The Weight of Indirect Evidence
“So Cha, you’re not only good at crafting statements. You’re good at dirty little tricks, too?”
Prosecutor Kim Sung-gil glared at me, clearly displeased.
At times like this, I had to smile with just the right amount of defiance.
To show him that I knew things the police and prosecution didn’t.
“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m only saying this because I’d rather not have the backlash land on you, senior. But the prosecutor’s office is always crowded, no matter when I come by.”
By glancing around as I spoke, I made it clear I couldn’t say any of this out loud in front of everyone. Quick on the uptake, Prosecutor Kim nodded toward the investigators and clerks nearby.
“Man, I could really go for a cigarette.”
“Chief, shall we step out together?”
“While we’re at it, want to grab some ice cream too?”
“Why not? Prosecutor Kim, the three of us will be right back.”
As the three of them hurried out, Kim Sung-gil crossed his arms, his temper simmering just beneath the surface.
Yeah. He’s right on the edge of blowing.
I’d known that expression of his since my trainee days.
Still, I had no choice.
If I didn’t provoke him, Lee Seon-dong would spend even longer in detention.
And I’d be the one waiting longer to receive the mission reward.
“You didn’t come here to do a deal, but you’re saying if I order supplementary investigation as is, the blowback will hit me?”
“Yes.”
“Cha Do-hyuk, a supplementary investigation is what we order when the evidence we’ve gathered isn’t enough to determine the charge. Don’t you know that?”
“I do. But the police seem to have mistaken Lee Seon-dong for the culprit.”
“Mistaken? Are you seriously making sense?”
As expected, Kim’s brow twitched.
“No, I’m saying this because it’s the sort of thing anyone could easily overlook. Prosecutor, did you check the bill numbers on the dollar bills that were used?”
“…Bill numbers?”
“Yes. The new $100 bills used in the first case had serial numbers beginning with AE, and that’s the numbering used when authenticating counterfeit U.S. currency.”
“So you’re saying they were fake?”
Only an amateur would ask whether I was going so far as to forge American currency just to exonerate the suspect.
“I think it’s more likely they were old bills that had picked up some wear overseas. In Korea, $100 bills exchanged through banks usually start in the F series or later.”
“……!”
“For reference, the dollars Lee Seon-dong exchanged for business trips also had serial numbers in the F range and beyond.”
Kim hurried back to his desk and flipped open Lee Seon-dong’s case file.
“The serial numbers are mixed all over the place—AE, CG, everything in between. It looks to me like he exchanged them when he went out for business.”
The culprit, who used only dollars, had spent the equivalent of roughly one hundred million won at the club.
Of course the police and prosecution checked whether that money had been withdrawn from Lee Seon-dong’s account.
So rather than needling me and wasting time with this pathetic excuse about a mistaken identity, he wanted me to wrap it up here.
“When he visited Washington, D.C. on November 21, 2022, he also used only his credit card. He exchanged the cash just in case card use wasn’t possible, but he ended up bringing it back untouched.”
With a rustle, I showed him a photo of the dollar serial numbers and the exchange receipt I’d found in Lee Seon-dong’s safe.
That would force Kim Sung-gil to contact the Foreign Exchange Bank and strengthen the circumstantial evidence against Lee Seon-dong.
“On top of that, every time Lee Seon-dong traveled abroad, he donated whatever foreign currency he had left or deposited it into his foreign currency account. You checked his accounts, so you know how consistent that is, don’t you?”
“…That doesn’t change the fact that Lee Seon-dong is the suspect.”
Just as expected. I’ll have to bring up the second piece of circumstantial evidence right away.
I was building the case carefully, piece by piece, for the end.
“As you know, at the time of the incident, the location data from Lee Seon-dong’s smartphone was outside the margin of error from the club where the crime occurred.”
“He could’ve left his phone at home and gone to the club.”
“As the CCTV footage from the club entrance shows, the culprit entered while holding a smartphone.”
“…Lee Seon-dong could have gone to the club without the phone he normally uses. If it was a prepaid phone with no registration, that’s perfectly possible.”
“That’s just speculation.”
He looked straight at me, cutting through the silence.
“Speculation?”
“As I said, Lee Seon-dong is someone who only uses credit cards.”
So consistently, too.
“If he opened an unregistered prepaid phone to commit the crime, then he would have had to pay in cash, not by card. But there’s no record of him withdrawing cash from his account.”
“His parents could have given him pocket money face to face.”
“Then that’s the kind of issue you’d need to order supplementary investigation on.”
“…….”
That would create another layer of work. It would mean calling his parents in as reference witnesses, which was a great deal more annoying.
If you’re going to cling to something, you’d better be prepared to take the hassle with it.
“For the record, Lee Seon-dong returned home at nine o’clock on the day of the incident, and afterward there was no sign of him leaving on any CCTV from his apartment building or the surrounding area.”
“I’ll order supplementary investigation.”
He was accepting that point because it was likely to be dismissed if pushed straight to indictment.
“Also, no fingerprints belonging to Lee Seon-dong were found at Club Nine Room.”
Apparently the place had been cleaned so thoroughly that even the fingerprints inside the club had been wiped away clean.
Most likely, whoever had tried to cover up the incident had taken the lead in scrubbing everything down.
