this is is Yoo Young-chul and he has become one of south koea´s most infamou s serial killers between 200 and 2004
this man will leave a city in fear,and a national press hungry for answers , and a police refusing to acknolwedge they have s serial killer on their hand.
a homeade hammer with it he would on embark on a blod -sooked reign of terror before finally being brought to justice.
in a case full of some of the most schoking twists and turns you have seen.
bit yooo toung -shu was no stranger to breaking lthe law before before he came a cold harded killer , he already came with a pretty distubing rap sheet and history of prsion time.lets’s dyve right into the unhinges world of the korean man who at 26 people ,
also know as the raincoat killer.
south korea 2004 , the owner of serveral massage parlors and soul noticed a suspiciously familiar pattern. some of the girls in employment apperad to be going missing as sworking girls.
it’s not surpise that they were not notidecd missing by familiy or firends as many of them lived an isolated life this also made them easier targets.
eventully alarm bells ring when the massage parlor owner receives a call from a gentleman requiring the services of one of his girls.
normally this wood cause alarm but this , but this call came from the missings girls themselves
an operation began to fool the calelr into meeting a girl that was set up by police amd he walked straight into their trap.
as young you you – chul arrived at the lolacation he was swiftly taken int o custody ,but
what the police thought was just a case of kidnappning and human trafficking ,it turned out
to uncover one of the most horrific killing psrees ever committed unbelievalby ,during questioning, he admitted to taking the lives of over 20 people
most whom were either prostitutes or lederly and wealty victims.
and he would eventailly show police where he buried th bodies.
this stoy start when yoo was only a child. and his upbringing was not without stragedy settling in a places of series of events that would end up sending him on a path to murder
yoo young chul was born into poverty in 1970 in Gochang, and had a difficult early life with other kids in school , mocking him for his famil’s lower class status.
because some of his victims were vwealthy,it’s believed that it was his social status being poor from a young age that would eventually lead to his hatred for those who were much better off than him.
he and his sibblings wher also abonned by their mother early in life who left them at their grandmother’s home wone day and never returned home.
this was until his father took over responsibility of the children and moved them into his home with their new step mother . but this was no happy home life.
as their stepmother was violent towards the childrens , the ntragedy struck as you’s father passed away in 1985 in a traffic traffick accident. deviastating you and the family
from here ,you had a real opportunity to turn his life around in an effort to escape poverty he decided he needed to work hard and succed in life.
but after applying for art school ,he woukd suffer yet another personal blow as the school rejected him.
by 1988 , he would eventually settle for for a technical school that would accept him with the qualifications he had. but instead of studying haard, he discovered a new way to make maoney fast.
by indulging in a life of crime.
it seems crime was not something you was very good at , as aat only 18 , he was caught stealing from a neighbour and a wealthy one.
you was sent to juvenile detention center but the punsihment didn’t end there. because yoo could no onger attend the technical school. he flunked his classes and failed the course. from here his crimes esclataed rapidly , stealing, steeligng more expensive items , cash and eventually rogressing to cars , but in a pattern that will become familiar
he would be apprehended again in 1991 ,after steeling from his very own ladlord. this time he would face prson .where he would spend 10 months inside contemplating his actions.
desipite his questionable record ,his girldfriend who worked as a masseuse would eventually agree to become his wife and have a son together.
and instead of enjoying family life, yoo soon returned to what he knew best and retruned to stealing
he was later caught stealing a car and was spent a further eight month behind bars.it was on his release that he was diagnosed with epilepsy,for which he would spend time in medical care before returning to normal life.
but his newly diagnosed epilepsy would be something he would later use to his adrantage
yoo was not stranger to breaking the law for his own needs, so far his record was full of theft or similar crimes that didn’t really hurt anyone.other than insurance companies .
buut he would leap from petty theft to sick and twisted individual when he was arrested for selling illegal pornography and was sent to prison for two years.only to immediately re-offend on his release and return to life behind bars for a further three years.
and through all of this , his wife had stood by his side raising their son while he continued to steal and eventually get caught by police time and time again.
