Life sentence finalized for man who killed his parents, wife and 2 children

A man, who was sentenced to life imprisonment at the appellate court on charges of murder and patricide for killing five members of his immediate family, including his parents, wife and children. (Yonhap)

Life imprisonment has been finalized for a man convicted of killing five members of his family.

The Suwon High Court in Gyeonggi Province upheld a lower court ruling sentencing the man in his 50s to life in prison, and neither prosecutors nor the defendant filed an appeal, local media reported Monday. He was found guilty of murdering his parents, wife and two children, and violating drug control laws.

At his final hearing, the defendant, identified only by his surname Lee, asked the court to impose the harshest possible punishment. “Please punish me with the hardest sentence, even the death penalty. I deserve it. I will spend the rest of my life in repentance.”

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty in both the first and second trials but accepted the high court’s decision.

“The court sufficiently explained the basis for its sentencing decision,” prosecutors said in a statement. “We internally reviewed the possibility of an appeal but decided not to proceed.”

In its ruling, the court noted that Lee continued the killings despite resistance from his wife and two daughters. “This is a woeful crime that is difficult even to describe,” the judge said.

The judge acknowledged that the crime warranted severe punishment but said it fell short of the threshold required for capital punishment, citing an analysis of 15 cases in which death sentences were finalized since 2004.

“It is recognized that the defendant deserves a severe penalty, as requested by prosecutors,” the judge said. “However, it is difficult to conclude that this case presents circumstances so exceptional that they would be universally accepted as justifying the death penalty.”

Lee was arrested in April last year after putting his parents, both in their 80s, his wife in her 50s, and his two daughters, one a teenager and the other in her 20s, to sleep with sleeping pills before strangling them to death.

Investigators said he planned the killings after his business collapsed, leaving him with debt totaling billions of won. He reportedly feared that the financial burden would be passed on to his family after his death.