A South Korean court has given a life sentence to a true crime fan who told police she murdered a stranger “out of curiosity”.

Jung Yoo-jung, 23, had been obsessed with crime shows and novels and scored highly on psychopath tests, police said.

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 brutal killing shocked South Korea.

Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty - a request typically reserved for the gravest of offences.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    From the sound of things, she wouldn’t have gotten caught if she hadn’t tried to dispose of the body. If she had just left after murdering the woman, it would have been much harder to solve the case.

    • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      The app she used to find the victim likely had enough of a digital trail to link back to her, so body disposal or no, she would likely have been investigated and caught sooner or later.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think harder, but probably longer.

      The article also says that she was caught on CCTV leaving and entering the house multiple times. Even if she left the body there, eliminating the need for her to make multiple “drop off” runs, she’d still be the last person seen entering the house and subsequent DNA evidence would be enough to convict.

      The taxi driver reporting her to police just expedited how quickly she was caught. The crime would have likely been discovered as soon as the teacher failed to report in to work or to her next appointment. But if she hadn’t been reported so quickly, it would have given her more time to disappear.

    • Mac@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Someone who recently disappeared would have their meetups and messages gone through. She would have been investigated.

    • stifle867@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      She would have left a strand of hair at the scene that they DNA test then the whole case gets busted upon. That’s how it works in the shows anyway

      • wrath_of_grunge@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        if the shows are any indication, the hair strand won’t be tested, and innocent person will be charged, and in 20 years, they’ll figure it out after the innocent person basically became their own lawyer and found out about the hair, then managed to get the hair tested on their final appeal.

      • VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        DNA testing is only useful if someone is already in the system, so long as the killer isn’t in the system then they need a sample from the killer somehow to compare the DNA. This is why if you’re interviewed formally by police at the station they offer you something to drink, so they can get fingerprints from the glass/cup and DNA from your saliva on the rim.

        • stifle867@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Yeah it was just a joke about the cliches of the true crime category. To be fair I don’t watch true crime myself.