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| ▲ Lee Eun-hae covers her face with both hands while going to attend a court hearing in Incheon, west of Seoul, on April 19, 2022. (Yonhap) |
court-valley murder
Life imprisonment upheld for woman in drowning death of husband for death benefit
SEOUL, April 26 (Yonhap) -- A life sentence was upheld Wednesday for a woman charged with murder in the high-profile drowning death of her husband in 2019 for a hefty life insurance payout.
Lee Eun-hae, 32, and her extramarital lover, Cho Hyun-soo, 31, were indicted for allegedly prodding the woman's then 39-year-old husband to jump into a deep valley river in Gapyeong, 50 kilometers northeast of Seoul, in late June 2019, even though he was unable to swim, and letting him drown.
Their motive was found to be an 800 million won (US$598,578) death benefit payable to Lee upon her husband's death.
On Wednesday, the Seoul High Court convicted Lee of murder, confirming the life imprisonment sentenced by a lower district court, and also upheld the district court's 30-year prison sentence for Cho.
Like the lower court, however, the appellate court rejected charges that Lee "gaslighted" the husband and egged him on to dive into the river, and so to his death, ruling instead that Lee and Cho are responsible for the husband's death because they did not come to his rescue when he drowned.
The two were also convicted of attempting to kill the husband earlier in 2019 by poisoning him with puffer fish toxin and trying to drown him at a fishing place.
Lee, in particular, drew the public's ire after it was revealed that she had not dropped a suit she filed to reverse an insurance firm's decision not to pay the husband's death benefit to Lee even as she underwent trial on murder charges.
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