The siblings being accused of murdering their 76-year-old father on Parents’ Day have spoken up about the victim’s abuse of their deceased mother.
During police interrogation, the 43-year-old brother claimed that his father had sexually abused and hit his mother who had dementia and a physical disability after being in a traffic accident in 1990. The father had allegedly spent his wife’s government subsidies on another woman, and did not attend his wife’s funeral in 2009.
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(Yonhap) |
The 47-year-old daughter had reported the victim on four occasions for assault, between 2010 and 2011. She had also twice acquired court injunctions to keep him away in 2011.
The siblings are being accused of murdering their father at his apartment in Ochi-dong, Gwangju, South Jeolla Province.
While the two have expressed evident hatred toward their father, they reverted to exerting their right to remain silent when asked if they had killed their father and about their motives, at the arrest warrant hearing on Thursday at Gwangju district court.
Although they have made no direct confessions, the police have decided that the evidence gathered is enough to issue an arrest warrant.
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(Yonhap) |
Surveillance camera footage showed the two entering their father’s house on May 6, 7 and 8. The crime took place on the third day, which happened to be Parents’ Day in Korea, as the father finally returned home from a female friend’s place that morning.
The victim’s body was discovered at the bottom of a giant rubber basket beneath 10 layers of blanket that had been used to mask the smell. He had been brutally mutilated and crushed with sharp and blunt weapons.
The two siblings, who are both unmarried, had planned to move out from the flat where they live together. They had requested that their landlord return them their deposit money and had reserved a date with a moving company.
Those who knew the victim said his son had visited him in April to demand for his house deed which is valued at 105 million won ($90,000).
The siblings are jobless. The brother had been studying for the Korean Bar Examination for a long time, while his sister had worked as an evangelist at a church until 2011.
By Lim Jeong-yeo (
kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)
