News Way
Caution is advised, especially when relying on appearances.
A young woman walks along the road. Having just arrived in the city of Cheongju in 2004, she has not yet had the chance to meet many people. Barely 22 years old, she has a certain intellectual disability and, as a result, does not suspect anything when a taxi stops to offer her a ride. She gets in, carefree, thinking she will get home a little earlier that evening—but nothing could be further from the truth. Behind the wheel is AHN NAMGI, born in 1967 and a taxi driver in the city for several years, for whom vice completely consumes him.
In the back seat sits his very first victim, JEON, whom he takes to his home, where he rapes her, strangles her, and disposes of her body. It is found on the banks of a river on October 16 of the same year. Due to a lack of evidence, the murder remains unsolved for several years. It would not be until 2009 that crime struck Cheongju again. KIM, 41, gets into the taxi, which appears perfectly ordinary, and provides an address. As she falls asleep in the back, NAMGI takes advantage, tying her up, raping her, and stealing her wallet. He then places her in the trunk, where she ultimately suffocates. Her body is discovered shortly afterward. CCTV footage capturing her credit card being used would later prove crucial in identifying the perpetrator. This occurred on September 21, 2009.
A pattern emerges: a lone woman enters his taxi, his profession serving as an alibi. He then either takes her to his home or assaults her in the vehicle, ultimately placing her in the trunk. Even more disturbing, he reportedly admitted during his trial that he would go about his regular taxi work with the bodies still in the trunk, hidden to avoid suspicion until he could find a place to dispose of them. As obtaining video evidence inside a vehicle was difficult, it was the city’s surveillance cameras that ultimately enabled his arrest.
On March 26, 2010, NAMGI targeted SONG, 24. Using the same method, he tied her up, raped her, killed her, and then withdrew money using her credit card. Her body was abandoned in a parking lot in the city of Daejeon. Although the CCTV did not capture the transfer of her body from the car to the trunk, and from the trunk to the parking lot, it did record NAMGI’s trips to and from the ATM. Then, perhaps a point of no return occurred in January of the following year, when on January 20 he kidnapped a 30-year-old woman but eventually released her after she told him she was pregnant.
The “taxi killer,” born into a modest family and with limited schooling, was arrested. During the trial, he was quickly found guilty and sentenced to death. However, the sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment on appeal, and he was incarcerated in Cheongju. Investigative programs such as “그것이 알고 싶다” later highlighted the “gap” between his first and second murders, between 2004 and 2009, attempting to link NAMGI to other unsolved cases in the region. However, he never admitted to any other murders. In fact, in February 2005, a housewife named JO SANGMOOK disappeared one evening at a bus stop on National Road 36 in Cheongju. It is said that she missed her bus, and within the ten minutes until the next one arrived, she vanished without a trace.
“Everyone in the village cried. She was such a respectable and kind woman who treated the elders so well. We heard all sorts of rumors—sometimes that her body had been found, sometimes that it hadn’t, that it was lies, and so on. We don’t even know what’s true anymore.” —Resident of Cheongju
Cash was withdrawn from an ATM using the victim’s card, but the CCTV footage was too poor to identify the suspect. It remains a cold case, the mystery unresolved. As for NAMGI, he had been imprisoned in 2000 for attempted rape, around the time he began his career as a taxi driver. Initially, he had worked in a factory. The program in which this report aired has been recognized since its debut in 1992, specializing in investigations of unsolved criminal cases and corruption scandals.
NAMGI apparently had the habit of asking his passengers whether they were employees or students, and he was reported on several occasions as behaving oddly, even alarmingly. This question may seem innocuous, but it mainly allowed him to determine whether his potential victim had money. As a result, he preferred salaried workers or others with income to ensure he could withdraw cash after committing his crimes. During his trial, he recounted the details of the murder of his last victim, SONG.
