Criminal Minds Episode 6: Not The Reason Why

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NOT THE REASON WHY

SADISM

DOCUMENTED

ON FILM

JO EUN JUNG

The following story should be one of parental interest as it speaks of young girls being easily abducted in broad daylight. It is a stark reminder that young females can’t be too careful.

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Near the Noryangjin Station in Seoul was a top private educational centre where candidates have cloistered themselves for prolonged periods of time in air-conditioned ‘Study Rooms’ to seriously prepare themselves for the fiercely competitive Civil Service Examinations.

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The thought of the approaching tough examinations didn’t thrill; it was burdensome with the clock ticking away. Under such circumstances, some were bound to succumb to the tremendous pressure and mounting anxiety.  A young girl with a nosebleed had to rush to the rest room to clean up.

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Coming upon a notebook with lots of transcribed information for the examination, the guileless girl rushed out after a man who seemed to have dropped it. Being good-hearted may not have its rewards. Someone lurking in the shadows knocked her out with a taser. She must have experienced great pain as she had crumbled to the floor and rolled down the stairs. Unbeknownst to the centre, she was then dragged away.

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A letter addressed to her mother soon arrived. The unsuspecting father opened the envelop to find a VCD of his daughter, who had been physically abused.

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THE SADIST

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The Team Manager and Yoo Min Young viewed the grisly video. The scenes were sadistic. The girl, who was tied in bondage, was beaten, tortured and humiliated by the torturer. The evidence spoke for itself.

Kang Gi Hyeong’s mind blurred; he was glassy-eyed for a moment, being overwhelmed by hallucinations of ‘The Reaper’. The face of his wife’s murderer had been making endless loops and barrel rolls in his mind.  Calling for the NCI members to assemble, he forgot the pain in no time.

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The team were not sure whether the victim had already been murdered. She had been missing 3-5 days before that. It seemed she had stayed in the academy. She had the habit of turning off her mobile phone for 2-3 days to prevent distraction. Therefore, her parents did not know exactly when she had gone missing. There was no suspect nor motive.

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The video was full of noises. Nana Wang was requested to separate the voice of the masked unsub from the jarring background music. 

📷 📷 📷 📷 📷 📷 📷 📷 📷 One interesting observation was that there was a mark on the masked man’s wrist.

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SADISTIC FETISHISM

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Lee Han suggested that sadistic criminals tended to choose victims with whom they were not associated. It is easier for them to torture and kill their victims if there were no emotional ties.

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Kim Hyun Joon understood the signs of the sexual deviance. The sadistic tied bondage act could be a basic sign of ‘sadistic fetishism’.  It was strange that the sex offender did not mind running the risk of exposing his identity by filming it. Probably, sending the video to family members stemmed from a strong desire for domination; the feeling of power and authority. Was there instant gratification when the criminal imagined the suffering of the viewers?

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Ha Sun Woo felt that with the blatant flaunting of his brutality, he aimed at striking fear in the victim’s family. Perhaps, the sadist wanted to draw attention to his desire to be recognized.

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Team Leader Kang drove home the point that what was most important was not the reason ‘why’  the VCD was sent, but to ‘whom’ it was sent.  The recipient of the VCD was the key to the mystery.

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He added that since 2015, there had been three such unsolved murder cases in Seoul and the Gyeonggi Province. The serial killer had abandoned the corpse in the place where the parents could easily notice.

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‘But this time’, Kim Hyun Joon ventured, ‘the criminal sent a video instead of a body’. Could it imply that there could there be a new breed of serial killers or perhaps, the same killers had a different modus operandi or signature?

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Was it done for shock value and to heighten the pain? Ha Sun Woo supported the idea that the perverted murderer was pursuing pleasure. 

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Yoo Min Young believed that the murderers were trying to make it more painful for the parents. It would be more traumatic for them to watch the actual suffering of their children than to see their dead bodies.

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Team Leader Kang was certain that if the murderer was the same one, then his bizarre methods from the initial three murders had evolved dramatically to the extreme.

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ASSESSING THE EVIDENCE

AT

THE CRIME SCENE

JO EUN JUNG

Yoo Min Young interrupted their discussion with the dreadful news that Jo Eun Jung’s body had already been found.

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At the site, Kim Hyun Joon remembered in a flashback that he had reminded the Team Leader that in all previous cases, the murders were found a week after the victims went missing. The Team Leader had postulated that based on the murder pattern, the NCI had about three days left to solve case.  But, it was puzzling that this time, the murderer had sent a video. Did it mean that the murderer was not interested in the victim anymore?

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Dr Lee Han had examined the dead body which had neck, chest and thigh larcerations. The corpse had been placed in an unusual position. He discovered that a few fingernails and toe nails of Jo Eun Jung were missing. By studying the purple spot, they deduced that the torture had gone on for a few days. A dull ache must have crept through the profilers’ minds.

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Yoo Min Young was surprised that the place where he abandoned the body was so different. Previously, the bodies were dumped in places that would have been very obvious to the parents.

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Something must have struck the genius in Kim Hyun Joon. As usual, he took the initiative to venture further into the woods to find out more about the criminal and his crime. He had unsettling thoughts. He rationalised, ‘If the criminal’s goal was to conceal, he wouldn’t have chosen a place like that when there were better places for concealment. Why did he carry the heavy body all the way up to that area? There had to be a reason for him to change his murder signature. Many questions must have played over and over in his head. ‘Did the killer have a change of mind?’ ‘Was placing the body in such a position and in such a place for shock value?’ ‘What warped mind had conceived such a new signature?’

