GWANGJU — On the afternoon of Sept. 29, 2014, a 41-year-old woman, her middle-school daughter and her 68-year-old mother were killed one after another in an apartment in Chipyeong-dong, Seo-gu, Gwangju. The killer was a 34-year-old man who had stepped into the elevator carrying a flower basket. He had gone to visit the woman he was dating, and within three hours three people were dead.
The case came to light the next day at school. On Sept. 30, the homeroom teacher of the middle-school student, identified only as A, grew suspicious after being unable to reach her and called the police. Officers found that A's mother, identified as B, 41, had also failed to show up for work, and they traced her mobile phone.
The trace pointed to B's home. When repeated doorbell rings drew no response, police forced the door open. Inside, they found B, her daughter and her mother, identified as C, 68, dead. Plastic wrap had been wound around the faces of B and A, and a phone charging cable was coiled around B's neck. C had been struck on the head with a blunt object.
A Man Arrives With a Flower Basket, and Three Die in Three Hours
Apartment security camera footage identified the killer. A man surnamed Kim, 34, who had entered B's home at 6 p.m. the previous day carrying a flower basket and stayed for about two hours, emerged as the suspect. In questioning, Kim admitted he had been in a relationship with B for three years. He said the two had quarreled during a date that day over another woman, and that he went to her home to patch things up, but killed her in a fit of anger after she said something he took as dismissive.
At 7 p.m., after strangling B until she lost consciousness and then killing her by wrapping her face in plastic wrap, Kim was interrupted when C, who lived in the same complex, stopped by her daughter's home. Kim beat C, and when she fought back hard, he struck her with a frying pan and killed her. At 8 p.m., when A returned from a private cram school and began crying and screaming at the sight of her grandmother lying on the floor, Kim strangled her from behind until she lost consciousness and killed her the same way.
Kim fled in a rental car, wandered around South Jeolla Province and was arrested by police at 5:30 a.m. the next day on a wooded hillside in Gochang, Jeonbuk State. He had tried to kill himself with burning charcoal briquettes while on the run but survived.
Prosecutors sought the death penalty at trial. But in January 2015 the Gwangju District Court sentenced him to life in prison, and both the appeals court and the Supreme Court upheld that ruling, finalizing the life sentence in August of that year. Kim later served his term as a model prisoner and took his own life at Haenam Prison in March 2026. He was 45. He was reported to have grown despondent about his chances of parole.
A heavier truth lies buried in this case. In 2006, Kim had been arrested as a prime suspect after a woman in her 30s was found dead and burned in a studio apartment in Nohyeong-dong, Jeju. DNA from cigarette butts collected at both crime scenes matched Kim, but prosecutors dropped the case, citing insufficient evidence.
The detective who handled that case later said, "If he had been indicted and punished, the tragedy in Gwangju eight years later might never have happened."