but she would have enough on yoo’s recless ways when in the year 2000 he was found guilty of raping a 15 year old girls and sent down for another three and a half years ,
causing his wife to fianlly file for divorce.she would do this while still inside. claiming abuse and alcohol related problems.
upon his release in 2003 , he would begin a new path of depravity that would send send schokwaves around the world and leave a city gripped with fear.
inside prison yoo had begun an admiration for a killer by the name of
john Du young. who took the lives of nine people between 1999 and 2000. each o f the victims were wealthy.
something yoo appear to releate to. his hatred for those with money had escalated and he saw them as the root of his problems.
but he had also develeoped a hatred for women too after his divorce,leaving his mind full of dark and dangerous thoughts inspired by his idol. young.
living back at his mother’s home, he was allowed access to his son .but these visitations would take a much more sinister turn.
youu young chul have planned to take out revenge on his wife in the cruelest way. he would take her life and then his sons.and the visitations would be the perfect time for him to do this.
he later admitted that he could not carry out the act in some kind of moral stance, his wife and child would survived this sadistic maniac, but sadly, he would not have such hesitation when he found his next target. the wealthy.
in order to be prepared , you needed to practice his killing and he knew exactly how he would go about it.
he built his own weapon ,fashioning a hammer that packed enough of a punch to kill with its long handle ,replaced for a shorter one.
customizing the grip to his own needs along with a knife and gloves , he had everything needed to enact what he called his revenge to test his new found weapon he began taking strayed dogs to secluded woodlands and would then beat them to death and remoserless attack ,
we’ve seen many serial killers progress this way,where they often began their twisted ways on animals before progressing to more human victims.
yoo was no exception, and before long , he would find it within himself to begin acting out his revenge on those he hated the most.
by september 24th,2003 ,yoo had been a free man for less than two weeks before he acted out his plan.
he targeted the wealthy region of sin sadun, and it wasn’t long before he’s spotted victim number one.
lee deok su. was a retired professor in his 70s who lived with his wife eun -ok without warning yoo burst into theirhome around 10:00 am and merilessly stabbed mr , lee in the necke before turning on his wife.
she was bludgeoned with the hammer until yoo returned to mr lee to finish him off off .
amasingly ,after all of that he cleaned up and left. he had to break into the house again because he had left behind his knife.
he decided that if the scene looked like a robbery gone wrong , it might work as a distraction for investigators .but yet another error , but in yet another error , he trashed the house wuth actually stealing anything,raising a huge red flag for police.
the also discovered shoe prints at the scene that soon become very familiar. within weeks yoo struck again october 9th ,2003
and he finds himself in Gugi -dong fullfilling the same MO he broke into the house of a wealthy household around mid -morning.after encountering 85 year old mo kang, he butchered her in a dperaved act before being interrupted by the homeowner’s wife.
he forced her into the lounge and asked her to bow her head presumanbly in some kind of execution.she refused after she told him her husband and son were home , he unleashed his rage and claimed another victim,
next , he targeted her son.what makes this case even more shocking is her son has disabilities showing what kind of psychopath we are dealing with.
he forced her son to kneel down and he hit him with the hammer until the life drained from him,making three citims in just minutes , it would ‘ve been four ,but the husband was not actually home ,
it’s unclear whether the homeowner’s wife lied about him being there to try and scare the intruder away or wheter she actually thought he was home.
but this poor unfortunate father and husband wwould be the one that discovered their bodies and what must have been a heartbreaking scene.
those foot prints from the last crime scene ,they also appeared here. now the police had something to go on and began a databas search in an effort to try and identify the assailant.
yoo was far from finished . this time moving on to samseong- dong, this time he would break into a house with just a single resident home. yoo joon hee . was a 69 year old mother when she encounter yoo in her house , he forced her into the bathrom, there he would beat her in another terrifying disregard for human life.
she was discovered by her son ,who mircaulously found her still alive. despite all efforts by paramedics, she sadly did not survive the ordeal , in another tragick and needless end to an innocent life.
by now, media had noticed the proximity of the murders and began to ask questions on the possibilities that these cases may be linked with the same footprints as several ofthe crime scenes and the similarities of the death.it was becoming inreasingly obvioous that there was a connection.
