to him getting arrested but also his wife finally divorcing him and taking the custody of their then four-year-old son.
Yoo had a habit of blaming others for his problems and the hardships he had faced in his life instead of looking at himself, improving himself. Yoo already had a deep-rooted hatred for the rich and when his wife divorced him, he developed a strong hatred towards women and decided to obtain revenge.
During his time in prison, Yoo had been busy planning the murder of his wife and son and get his revenge on his whole family by wiping them out. He was released from prison in 2002 and earned money by extorting it from pimps and hookers, using a fake police ID.
In the year 2003 Yoo Young Chul finally decided to commit his first act of crime. However, when he entered the house his wife and son were living in, he found his child to be too adorable and he could by no way gather himself to kill his own son. So, he decided to spare the child and decided to move on with his plan of murdering his wife. Fortunately, again, when Yoo Young Chul approached his wife, he saw her sitting in the kitchen area drinking one beer and had one piece of seaweed, he felt pity for her and decided to spare her life too.
After failing to end his wife's and child's life, Yoo decided to take out his pent up anger on others who became his victims. He started with his sick spree of murders in which he first targeted the wealthy.
Yoo Young Chul's Sick Killing Spree:
(The following victims were all rich, live in large houses in some rich areas of South Korea.)
1st Victim:
On September 24, 2003, Yoo stabbed the University professor, Lee Deok-su (aged 72), in the neck with a wife. Lee Eun-ok (aged 67) and the professor were then beaten to death with a 4kg hammer.
The victims lived in the Sinsa-dong area, a ward of Gangnam-gu in Seoul, South Korea.
2nd Victim
On October 9, 2003, Kang Eun-sun (aged 85) was bludgeoned to death with a hammer. Her daughter, Lee Sook-jin (aged 60) and her handicapped grandson Go Jin-soo, 35, were killed in the same manner soon afterwards.
3rd Victim:
October 16, 2003, in the Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Yoo Young Chull beat up Yoo Joon-hee, 60, with a hammer. She was later found by her son at 13:30 (01:30 PM) but died thirty minutes later.
4th Victim:
It was November 18, 2003. Yoo used his hammer to kill Kim Jong-seok (87) and the latter's housekeeper, Bae Ji-hye, 53. Yoo accidentally cut himself while attempting to open a safe, so he burned down the house to destroy any DNA evidence. This happened in Jongro-gu, Seoul.
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It is said that after killing this fourth victim of his, Yoo Young Chul met his girlfriend, an escort. During the course of their relationship, Yoo's girlfriend discovered Yoo's history of crime and his really dark past. Yoo was also very aggressive with the escort girl, so she decided that they break up. This decision resulted in a really big argument between Yoo and her. At this point, Yoo was so frustrated and angry that he decided that he might want to hold his girlfriend captive and murder her. However, he went on to decided against this as he came to realise that if he did kill her, there would be too much evidence left behind in the form of all their phone calls, etc. and it was a bad idea after all. This breakup increased the hatred that Yoo Young Chul held for women, which had held since his divorce. However, instead of obtaining revenge or pending his anger women on his wife and girlfriend, Yoo once again chose to remove it on others who were similar to those who had caused the development of his hatred of women. He shifted his victims from old, rich people to prostitutes or escort girls.
Some people say that The Raincoat Killer was similar to Jack the Ripper, a notorious serial killer from the Whitechapel district of London in 1888, as they both chose prostitutes as their victims. However, unlike Jack the Ripper, the identity of this Raincoat Killer is known as Yoo Young Chul and the item used for the murders was a hammer and not a knife.
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Yoo Young Chul's Second Killing Spree aimed mainly at Prostitutes/Escort Girls:
Beginning March 2004, Yoo Young Chul began calling agencies that provided services indulging with prostitutes or escort girls. These service companies obviously provided Yoo with these prostitutes who he would bludgeon to death with his hammer after having sex with them in his residence in western Seoul.
Yoo often dismembered and mutilated his prostitute victims to hinder their identification. Then he would proceed to bury the body in the mountains surrounding the city.
5th Victim:
On February 9, 2004, in Seoul, Yoo killed Chung Young-dae, 47.