“If a wealthy man who throws around huge sums of money commits the crime using drugs, then of course he’d use the staff to handle the cleanup so he wouldn’t leave any DNA behind.”
Though from the culprit’s perspective, the victim waking up had ruined the whole thing.
“We questioned all the staff, and nothing like that happened.”
So the wife knows, but the police and prosecution don’t.
I almost laughed.
“The name used at Club Nine Room was Yoo Jeong-hu. Did you also find the real name, Woo Gyeong-ho?”
“Who?”
“The actual manager responsible for the VIP room where the crime took place.”
“What?”
Of course he wouldn’t know. Hell, I wouldn’t have known either if I hadn’t gotten the information from a private investigator.
“Woo Gyeong-ho is thirty-two years old. He currently works as a floor attendant at Yuhwa Chinese Restaurant in Gura-dong, Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province.”
“……”
“My guess is that the culprit had the staff do the dirty work, but the victim waking up ruined the perfect crime. So he dumped the DNA in the car and pinned everything on Lee Seon-dong.”
No matter how meticulous a planned crime is, the culprit always acts with some unconscious consistency. Even down to the way he spends money.
“And using dollars in Korea in such a consistent way—that’s unconscious behavior from a culprit who isn’t accustomed to Korea.”
Ironically, the deliberate action taken in hopes it wouldn’t be him became evidence, while the unconscious action pointed straight at the culprit.
The culprit didn’t know that.
“…That still doesn’t change the fact that Lee Seon-dong is the suspect. Any other points on the first case?”
He was stubborn to the bone.
“If not, let’s move on to the second case.”
Saturday, October 14, 7:10 a.m.
It was the case in which a high school student was sexually assaulted at Gogae Park while walking from Dogok Daehan Apartment to a study café near Gangnam Station on the Shinbundang Line.
I need to make this the key case that proves Lee Seon-dong is not the suspect.
“You’ve gone quiet all of a sudden. Is there some solid evidence in the second case that made you chicken out?”
“No. I’m choosing my words carefully because I have solid evidence too.”
“Solid evidence?”
“Yes.”
In criminal cases—especially sex crimes—when people said there was solid evidence, they meant DNA.
“Ha!”
The analysis of the perpetrator’s semen taken from the victim’s body, along with the fourth victim’s testimony, pointed to Lee Seon-dong as the culprit.
So it made sense that Kim Sung-gil would laugh.
“Cha Do-hyuk, is there any evidence more solid than DNA? Especially when the match rate is ninety-seven percent?”
“It’s not a hundred percent match, is it?”
DNA that would let a judge hand down a guilty verdict without even the slightest hesitation.
And yet there was exactly one way to undermine the value of that evidence.
Submit another piece of evidence and chip away at the so-called conclusive proof.
Raise the probative value of the evidence I had, its context, and its relationship to the other evidence.
“So what evidence are you bringing to the table?”
He crossed his arms again.
“The police and prosecution never found the weapon used in the second crime scene at Gogae Park.”
“The pigs couldn’t find it.”
“If they had found the weapon—”
“It’d have the victim’s blood on it. So what? Don’t tell me you’re going to bring up fingerprints. Even then it’d still be Lee Seon-dong’s prints.”
And why would it be only the culprit’s fingerprints?
If I hadn’t visited Gogae Park that day, probably no one would have found it at all.
“The weapon would have to be small enough to fit at least in a pants pocket. So then, something about this size—a portable size?”
I roughly measured with my hand.
“Judging by the wound on the victim’s lower left abdomen, it had to be a combination of a narrow corkscrew and a knife.”
“……”
“And if you look at the streetwear brand preferences and spending habits of the culprit at the time, it points to a luxury knife product.”
I held out the photo.
“More specifically, a Supreme and Laguiole collaboration piece.”
“Where did you find it?”
“In a trash bin near Gogae Park. Judging from the culprit’s psychology, I figured he’d come back later.”
Kim Sung-gil’s eyes sharpened.
It was so obvious what he was thinking it practically floated over his face.
“Attorney Cha Do-hyuk, so that’s why you said you were going to visit the crime scene.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? Lee Seon-dong’s in detention, and you were just trying to claim the real culprit dumped it in the trash bin!”
“I thought it might be misunderstood that way.”
That’s why I’d prepared this.
First, the circumstantial evidence to calm him down.
“Take a look.”
“What is this?”
“A video I filmed while walking around the crime scene from my house on the day I visited it. And this is—”
“……?”
I unfolded an A2-sized map of Seoul and pointed to a star near Soongsil University Station.
“The starred starting point is my home, and this is the route I’ve walked from the day I was assigned this case up to now. For reference, I marked each date in a different color. If you doubt it, investigate it.”
“Ha! So you even filmed it with a GoPro and brought your own location tracking map because you expected me to react like this?”
“When you mentored me, Prosecutor, you told me not to leave even the slightest opening for the defendant.”
I was just following what I’d been taught, and he was already horrified by it.
“What really matters is this.”
Kim Sung-gil flinched at the heavy shopping bag with a thud.
I presented him with a big gift.
“The clothes the culprit was wearing at the time of the second crime. I believe there was a tiny amount of the culprit’s blood on the cuff of the right sleeve.”
“……!”
It had been the spot on the back of the culprit’s right hand I discovered while analyzing CCTV footage from the third case.
That had been the wound left by the second crime.