"Planned from 3 Months Before Birth" Cohabiting Couple in Geoje Charged with Murder and Abandonment of Infant, Detained and Indicted

Search for Similar Crimes and Scouting Locations for Corpse Abandonment

A common-law couple who were prosecuted for killing a newborn baby and abandoning the body were found to have committed the crime in a premeditated manner.

According to the legal community on the 26th, the Criminal Division 2 of the Tongyeong Branch of the Changwon District Prosecutors' Office in Gyeongnam arrested and indicted the suspects, the father in his 20s, Mr. A, and the mother in her 30s, Ms. B, on charges of infant murder and corpse abandonment in the so-called "Geoje Infant Murder and Abandonment Case."

Police are searching the area around the stream where the infant's body was abandoned.
[Photo by Gyeongnam Police Agency]

Mr. A and others were urgently arrested around 10:30 p.m. on June 30 for abandoning the body of an unregistered newborn infant at a residence in Geoje on September 9 of last year.

The two, who were in a common-law relationship, gave birth to a boy named C at an obstetrics clinic in Geoje City on September 5 of the same year, and four days later, after being discharged, strangled the baby to death at their residence.

They stated that they committed the crime due to financial difficulties and fear that their families would separate them if they found out about the birth.

At the time of arrest, they claimed, "We came back home, slept, and when we woke up, the baby was dead," and said they buried the body in a nearby mountain, but later confessed to the crime during further investigation.

They also revealed that although they initially tried to bury the body in the mountain, they discarded it in a nearby stream in a plastic bag early the next morning because people were passing by.

The police searched the area around the stream where they said they abandoned the body but ultimately failed to find it.

The prosecution uncovered through digital forensic analysis of Mr. A’s mobile phone that they had planned the murder of baby C.

They confirmed 13 photo files created at the residence from 4:43 p.m. to 7:59 p.m. on the day of the crime on the phone.

Based on this, the prosecution obtained a statement from Mr. A and others saying, "Around 4 p.m., we killed baby C, put the body in the refrigerator, and then went about our daily lives taking photos."

It was also found that they searched for similar infant murder cases before the crime and scouted locations to abandon the body afterward, leading to a confession that "the crime was planned and executed starting three months before the birth."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.