Petty thief convicted of murder

SEOUL, Dec. 20 (Yonhap) -- A Seoul man who confessed to killing two women a
decade ago while detained in early October by police for stealing a cellphone was
sentenced to 22 years and six months in jail, court and police officials said
Sunday.

The Seoul Dongbu District Court convicted the 37-year-old man, identified only by
his family name Lee, of the two murders in 1995 and 2001 and sentenced him to the
lengthy jail term, describing the motive and method of his crimes as "malicious."
Lee was quizzed about his possession of a stranger's cellphone on Sept. 26 after
he was taken into police custody for acting suspiciously in a Seoul residential
neighborhood.
Police detectives later searched Lee's car and home and discovered stolen female
underwear, thousands of pornography CDs and a hard disk containing a copy of one
of the murdered women's ID cards.
After undergoing intensive questioning by police, Lee confessed to killing a
58-year-old woman at a mountain park in eastern Seoul in 1995 and raping and
strangling a 31-year-old woman to death in eastern Seoul in 2001.
The two murder cases had until then remained unresolved due to lack of evidence.
(END)