National Forensic Service says decomposition makes cause, time of death hard to determine; landlord who ordered disposal claims he did not know it was a body
Police investigating the abandonment of a body in a residential area of Guro-gu, Seoul, have identified the victim.
The Seoul Guro Police Station announced Wednesday afternoon that it had identified the person whose body was found on a Guro-gu street the previous day. An initial examination had estimated the victim to be a male in his 50s to 80s, but the exact identity, nationality, time of death and cause of death had not been confirmed at that point.
Using the newly confirmed identity, police plan to continue investigating the deceased's movements, the circumstances that led to death, and the suspects' relationship to the victim.
No signs of foul play or a specific cause of death have been established. The National Forensic Service, which conducted an autopsy Wednesday morning, said decomposition and other factors made it difficult to determine the cause or exact date of death. The agency will send its final autopsy findings to police at a later date.
Police conducted a first round of questioning of the two suspects on Tuesday. Both acknowledged disposing of the body — one, a South Korean man in his 60s identified only as A, faces charges of abandoning a corpse, while the other, a man in his 80s identified as B, faces charges of ordering the disposal.
B, who instructed A to dispose of the body, owns the multi-unit residential building in Guro-gu where the body was first discovered. A had previously lived in the building as a tenant and was known to regard B as a father figure. Police are investigating whether the deceased had been a tenant at B's property, given that the body was found in front of the building.
In questioning, B said he did not know what he had told A to discard was a body, claiming he had seen what appeared to be a doll-like object and told A to throw it away. A, by contrast, said he had suspected the object might be a body but disposed of it anyway on B's orders.
A carried and discarded the body alone after receiving B's instructions and is believed to have gone unobserved by residents at the time. Police plan to determine whether either suspect was involved in a killing or other crime before the body was abandoned.
The body was discovered Tuesday around 11 a.m. by a sanitation worker employed by the Guro-gu district office, at a spot in the residential area where residents regularly leave their trash. Other sanitation workers are confirmed to have visited the location after the body was left there. Wrapped in plastic and newspaper, the body had lain there since Thursday afternoon — five days earlier — and had partially decomposed and dried out, leaving it in a mummified state.
After receiving the sanitation worker's report, police reviewed closed-circuit television footage and other evidence to track down the suspects, arresting both A and B around 4 p.m. the same day.
ikson@heraldcorp.com
