Lee Ho-seong in his heyday as a star player with the Haitai Tigers. Child Sex Offenders to Face Harsher Penalties Police Prodded Into Action on Child Abduction Attempt Too Dumb or Too Lazy to Protect and Serve? Girl Killer Suspect Leads Police to Gruesome Find Athlete's Rampage: A Beast Unleashed 82 Days to Catch a Suspect

Police found the bodies of the four women at late Monday in a cemetery on a hill in Hwasoon County, South Jeolla Province. Investigators said they discovered bags with four dead bodies presumed to be those of the 47-year-old woman, identified as Kim, and her daughters in the public cemetery where the father of Lee Ho-seong is buried.

Hours later, police recovered Lee’s body from the Han River following a report that a dead man was floating between the Banpo and Hannam Bridges. Fingerprint analysis established his identity, which was confirmed by Lee's family. A senior police officer in the Mapo Police Station said Lee probably died at around 3 a.m. Monday. The ex-baseball star left no suicide note, and only three telephone cards were found on the body.

A police flyer seeking former pro baseball player Lee Ho-seong (right) on suspicion of killing a woman and her three daughters.

Lee Ho-seong was one of Korea’s most glamorous pro baseball players, spending his pro baseball career with the Haitai (now Kia) Tigers, which ruled the Korean pro baseball world in the 1990s. Lee was always at the center of the team. After graduating from Gwangju Jeil High School and Yonsei University, he shone in various international matches with the national team. His performance improved further after he joined the pro baseball team. He led the Tigers to four Korean Series Championships. Since the late 1990s, he was the cleanup hitter for the team and in 2001 became chairman of the Korea Professional Baseball Player Association.

Following his retirement in 2001, he turned to business, where he was less successful. A wedding business in Gwangju, though initially thriving, went bankrupt. He then turned to investment in real estate but ended up entangled in a billion-won scam and was arrested on fraud charges in 2005. Three years later, he apparently jumped into the river after being named as the chief suspect in the murder of four women.

(englishnews@chosun.com )