but in order to avoid a panic by the public , the police denied that the murders were linked. it would take only a few more weeks for yoo’s dark desires to overcome him again,
and on november 18th ,2003, he would once again take to the st reet of awealthy area. this time in the province of Hyenhwa-dong breaking into a house, he aproached the resident houskepper and produced his knife.
she was forced to show him the master bedroom where she said the 87 year old homowner kim jong -seok was , but as weel as kim , yoo came face to face with the problem he had not enountered before.
the homeowner’s son was in the room with them and he was only a baby as yoo young shul leapt at the homeowner with his hammer ,the housekeeper grabbed the one year old tried to make a run for the door.
she was surely have assumed the worse as yoo snatched the baby and wrapped him in a blanket instead of harming the baabyh , he took him to another room and left him wrapt up so his cries would be heard by the neighbors.
with unfinish buisness he returnted to the bedroom and turned his hatred on the housekeeper.who sdly did not survive the attack .
once again , yoo made a critical mistake that he would need to cover up , while trashing the property in his usual attempt to make it look like a botched robbery, he cut him self leaving his DNA for police to find.
to hide the evidence of his blood.he sat fire to the house , leaving the baby inside. and watched from a safe distance as the house burned .
by a miracle ,the baby was later dicovered alive by a family member. allthough the blaze had destroyed the bodies and the master bedroom had left most of the house untoched.
when the police checked the home’s security cameras, they finally had a look at south korean’s newest serail killer wearing sweater he found inside the house to cover the blood on his one clothing.
he is seen only from the back but it at least gave investigators something to go on along with yet another set of shoe prints that linked to other crimes scenes.
then yoo just st opped targeting the older wealthy residents of the city who knows maybe police would ‘ve caught him sooner if he continued his familiar pattern, but for now yoo had other ideas on his mind.
he needed a change of scene ,one that would eventually lead him to his next inevitable victim.
acquiring a police officer’s uniform he began to extort money from escorts working around the red light district he was suprisingly very good at this newfound illegal profession.
and eventually raised enough cash to move into an apartment where he continued his reckless ,indulgent lifestyle, much like the wealthy were a trigger for used hatred.
soon he would find a new hatred for women after he started dating an escort who he later proposed to ,but as soon she discovered he had already been married and had a shady past , she left him and they never spoke again.
the rejection seemed to be the tipping point for yoii and he wanted revenge.
on march 16th ,2004 , after a short pause in his killing streak , he returned to the streers with only one thing in mind ,posing as police officer again , he ordererd an escort and pretended to arrest her ,
he tool her back to his apartment.only this time death would come by strangulation. an agonizing end to this gilr’s life, ans surley an indication of just how sadistic yoo young -chul really was. as if this wasn’t twisted enough.
it’s reported he cut off the girls head and hung it up to drain her blood. realizing his third floor apartment was unsuitable for removing the body.
he dismembered her into several pieces and buried them in grocery bags behind sogang university.
he then marked the spot where he buried the girls remains with a bottle cap , but this was not as some kind of marker so he could return to the spot and admire his own handwork.
this was so he didn’t use the same spot again foh his next victims, yoo would break his pattern in his next victim who was who’s neither wealthy nor an escort, he ws infact a street vendor names an jae -son , after purchasing fake viagra that didn’t work .
yoo put on his police uniform and arrested the vendor for braking pharmaceutical laws.
uisng the vendor’s very own van. he drove them both to a nearby spot if an was suspicious of being taken away in his own vehicle , then he didn’t have mich time to act on it as he was stabbed in the head and neck, but in the struggle to survive an injured yoo
who then retaliated with his hammer frenzied attack killing on with over 20 blows to the head with traces of his own blood in the victim’s van. he had no choice but to destroye the evidence by burning the van along with body and perpetrator’s DNA in a nearby car park
he was set his targets on the escorts of the red light district once more.and with it began as short but shocking killing spree that would take more lives and leave many families grieving for their loved once slain by an unremorseful psychopath.
this time he would call escorts to his apartment and bludgeoned them one by one before dismembering them and burying their bodies ,topped with a bottle cap to avoid digging there.
