Stranger was murdered 'out of curiosity' by a Korean true crime fan
Jung Yoo-jung, 23, was obsessed with crime shows and novels, according to police, and scored highly on psychopath tests. Fixated with the idea of "trying out a murder"
A South Korean court sentenced a true crime fan to life in prison after she admitted to police that she murdered a stranger "out of curiosity", reports BBC.
Jung Yoo-jung, 23, was obsessed with crime shows and novels, according to police, and scored highly on psychopath tests. Fixated with the idea of "trying out a murder", she used an app to meet an English-language teacher, stabbing her to death at her home in May.
The killing "spread fear in society that one can become a victim for no reason"
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
South Korea was shocked by the brutal killing. Prosecutors had requested the death penalty, which is typically reserved for the most serious of offences. They testified in court that Jung, an unemployed loner who lived with her grandfather, had spent months looking for victims, using an online tutoring app to find a target, BBC added.
She contacted over 50 people, primarily women, and asked if they held their lessons at home. In May, she contacted the 26-year-old victim, who lived in the south-eastern city of Busan, posing as the mother of a high school student in need of English lessons. Police have not revealed her identity.
Jung then arrived at the tutor's house dressed in a school uniform she had purchased online, according to prosecutors. She attacked the woman after the teacher let her in, stabbing her more than 100 times and continuing the frenzied attack even after the victim died. She then dismembered the woman's body and took a taxi north of Busan to dump some of the remains in a remote parkland near a river.
She was captured after a taxi driver alerted authorities to a customer who had dumped a blood-soaked suitcase in the woods.
According to police, Jung's online browsing history revealed that she had spent months researching how to kill and dispose of a body.
However, she was also careless, according to police, and made no effort to avoid CCTV cameras, which captured her entering and leaving the tutor's home several times.
A sentencing judge in Busan District Court said on Friday that the killing "spread fear in society that one can become a victim for no reason" and "incited a general distrust" among the community. While South Korea retains the death penalty, no executions have occurred since 1997, BBC writes.
Jung, who confessed to the crime in June, pleaded for a lighter sentence, claiming she was suffering from hallucinations and other mental disorders at the time. However, the court dismissed her argument, stating that the crime was "carefully planned and carried out, and it is difficult to accept her claim of mental and physical disorder."
They noted that her statements to police had frequently changed. Jung initially claimed that she only moved the body after someone else killed the woman, but later claimed that the killing was the result of an argument.
Finally, she admitted that crime shows and TV shows had piqued her interest in committing a murder.