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It had come as little surprise that the consummate profiler, Kim Hyun Joon finally arrived at the answer.  He discovered a small burial place for an animal. It was a private place hidden from the hundreds of climbers who had passed that way. There was a wreath of flowers at the site. He also found a locket of the mother and daughter. 

He called for the attention of the other NCI team members. ‘Did they miss something crucial?’ Perhaps, the site was symbolic; it was the place to maximise the pain of the parents.

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THE SYMBOLIC PLACE

Jo Eun Jung’s distraught mother talked about Boksil, a female puppy that her husband had bought as a companion for their daughter. The young girl loved her puppy dearly. When it died, they had dug a grave for the puppy at that particular site. And that was the place where they found her daughter’s abandoned body. That place had been their sanctuary - a special place for the mother-daughter pair to relax.

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A question posed by Ha Sun Woo was, ‘Did your daughter wear a ring similar to yours?’ The mother and daughter pair bought similar rings on Jo Eun Jung’s 20th birthday.

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THE RECIPIENT OF THE VCD

Ha Sun Woo came to the conclusion that all the evidence pointed to the fact that the target was the mother, not the father. The recipient’s name on the envelope with the VCD was the name of Jo Eun Jung’s mother, Lim Joo Sun.  She was convinced that the site for the dumping of the corpse had nothing to do with the father. The NCI team soon realised that the burial place for the puppy was a symbolic place that would maximise the pain and suffering of the mother.

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The recipient’s name itself was the message of the murderer. In the three previous murder cases, all those who first discovered the corpse had been their mothers, not their fathers. The killer had targeted the mothers of the abductees.

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MAKE JUDGEMENTS ON WHAT LIKELY HAPPENED

Nana Wang was wondering why Lee Han was so obsessed with watching and rewatching the shocking video.

SWAYING CAMERA

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After several attempts to understand the video, he realised that the sadistic torturer in the video was not committing the vile acts out of self-gratification.  The masked man was performing for an audience. There was another person who was hidden in the shadows.  Lee Han was observing the swaying camera for the third time. It couldn’t be more obvious that it was a moving camera and not one which was fixed on a tripod.

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‘FOLIE A DEUX’

A SHARED PSYCHOSIS

Yoo Min Young handed the DNA test results of the murder case to the Team Leader. She argued that it was weird that the DNA of the previous murder suspect and the DNA of Jo Eun Jung’s murderer did not match. Team Leader Kang postulated that there was more than one criminal, just like what Lee Han had guessed. Lee Han reiterated his viewpoint about the criminals to Yoo Min Young. One tortured the victim, the other filmed the process. One was the dominant personality; the other a submissive one.

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Lee Han was quick to add that it was ‘Folie a Deux’ (madness of two) or a shared psychotic disorder. It was the sharing of the same psychological delusion. Performing the sadistic acts was a process to bring out the worst or most cruel nature in themselves. The dominant criminal could have forced the other relatively weaker accomplice to murder, and then used it as a piece of evidence to threaten him and hold him mentally captive. 

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RECONSTRUCTING

THE CRIME SCENE

JO EUN JUNG

While the other NCI team members were discussing the issue, the more physically active duo, Kim Hyun Joon and Ha Sun Woo paid a visit to the academy where Jo Eun Jung had studied. They requested to look at the video footage on the day the examination candidate disappeared. They studied it closely. 

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The owner of the academy frowned; he was not in the least pleased. Anyone in his position would have been anxious about his academy being linked to a vicious murderer. Bad for business. The institution would be stigmatised as the place where the murder victim had disappeared.

📷 📷 📷 📷 📷 📷 📷 📷 Kim Hyun Joon invited him to walk along the corridor to test the CCTV while Ha Sun Woo would monitor their movements on the computer. Analysis. If a person moved in the blind spots, it was impossible for him to be captured on the CCTV. There might be shadows at the corners. 

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Ha Sun Woo had also arrived at the same conclusion that the unsub had lured the victim without being seen on the CCTV. On impulse, she decided to test her assumptions. She rushed out to re-enact the scenario in her mind. The pertinent question was: ‘Why did Jo Eun Jung follow the unsub?

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Imagining that she had picked up a notebook, she opened the door to the staircase.  Someone had suddenly clutched her hands but the alert lady profiler, a former policewoman, was no easy target for any lurker.  The reaction of the tense NCI lady was swift. She grabbed hold of the man’s hand and pinned him to the wall. Kim Hyun Joon, who had been checking the staircase on a whim, winced in pain and screamed out her name.

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Utterly stunned by the sudden attack, Kim Hyun Joon, however, did not react in self-defence. Not one to squirm in embarrassment, he stared curiously at the edgy female profiler.  Was her heart pounding when she realised the hand that she had trapped belonged to her NCI partner?  Well, at least, the playful profiler had finally learned some manners – never touch a sensitive lady’s hand without permission!

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She expounded her theory to Kim Hyun Joon on how the victim was kidnapped. ‘One lured the victim, the other carried her away.’ The male profiler agreed. It was clear that the accomplice must have been hiding there as they were not likely to be noticed. The staircase was probably not used during the intensive study time. They could imagine the chilling scenario. Ha Sun Woo thought that the victim was easily abducted due to her naivete. She had a genuinely kind heart.

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Although there is no need to belabour the point,  young people, especially girls, have to be reminded to be cautious around strangers.