Man Orders Hit on Adoptive Mother for Inheritance

“I have no idea why I committed this cruel act on my mother. I’m awfully sorry for this.”

A man in police custody appeared to be in disbelief over what he did to his adoptive mother. His fair skin made him look like he was raised in luxury and resembled the handsome serial killer portrayed in the Korean detective movie “Public Enemy.”

In the movie, a man kills his rich parents after they say they will donate their fortune to charity instead of giving it to him. Yesterday’s arrest of a man suspected of having his adoptive mother murdered seemed like the movie’s killer had come to life.

Police in Seoul’s Seocho district arrested the 34-something man on the charge of hiring hit men to murder his adoptive mother 15 months ago. The suspect apparently ordered the hit to get her fortune.

Arrest warrants are also being sought for the two assassins.

Police said the suspect thoroughly planned the crime to support his illegal habit of betting on horse races. He reportedly begged his mother in March last year to lend him 200 million won (159,046 U.S. dollars), saying he needed the money for his business. She rejected his request, saying he had lost a bundle on horserace betting and would instead donate her money to charity.

The suspect was enraged and plotted to kill his mother. While trying to find accomplices at an Internet café, he found the online club “Shelter for Ex-Cons and Ex-Prisoners” and found the two suspected assassins. The two uploaded a posting saying, “We’ll do whatever you want.”

The suspect allegedly paid the two men 130 million won (119,284 dollars) to kill his mother.

After receiving the money, the two alleged assassins kept a close eye on the adoptive mother’s every move from April last year. They searched for a suitable place to perform the hit while tracing their target’s movement patterns for a week.

Learning that she frequently passed by a university in the southern Seoul suburb of Seongnam in Gyeonggi Province, in the morning, they plotted to hit her with a passenger car.

Though they tried to make it look like a car accident, they failed since many people were around the selected crime scene. The two then decided to use the woman’s home as the crime scene to give the impression that she died of diabetes.

Her son gave the alleged killers information including her address and access code to enter her home. The two then hid at her home and suffocated her with a plastic bag May 2 last year after she returned home from jogging.

Her son said his mother died of a heart attack resulting from diabetes and held the funeral without an autopsy. He eventually inherited two billion won (1.59 million dollars) of her fortune and indemnity from her death.

The man had been adopted by the woman as a newborn. Though he was not her biological child, he told police that she treated him as if he was.

The son eventually lost 1.55 billion won of the money in betting on horse races after just three months.

A police source said, “We began the probe after the woman’s relatives and friends harbored strong doubts over her sudden death. In the process of the investigation, we found evidence that her son gave money to the two assassins and interrogated him. He confessed to having his mother killed in a rage over her refusal to give him more money.”

zozo@donga.com