he would follow this pattern with his next nine murders until one massage parlor owner began to notice the strange disappereances .
it appear yoo was not the best at planning ahead which had led to many of the mistkes he had made in the past and this would eventually lead to his downfall.
many of the parlors that the victims worked at were all owned by the the same man , and he was missing a girl who had left to see a client, he asked around another parlor ,and it became obvious that something was very wrong.
as a list of missing escorts grew, he also discovered that the same phone number had booked girls at two different parlors ,and both had gone missing.
not only that. the number used was a phone that was own by one of the missing girls fearing the worst ,he called the police. together the police concocted a plan to try and snare the culprint, assuming the girls were being kidnapped and sold.
sure enough , that very same phone number called back, the plan was put into action .the escorts arrived at the agreed meeting point , and right at the moment it looked like they may have their suspect, yoo called the girl back and canceled the appointment.
the reason , the girl was too tall.
this makes sense , when you look at the way yoo killed many of his victims, even the victims themselves reveal much about the mind behind the man.
he often made his victims kneel, dispalying signs.he liked them to be submissive,much like the way he chose his targets he thought they would be easier to overpower unsuspective escorts and the elderly , or frail .
by being confronted by a tall girl, he would have felt less control so he called it off last minute ,but it would not take very long before they found the ideal girl to play the part and he took the bait perfectly .
before yoo could act he was surrounded by police ,he was fond to be desperately chewing something which tunred out to be the calling cards of several escorts and his phone it matched the very phone the police were looking for.
but when they got the suspected thief and kidnapper into an interrogation room .he revealed to them was way beyond they could have ever expected…
he was taken to the sole metroplitan police agency where he was asked what he had done with the girls . he denied kidnaping and selling them.
but revealed to the police that he was in fact responsible for the murders he committed in the wealthy comunity.
police were unsure of the confession and didn’t believe him straight away to shock the detectives into action.
he told them he had killed over 20 people , starting with a murder in dinds -dong and finishing with a murder of an escort just days before his arrest .
whether yoo fully planned his next move is unclear. but using hi epilepsy to his advantage ,he faked a seizure, and amazingly officer’s actually realeased him from his hand and left him alone with the door wide open . believing he was inacapacitated, this failure of proper care allowed yoo to escape where he made his way home and began to destroy evidence.
strange how he would admit to the murders to only destroy evidence of them.
but it’s clear by now that this individiual is extrermely unhinged and perhaps not thinking straight.
he was spotted by a police officer within 12 hours of his escape and once again apprehended and this time there will be no escape.
Allthough he changed his story several claim that he eaten the organs of several victims
this was never really proven for sure , but some of his victims were found to be missing organs, so this sorted sick clsim may just be true.
yoo agreed to take police to the bodies of his victims ,and it was during this time that he earned the nickname the raincoat killer.the term was used more internationally than in south korea
the reason was because he was paraded around the sites whete he had hidden the boddies his identity was disguised by wearing alarge yellow raincoat . the term was born from the media and allthough irrelevent to the acutal murders
the name stuck and the raincoat killer began to be known across the world. the reality is , is that the police departements working the case were criticized for the way it was handled.
wasn’t it not for the massage parlor owners.they may have never caught their man . who’s reported as saying he would have continued until he was stopped.
thankfully he was now in custody and would face trial for his crimes, during the trial he tried to attack the judge and attempted suicide while in custody causing unnecessary delay .
then while back in court he tried to attack a spectator and showed no remorse towards the families of those had killed.
eventually inevitable guilty veridct was reached and this cold -blooded killer would face the maximum punishment.
death penalty . he currently sits on death row as an execution has not taken place in south korea since 1997.
infact ,rigth up until this case made the press, the public mood was near to abolishning capital punishment.
this series of grizzly murders and total disregard for human life angered the country and the death peanlty remains in south korea.
even if many may never see a execution
this case sent shockwaves across south korea and remains one of the worst ,if not the most disorganized series of murders to have ever happened.
but even if yoo young -chul never faces an execution, we can sleep better knowing he ‘ll spend the rest of his natural life inside a prison cell.
