Woman accused of killing husband for insurance payout arrested

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Woman accused of killing husband for insurance payout arrested

Lee Eun-hae, left, is accused of drowning her husband in 2019 with the help of Cho Hyeon-soo, right. The pair were arrested in Goyang, Gyeonggi on Saturday. [YONHAP]

Lee Eun-hae, left, is accused of drowning her husband in 2019 with the help of Cho Hyeon-soo, right. The pair were arrested in Goyang, Gyeonggi on Saturday. [YONHAP]

 
A woman who allegedly killed her husband in 2019 in order to claim a life insurance payout was arrested in Goyang, Gyeonggi with her accomplice, the police said Saturday.
 
Incheon Metropolitan Police said the 31-year-old murder suspect, Lee Eun-hae, and 30-year-old Cho Hyeon-soo were taken into custody at a residential building in Goyang, Gyeonggi at noon on Saturday.
 
The arrest comes 17 days after police put out a wanted notice for the pair.  
 
Lee is accused of drowning her 39-year-old husband with Cho’s help in June 2019 in a stream in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi in order to receive a life insurance payout worth 800 million won ($650,000).
 
The pair went into hiding during questioning by prosecutors. Their failure to appear for a second round of questioning on Dec. 14 prompted police to begin a search operation.
 
Lee and Cho evaded capture for three months until police put them on a wanted list in late March and made their identities public.  
 
Over the course of their investigation, detectives narrowed down the pair’s whereabouts to a mixed residential-commercial building in Goyang’s Deogyang District.
 
Police obtained the number of the apartment by questioning Lee’s father, whom they urged to convince his daughter to turn herself in.  
 
Lee’s father accompanied detectives to the pair’s apartment on Saturday. Neither Lee nor Cho resisted arrest.
 
“We found their hideout by investigating the residents around them,” a police officer said. “While there were only the two of them inside the room, we plan to find out if they have received help from others.”
 
Closed-circuit television footage from the building and neighborhood where they hid shows that the two did not stay solely in their apartment, which was leased in February when the building opened to tenants.
 
Instead, the pair emerged periodically to run errands.
 
Police said they plan to investigate Lee and Cho’s whereabouts between December and February.
 
Postcards exchanged between the pair in March last year suggest that the two were engaged in an affair while Lee's husband was still alive.
 
In one postcard, which was found at Lee’s previous residence in Incheon, Lee referred to herself as Cho’s “master” and reminded him that it had been two years since the two met.
 
Judging from the date on the postcard, which was posted in March 2021, Lee and Cho had met by March 2019. Lee’s husband died on June 30, 2019.
 
Police plan to transfer the two suspects to the Incheon District Prosecutors’ Office.
 
Lee and Cho are also accused of trying to kill Lee’s husband earlier in 2019 by poisoning his food in February and pushing him into water in May.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]
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