After she got into his taxi following a birthday party, he asked her the aforementioned question. Learning that she worked in a public service office, he took her into a dark alley, stole her wallet, and raped her in the back seat of the taxi. After binding her wrists and ankles with nylon cables, he taped her mouth shut and placed her, still alive, into his trunk. He then spent several hours searching for an ATM, and once the victim’s account was blocked because he had entered the wrong PIN, he opened the trunk and found her dead, suffocated. He disposed of the body the following day, having slept a full night at home while leaving the corpse in the car.
NAMGI officially acknowledged only two murders, those of 2009 and 2010. He was also charged for the very first one, as his DNA was found, but since he did not admit to killing JEON, it is therefore not impossible that he may have committed other murders between 2004 and 2009. Moreover, he had kept belongings of his 2009 victim: a cap and a pair of shoes. He confessed that he preferred to kill all these women because he did not want them to report the rapes. A forensic expert could not help but note the similar details between NAMGI’s murders and the disappearance of JO SANGMOOK, but with no body ever found, it cannot be proven.
An attempt was also made to link another cold case: the murder of a beautician in Cheongju on September 9, 2000. Her body was found six hours after leaving a business dinner, mutilated and naked, at the side of a road just 3 km from her home. Her boyfriend was a potential suspect but was cleared, as the crime appeared purely sexual. Once again, the program “그것이 알고 싶다” mentioned the “taxi killer,” prompting the victim’s elder sister to request a meeting with him in the prison visiting room. He told her he did not clearly remember whether he was incarcerated at that time and later asked for a photograph of the victim to try to recall something. However, no further developments came from this.
« I didn’t intend to kill. » —AHN NAMGI
Yet, NAMGI had reason to be happy and fulfilled. Although he was born into a disadvantaged background and left school after middle school, he found a wife after completing his military service and even had three sons. However, it was when he moved to Cheongju that he plunged into criminality. In September 2000, he attempted to rape YEON, a 19-year-old girl, in the back of his taxi, earning him his first prison sentence and also leading to his divorce. He displayed a certain instability in his work: after working in a factory and serving his prison term, he became a taxi driver, committed his first murder, resigned in 2005, and then resumed in 2007.
The amounts of money he withdrew were not very large either, as he sought to avoid making the withdrawals appear suspicious. He withdrew 220,000 won using KIM’s card. NAMGI became the subject of a wanted notice, and a reward of 5 million won (~3,000€) was offered to anyone who could help capture the man seen in a CCTV image. It wasn’t until the third murder, that of SONG, that he was finally apprehended. In fact, the police identified and interrogated every taxi driver from the 67 vehicles filmed by the surveillance cameras on the day the body was found. SONG’s blood was discovered on a knife in NAMGI’s taxi, solidly confirming his guilt.
NAMGI underwent a psychopathy test, scoring 25 out of 40, which contributed to his incarceration. He was found guilty on multiple charges: kidnapping, robbery, rape, murder, and disposal of bodies. Each of the murders was reconstructed with NAMGI present to explain, step by step, how the crimes were committed. Upon announcing the sentence, the court stated:
« Despite the brutal crimes he committed, the defendant denies any intent to kill, constantly changes his statements regarding specific circumstances, and shows no genuine remorse for his actions. Some of the victims’ families strongly wish for the harshest possible punishment. Considering the physical and psychological suffering endured by the victims and their families, and the fact that the defendant committed his cruel acts using a public means of transportation—a taxi—which shocked and horrified society, imposing the maximum sentence to permanently isolate the defendant from society was an inevitable choice.».
This entire case brought to light an illegal network of taxi drivers. One company allegedly employed nearly 100 drivers illegally in Cheongju, with these drivers paying up to 30,000 won less per day than legally contracted drivers. Since no prior identity verification was conducted, former criminals were discovered within the network. In 2012, following NAMGI’s trial, a law was passed preventing anyone with a criminal record related to sexual violence, theft, or drugs from ever becoming a taxi driver. It also became mandatory to provide one’s criminal record to avoid any suspicion.
Even though it took the lives of several women, laws designed to protect the rest of the citizens were eventually put in place, even if their enforcement sometimes leaves much to be desired. What did you think of this story? Let us know in the comments!
Journalist : Pillet Anaïs
Sources : KSTATION TV, under pictures