(This incident occurred after Yoo's breakup with his escort girlfriend. I assume this murder happened as a part of Yoo's killing spree aimed at old people, but as it occurred after Yoo developed his hatred for women and the incident with his escort girlfriend, I decided to add it here.)
6th Victim:
On March 16, 2004, in Seoul. Yoo choked Kwon Jin-hee, 23, to death. He then cut her corpse into pieces and dumped them on a nearby trail.
7th Victim:
April 14, 2004, Mapo-gu, Seoul. Ahn Jae-sun, 44, a vendor who had scammed Yoo by giving him fake viagra, was wrestled into his own van, handcuffed, and murdered. Yoo sawed the victim's hands off and disposed of them in a plastic bag. He then set the van on fire.
8th Victim:
May 2004, Mapo-gu, Seoul. Yoo lured a 25-year-old escort girl to his apartment and bludgeoned her unconscious with his hammer. He then decapitated her in his bathroom, smashed her head, mutilated her body, and buried her remains near in.
9th Victim (8th Crime):
May 7, 2004, Mapo-gu, Seoul. Shin Min-a, 33.
10th Victim (8th Crime):
June 1, 2004, Mapo-gu, Seoul: Han Sook-ja, 35.
11th Victim (8th Crime):
June 9, 2004, Mapo-gu, Seoul: Jang Kwang, 26.
12th Victim (8th Crime):
June 18, 2004, Mapo-gu, Seoul: Kim Ji-ho, 27.
13th Victim (8th Crime):
June 25, 2004, Mapo-gu, Seoul: Woo Koo-yeon, 28.
14th Victim (8th Crime):
July 2, 2004, Mapo-gu, Seoul: Kim Mi-young, 26.
15th Victim (8th Crime):
July 9, 2004 (Aesongi escort), Mapo-gu, Seoul: Go Sun-hee, 24.
16th Victim (1st Crime):
July 13, 2004 (Aesongi escort), Mapo-gu, Seoul: Im Mi-yeon, 27.
(Note: The killing method of all the prostitutes was the same.)
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It so happened that all the escort girls or prostitutes Yoo had been murdering belonged to the same company. Yoo had been contacting only one agency as there were not many such companies existing in Korea at the time. Having so many of the girls go missing and never come back home, the agency began looking into the details of the person who had asked for them last, to realise that all the girls who had gone missing had been asked for by the same man, Yoo Young Chul. This was when Yoo Young Chul contacted the same company for one last time, but the agency contacted the police instead as they were sure that the next girl to be sent to Yoo would be the next victim of this vicious serial killer.
The police manage to arrest Yoo, but while he was in custody, Yoo feigned epileptic symptoms. He began to act like a lunatic and in order to calm him down, the police took off his handcuffs which helped Yoo to manage to escape. Fortunately, eleven hours later, the police managed to re-arrest Yoo Young Chul.
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Yoo Young Chul received the death sentence in 2005, but the last time a criminal was executed in South Korea was back in 1997. Thus Yoo is currently detained in Seoul Detention Centre.
During sentencing, Yoo said he felt sorry for his victims and felt remorse, but also admitted that he would have not stopped his sick murders if he was not caught. In fact, he claimed that if he was released from jail, Yoo would kill a hundred more people.
During his time in prison, Yoo Young Chul requested adult Japanese anime (Hentai), which was sneaked in by a prison guard for him.
Yoo confessed in a letter he wrote to a reporter while in jail, that the scariest moment during his killing spree was when his four-year-old son made a phone call and asked him if he was doing well and if he was alright as Yoo was having a cold at that time. This happened while Yoo was busy mutilating the body of one of his victims.
"The scariest moment was not when a decapitated head fell off from a hanger or when a headless body came running to me. It was when my son called to ask if I still have a cold."
Yoo also claimed to have eaten the liver of one of his victims, however, this has not been confirmed.
A movie, "The Chaser," that reflected his story, was a box office hit in 2008.
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Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoo_Young-chul
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170526000521
https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/Yoo_Young-chul
https://youtu.be/7sj_k_AYcCo
