South Korea baseball star in quadruple murder, suicide probe

Police said Lee Ho-seong, a star hitter who led the former Haitai Tab

igers to four Korean Series wins in the 1990s, apparently committed suicide by walking into the Han River in Seoul, they said.

Since retirement, a series of failed business ventures had left him facing huge debts.

A manhunt was launched after police Monday found the bodies of the women buried together in a pit at a cemetery in Hwasun County, about 300 kilometers (200 miles) south of Seoul.

Police said Lee, 41, and the 45-year-old woman had been lovers, and that he had come under pressure from her to repay around US$177,000 she had lent him.

The bodies were found after a labourer reported to the police after remembering he and his colleagues had dug the pit, next to the tomb of Lee’s father, at the request of a man who looked like Lee.

Police said they would reward the labourer.

He and his colleagues told police that on their way to the tomb to dug the pit, Lee had refused to let them into his car, where they said there were two large bags on the back seat.

Police ordered the hunt after obtaining closed-circuit television pictures of Lee carrying large bags in and out of her Seoul apartment on the evening of Feb. 18, when the four went missing.

They released a photograph of Lee and offered a reward of US$3,000 for information leading to his capture.

“No injuries or bruises were found on his body,” a police chief detective, Lee Moon-soo, told journalists in Seoul.

He said no suicide note was found but that Lee reportedly sent a letter to one of his relatives hinting he might kill himself.

Police also said they would reinvestigate the disappearance of Lee’s business partner, identified only as Mr. Cho.

Lee, the last person to meet Cho before Cho vanished in August 2005, was then questioned by police but released.

Lee retired in 2001 and turned to his hand to business affairs.

An initially thriving wedding business in the southwestern city of Gwangju, the home of the Tigers, went bankrupt, and subsequent ventures in real estate and a virtual horse racing arcade left him in huge debts.

The news sent shockwaves throughout the country, making newspaper headlines and TV channels interrupting regular programmes with breaking news about the discoveries of the bodies of Lee and the women.

“I am very shocked. How could such a caring person who took good care ofyounger players turn into a man like that?” said Nah Jin-Gyun, a secretary general of the Korean Baseball Players’ Association.

“I hope we can give some relief to baseball fans who were deeply hurt by the tragedy by achieving good results,” Coach Kim Gyeong-mun of the South Korean team said in Taiwan, where his team was taking part in Olympic baseball preliminaries.

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