Husband Kills Wife for Insurance Money and Stages Traffic Accident... Supreme Court Confirms 35-Year Prison Sentence

A man who killed his wife to claim the death insurance and then tried to cover up the crime by staging a traffic accident was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

On the 31st, the Supreme Court's 1st Division (Presiding Justice No Tae-ak) upheld the original sentence of 35 years imprisonment for Mr. A, who was charged with murder and violation of the Special Act on the Prevention of Insurance Fraud.

Supreme Court, Seocho-gu, Seoul

Mr. A, a soldier, on March 8 last year, got into a financial dispute with his wife, Ms. B, at home and strangled her neck until she lost consciousness. Mistaking his unconscious wife for dead, Mr. A attempted to conceal his crime by placing her in the passenger seat of a car and crashing into a cement retaining wall at about 90 km/h, causing her death.

After deliberately causing the traffic accident, Mr. A disguised it as an accident caused by negligence and received approximately 32 million KRW in medical expenses from the insurance company. Furthermore, he attempted but failed to claim about 474 million KRW in injury and death insurance benefits for his wife.

Both the first and second trial courts sentenced Mr. A to 35 years in prison. Mr. A appealed, claiming the sentence was too harsh, but the Supreme Court rejected the appeal. The Supreme Court stated, "There is no error in the lower court’s judgment regarding the establishment of murder and violation of the Special Act on the Prevention of Insurance Fraud," and "even considering the grounds for appeal, it cannot be deemed that the lower court’s decision to maintain the first trial’s sentence was grossly unfair," thus dismissing the appeal.

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