Man Who Murdered His Wife Nine Years Ago and Also Killed His Second Wife

A man in his 50s, previously incarcerated for murdering his wife nine years ago, has been charged with killing his second wife.

According to the legal community on the 22nd, the Suwon District Court’s Criminal Department 12 (Presiding Judge Hwang In-sung) sentenced a man in his 50s, Mr. A, to 22 years in prison on a murder charge and ordered him to wear a location tracking device for 10 years.

Mr. A is accused of killing his wife, Ms. B, in her 40s, by strangulation during an argument at the laundry shop that he ran in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, around 6 p.m. on July 12 last year.

Mr. A was investigated for committing the crime in a fit of rage, thinking that his wife was not properly listening to his opinion while talking about the closure of the laundry and the establishment of a new business.

Mr. A reported the crime to 112 immediately after the incident. Ms. B was transferred to the hospital in a state of cardiac arrest and died four months later in November last year while receiving treatment. Mr. A was initially charged with attempted murder, but the charge was changed to murder following Ms. B’s death.

Mr. A was previously sentenced to four years in prison and protective custody by the Naval Operations Command Military Court in September 2015 for murdering his former wife when he was a soldier.

Mr. A claimed that he was in a state of diminished mental capacity.

The court said, “The defendant has been treated for mental illness for a considerable period of time and has been recommended to take psychiatric medication for life, but he voluntarily stopped taking the medication and transfers responsibility to the victim,” and “The victim’s family is calling for severe punishment against the defendant.”

The court stated, “The result of the mental evaluation of the defendant does not seem to have difficulty in judging right or wrong socially,” and “There is no need to reduce the sentence on the grounds of diminished mental capacity,” and sentenced him to 22 years in prison.

By. Kyung Jin Yoon