A masseur accused of killing a university student has confessed to her death — and to strangling six other women over the past two years, police south of Seoul said yesterday.
Kang Ho-sun, 38, was arrested on Saturday last week at his workplace in Ansan, a city about 30km south of Seoul, in connection with the killing of a student who disappeared last month. Her body was found in a nearby town last Sunday, police said.
Kang on Thursday confessed to kidnapping and killing the student — and six other women between December 2006 and November last year, said Park Hak-geun, a senior police official in Suwon, the capital of Gyeonggi Province.
PHOTO: AP
Kang is also suspected in the 2005 arson deaths of his fourth wife and her mother, Yonhap news agency reported.
Police said Kang told them he approached his victims for sex — or with the intent to rape them — and then strangled them with a pair of stockings, Park said at a briefing yesterday. Kang said he then buried their bodies.
“I couldn’t suppress my urges after committing the first murder,” investigators quoted Kang as saying.
Police said Kang had lived since 2006 on a farm in Suwon, a city of about 1 million people about 30km south of Seoul, and was working as a sport massage therapist.
He pointed investigators to spots within a 7km radius of the farm, where he said he buried the bodies. Investigators were working yesterday to locate the bodies.
The six other women were identified as a 48-year-old Suwon housewife who disappeared on her way home, three karaoke bar employees, a 52-year-old office worker and another college student.
Kang has a criminal record that includes theft and other offenses, and was accused of rape in January last year, police said.
He also is suspected of setting fire to his home in Ansan three years ago — a blaze that killed his fourth wife and her mother — and collecting insurance payouts afterward. He had registered their marriage just five days before the fire broke out, Yonhap said.
Kang has denied setting the fire. Police said the suspect told investigators he felt “lost” after his wife’s death and developed the urge to kill about a year later.
South Korea’s worst serial killing spree in decades was carried out by Yoo Young-chul, a thief and sexual predator who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2004 for killing 20 people, mostly prostitutes and wealthy older people.
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