True Crime (11) Monstrous side of 'Molar Daddy'

Lee Young-hak was once a darling of the South Korean public.

In 2005, the inspirational tale of how he overcame a rare disease to become a loving father and husband touched people across the country. Donations poured in to help him, his wife and his daughter, who had the same disease.

The public gave him the nickname "Molar Daddy" after the rare disease, known as gigantiform cementoma, that caused disfigurement of his and his daughter's mouths.

But a horrifying truth was uncovered a decade later. In 2017, the nation was stunned by the news that the once-beloved Molar Daddy was facing murder and sexual assault charges.

The victim was a 14-year-old girl, and a friend of his daughter. Even more shocking: His middle school daughter aided Lee in the crime.

This episode will delve into how the father and daughter turned out to be accomplices in a heinous crime, and how many people were blinded by his tearjerker of a life story that concealed his dark side.

Let's look at how things were in 2005. The image of a 27-month-old girl with a face disfigured by tumor growth, barely able to eat, shocked the nation when she appeared on television.

Her 23-year-old father Lee shared how he and his wife had despaired at their daughter's inheritance of his condition, of which there are only a handful of documented cases around the world.

"Even if we don't have money, we can give love as parents. But I gave her my illness, too. I know it too well. Not as a parent, but as a person who suffered (from the disease)," a tearful Lee said in an interview.

The cause of gigantiform cementoma is unconfirmed, but it has been linked to certain gene mutations.

In a video message posted a few months later, Lee said that he was terminally ill, having been diagnosed with epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease.

He claimed that he had trouble finding his way home, and frequently forgot his daughter.

"I’m not even fully aware of what I'm doing right now," he said, as he cried and begged for donations to pay for surgery.

Lee received at least 1.3 billion won ($900,000) in donations between 2005 and 2017. The public wired the money out of goodwill, hoping that it would help Lee and his daughter obtain much-needed medical assistance.

Their compassion toward Lee was betrayed in the most outrageous way.

At around 11:20 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2017, the parents of a 14-year-old girl surnamed Kim reported to police in Seoul that their daughter had not returned home and her cellphone was turned off.

Police learned that Kim's classmate, surnamed Lee, was the last person she talked to, and visited her home on Oct. 2. The home was empty, and a search did not reveal any traces of a crime.

The officers investigating Kim's disappearance found that the friend's father was a man named Lee Young-hak, who had been investigated following his wife's suicide a month earlier. Reviewing surveillance footage of the surrounding area, they saw the missing girl enter Lee's home, but the footage didn't show her leaving.

A full-scale criminal investigation was launched on Oct. 4. Police found Lee and his daughter the following day, at a studio apartment in another part of Seoul, where they had attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

Lee claimed that he and his daughter put the victim's body in the trunk of his car and buried her on a mountain in Gangwon Province. He initially denied killing her, but eventually confessed on Oct. 10.

On Nov. 1, he was indicted on a series of charges, including abduction, murder, sexual assault on a minor, illegal use of drugs and abandonment of a corpse.

Lee said he had told his daughter to find a friend who could "fill the void of your mother," and chose the victim because she looked like his deceased wife Choi.

According to profiler Lee Ju-hyeon of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, who interviewed him, Lee's sexual desire was not of a kind that could be satisfied in a normal relationship with an adult, and he sought out a minor whom he thought he could control.

Police said Lee was likely not a pedophile, but had a morbid obsession with sex. Lee had issues performing sexually, which was why the autopsy on the victim did not reveal signs of rape.

Lee initially claimed that he had had suicidal thoughts since the death of his wife, and that Kim mistakenly took his pills and died. But the autopsy showed that the victim died by asphyxiation and had broken ribs, which indicated assault.

Officer Han Sang-ah of the SMPA's crime scene investigation division, after interviewing Lee's daughter, said she was psychologically dependent on her father.

"Her only route to discussing the genetic disease or acquiring information about it was her father. ... She was dependent on her father without even realizing it, and believed that her father was supporting the family by receiving donations."

Han said Lee's daughter did not want to believe her father to be wrong, and was devoted to his plans to the point of doing things he had not even asked her to do. This included actively lying to the victim's parents and jokingly talking about her friend's disappearance with her other friends.

