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The suspect arrested in the murders of two schoolgirls -- Lee Hye-jin, 11, and Wu Ye-seul, 9 -- is a 39-year-old man who lived by himself in an underground flat just 130 m from where the two girls lived. Police had been completely unaware of the fact that the culprit lived in an alley near the route the girls took to go to school and return home every day. Instead, they spent 80 days mobilizing 25,000 officers to search through every mountain in Anyang. They even printed 160,000 flyers and passed them out around the country.
In crimes involving kidnappings, the investigation usually begins with searching for the suspect among those who are nearest to the victim. Of the 1,081 cases of sexual assault on children reported last year, 17 percent were committed by neighbors. The murder of an elementary school student on Jeju Island in April of last year was committed by a man in his 40s who lived in an orchard just 50 m away. The rape and murder of an elementary school student in Yongsan two years ago was committed by the owner of a shoe store in the same neighborhood. Since there was no threat or ransom demand following the disappearance of Hye-jin and Ye-seul, experts theorized early on that a sexual predator may be involved. In that case, police should have searched for anyone living near the girls who fit that profile.
It is also common knowledge that kidnappers often use rented cars to commit their crimes. But police began searching for leads among rental car companies in Anyang only after Hye-jin's body was found on Mar. 11, just 15 km from where she was last seen. Police arrested the suspect only after receiving positive identification on DNA tests on blood samples taken from a car rented on the day the two girls went missing. Police had totally missed the most basic leads and relied on ostentatious investigation methods, mobilizing officers to dig up mountains with shovels and poke around hills with prods, while helicopters flew overhead and dogs sniffed the ground.
Gyeonggi Province has been the scene of a string of grisly crimes involving women and children, including the discoveries of the bodies of an elementary school student in Gwangmyeong in 2003, a female college student in 2004 in Hwaseong, and a woman in her 30s in Suwon in 2006. As long as the police fail to get their act together, there is no telling how much longer parents will have to live in fear of losing their children.
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