Twins get life imprisonment for insurance scam murder
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JANUARY 14, 2013 04:04.
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A boy ran away from home while in middle school in 1996 after his parents got a divorce. Hanging around the southern Seoul suburb of Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, he lived like an orphan while going on to work at a motorcycle store and as a delivery man for a 24-hour restaurant.
In 2004, he met and grew close to twin brothers while working at the motorcycle store. With the twins two or three years older than him, the man followed them as if they were his kin. When the brothers opened an architectural design office in Seongnam in 2008, he frequently visited and stayed there and a year later, he moved into the office.
Then something strange happened. In May 2009, the man, then age 28, was found dead at the restroom of the office a day after going early morning fishing with one of the twins and others. The cause of death was ruled carbon monoxide poisoning, and a police investigation found that the victim died of poisoning caused by a leak of liquefied petroleum gas from an instant water heater in the restroom while showering.
Drawing suspicion was that the twin brothers filed a life insurance claim for 1.7 billion won (1.6 million U.S. dollars) for the man`s death, having bought a policy under the deceased`s name, less than a month after his demise. The brothers were eventually found to have bought the insurance policy under the condition that they would receive the payout if the man died.
Highly suspicious of the case, police said the twins meticulously set up an elaborate scheme to get the insurance money in advance and killed the man. They allegedly added a sleeping pill into a glass of liquor, had the victim, who rarely drank, to consume it and faint, pushed him naked into the restroom that had been sealed with silicon, and cut the gas pipe linked to the water heater.
The brothers denied committing the crime and claimed that they were falsely charged, but the Seoul High Court on Friday sentence the younger twin who masterminded the crime to life in prison and the elder one to 20 years.
