[26.01.12] Man Who Killed Family of Five Using Drugged Dairy Products Gets Life Sentence Finalized

Man Who Killed Family of Five Using Drugged Dairy Products Gets Life Sentence Finalized

📍Elderly parents, wife, and two daughters strangled to death; both prosecution and defendant waive appeal

A life sentence has been finalized for a man in his 50s who killed five family members after feeding them dairy products laced with sleeping pills. With neither the prosecution nor the defendant filing an appeal, the case concluded without review by the Supreme Court.

A man in his 50s who laced dairy products with sleeping pills and fed them to his family, then murdered his elderly parents, wife, and two daughters—a total of five family members—has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

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🔹 Life Sentence Finalized After Appeals Waived
According to legal sources on the 12th, the life imprisonment sentence handed down by the Suwon High Court Criminal Division 2-1 was finalized after both the defendant and the prosecution declined to appeal. As a result, the ruling took effect without Supreme Court review.

From the first trial, the defendant stated that he deserved the harshest punishment and accepted the court’s decision. He did not appeal the first-instance ruling, which also imposed life imprisonment.

Although prosecutors sought the death penalty in both the first and second trials, they ultimately accepted the appellate court’s decision. Prosecutors said the court had thoroughly explained sentencing factors and compared the case with past death penalty rulings.

🔹 “An Unspeakably Tragic Crime”
The appellate court strongly condemned the crime, stating that the defendant continued the killings despite resistance from his wife and daughters. The court described the case as an “unspeakably tragic crime.”

It added that financial failure could never justify killing one’s family and rejected the argument that being a breadwinner warranted leniency.

However, after analyzing 15 cases in which the death penalty was finalized after 2004, the court ruled that while severe punishment was warranted, the conditions did not meet the threshold for imposing capital punishment.

🔹 Meticulous Preparation for the Murders
The defendant was indicted for killing his parents in their 80s, his wife in her 50s, and two daughters aged between their teens and twenties at their apartment in Yongin on April 14 last year.

Investigators found that he purchased a pill grinder weeks in advance, crushed prescription sleeping pills, and mixed them into dairy products. The victims were strangled one by one over a span of approximately two hours and forty minutes.

🔹 Motive and Arrest
Formerly a housing construction company executive, the defendant became embroiled in civil and criminal lawsuits related to apartment development projects, accumulating debts totaling tens of billions of won.

Believing his debts would be passed on to his family if he died alone, he decided to kill them first. After the murders, he fled to Gwangju, leaving a note suggesting a joint suicide.

Police began investigating after a family member reported suspicious messages. Although the defendant was initially unconscious due to a suicide attempt, he later confessed to all charges after recovering.

One-line summary : A life sentence was finalized for a man who murdered five family members using drug-laced dairy products after both sides waived appeal.