Lee’s daughter and Kim had been friends since elementary school, and it was the daughter who suggested that the victim take a drink spiked with sleeping pills.

While it was strongly suggested that Lee had psychologically manipulated his daughter, she was found guilty of aiding her father in the victim's abduction and disposal of the body. She was tried as a minor under the Juvenile Act, and the Supreme Court in 2018 confirmed a prison sentence of four to six years. Minors who are convicted can be released after serving a shorter term if they demonstrate good behavior.

Lee was initially sentenced to death by a district court, but his sentence was reduced to life in prison by an appellate court and confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2018.

Despite his atrocities being uncovered, Lee does not appear to have repented at all. After his punishment was confirmed, Lee sent a letter to his daughter saying that he is writing a book called "I'm a murderer."

"In just one year, we'll get our revenge," he said in the letter.

The police investigation found that Lee was about as far as possible from the family man he portrayed himself to be.

According to Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency profiler Lee Ju-hyeon, Lee Young-hak showed some signs of psychopathy, possibly triggered by childhood abuse.

The profiler pointed out that some psychopaths trick others and use them for profit. While this tendency may have been reinforced while he was receiving donations facilitated by the media, it is likely he had it from a young age.

Criminologist Lee Soo-jung said that his disabilities would have led to a loss of confidence as a young man approaching girls his own age, which may have led to his perversion. Police found certain sex toys at his home that led them to suspect he had sadistic tendencies.

Former middle school classmates of Lee told media outlets that he used to sexually harass children in elementary school.

His relationship with his late wife, surnamed Choi, turned out to have been an abusive one. Supplementary investigations revealed that he had forced his wife into prostitution, filming the sexual acts in the process.

Just three days after her death, he posted on a social networking website that he was looking for a woman to live with.

It is widely believed that Choi had been a victim of repeated rape by Lee's stepfather — her father-in-law. She had filed criminal charges against him shortly before her death. The stepfather denied the accusation, but an autopsy on her body revealed his DNA inside the victim.

The stepfather then changed his story. He said he did have sex with Choi, but insisted it was consensual. He died by suicide shortly afterward, on Oct. 25, 2017, leaving a note reading "Please clear my name."

After Choi's death, Lee handed the police what he claimed was her suicide note, which stated that she was killing herself because of the stepfather's rapes. But police later determined that the note was fake.

The abusive relationship between Lee, his stepfather, and Choi sparked suspicion over her death. But a police investigation confirmed that it was a suicide, although officials presumed that Lee's repeated abuse, including on the day of her death, may have played a key role in her decision to take her own life. Assault and coercion of prostitution were added to the charges against him.

The fact that Choi was a minor when she got pregnant was oddly glossed over in the initial media coverage in the mid to late 2000s. Choi was born in 1986, which means she would have been either 16 or 17 when she gave birth to their daughter in 2003. But many news articles at the time neglected to state her age, and the focus on Lee and his daughter left the public largely unaware of this fact.

An acquaintance of Choi testified after her death that Lee got her pregnant against her will and forced her to marry him.

Aside from his sexual attack and murder of an innocent girl, subjecting his wife to years of severe abuse, and possibly gaslighting his daughter, evidence shows that Lee used only a small portion of the donations he received for actual treatment of his daughter.

Police in October 2017 confirmed that out of the 1.3 billion won Lee received in donations, he only used 7.5 million won (0.6 percent) on hospital fees. Bank records showed that nearly 200 million won had been transferred to an account labeled “hospital,” but police believe that he put in a fake name and wired the money elsewhere.

This was due to welfare foundations funding much of the medical costs, according to police.

Police found that Lee spent much of the donations for his personal consumption, racking up as much as 10 million won a month on credit card bills, spending a total of 40 million won on tattoos and buying several expensive cars.

Because of this, he was charged and ultimately convicted with violating the Act on Collection and Use of Donations.

There have been crimes that were more gruesome in nature or had more victims. But the story of "Molar Daddy" remains one of the more shocking murders for Koreans, mainly because it involved someone whom many Koreans loved before he showed his true colors.