Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature three stories that will make you wonder how many monsters you may have encountered in your life without even knowing it.
The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.
The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.
The first story you'll hear is called Stumble and it's about a series of pictures that lead police down a rabbit hole.
The second story you'll hear is called Psychopath and it's about an evil person who makes a horrifying decision.
And the third and final story you'll hear is called The Pier and it's about a couple who stumbles upon their worst nightmare on a beach.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please offer to install brand new hardwood floors in the Follow Buttons house, but on installation day, remove all their old flooring, but then just quit the job and leave.
Okay, let's get into our first story called Stumble.
Are you searching for a romantic summer getaway?
Escape with Rich Girl Summer, the new Audible original from Lily Chu.
The phenomenally talented Philippa Soo returns to narrate her fifth Lily Chu title.
This time, Philippa is joined by her real-life husband, Steven Pasquale.
Set in Toronto's wealthy cottage country, aka the Hamptons of Canada, Rich Girl Summer follows the story of Valerie, a down-on-her-luck event planner posing as a socialite's long-lost daughter while piecing together the secrets surrounding a mysterious family. and falling deeper and deeper in love with the impossibly hard-to-read and infuriatingly handsome family assistant Nico.
Caught between pretending to belong and unexpectedly finding where she truly fits in, Valerie learns her summer is about to get far more complicated than she ever planned.
She's in over her head and head over heels.
Listen to Rich Girl Summer now on Audible.
Go to audible.com slash richgirlsummer. You know that person in your life who just can't stand mayo?
Call them traumatized. Call them close-minded.
We get it. They're stuck in their ways. But here's the thing.
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Chipotle mayo that turns your basic wrap into a smoky sensation.
So to all the mayo haters out there, yes, we're looking at you.
It's time to eat your words. Because with mayo this flavorful, any hater is just a mayo lover waiting to be convinced.
Hellman's Flavored Mayo. Get ready to eat your words.
In 1987, 21-year-old Deanna Wild had just separated from her husband, and she was living with her two friends, Virginia and BJ McGinnis, who were both 54 years old.
On April 2nd of that year, the trio decided to visit Big Sur, which is the very beautiful, but very steep and dangerous section of the Central California coastline.
They pulled over at a particular cliff overlooking the water to take some pictures.
Afterwards, as they were getting ready to go back to their car, Deanna wanted a closer look.
So she stepped to the edge of the cliff where she lost her footing and she fell 500 feet to her death.
It was ruled an accident, so investigating officers refrained from taking any on-scene photographs, accepting instead Virginia's photographs that she said she had taken right before it happened.
Deanna's mother was unable to afford a funeral for her daughter, and so the only person she could think to ask to help her was a lawyer that went to the same church as her.
His name was Steve Keeney. And Steve said, yeah, of course, I'll try to make some phone calls for you and see what I can do.
And in doing so, he wound up learning about the case, about what happened to Deanna, and he discovered that her two friends, Virginia and BJ, had actually taken a life insurance policy out on Deanna the day before she fell off the cliff.
And so Steve began digging into the backgrounds of Virginia and BJ and he discovered that Virginia had a history of being around a high number of accidental deaths and suspicious fires and that she had cashed in a whole bunch of life insurance policies.
So all of the sudden Deanna's death did not look accidental.
Steve would become obsessed with the idea that the McGinnises were behind Deanna's death.
But unfortunately, there was virtually no evidence to support that because when she died, the investigating officers ruled it an accident.
So there was no crime scene. There was no evidence collected.
The autopsy was very cursory. And so Steve would spend five years building a case against Virginia and BJ.
But at the end of those five years, it was a rock solid case and Virginia and BJ were arrested.
During their trial, the real story of what happened to Deanna finally emerged.
On that April day in 1987, the trio went to Big Sur and they had lunch together, they had a picnic.
And while they were eating, BJ slipped some of his prescription antidepressants into Deanna's drink.
And so after lunch, the drugs were in Deanna's system and she began to get very drowsy to the point where Virginia and BJ had to literally hold her up.
She was falling over, she was so tired. And so while Deanna's in the state, Virginia and BJ tell her, hey, let's go over to the cliffs and take some pictures.
And so they walk over, Deanna's stumbling and BJ's holding her up and they get to the edge of the cliff and BJ turns around so the ocean's at his back and he's propping up Deanna and Virginia steps away and she takes their picture.
And then right after that picture, BJ, while still holding Deanna, turned around to face the water and kind of carried Deanna right to the edge.
And Virginia took one more picture of them facing the water.
And then right after that picture was taken, BJ took Deanna and threw her off the cliff.
But perhaps the most disturbing part of this case is that as soon as he threw her off, Deanna kind of came to and whipped herself around and managed to grab onto the cliff with her hands.
And so she's literally dangling, holding onto this ledge like in the movies, begging to be pulled back up.
And Virginia and BJ, instead of helping her back up, picked up rocks and bashed her hands until she fell off the cliff.
Ultimately, it would be these last two pictures that Virginia took that got her and BJ convicted of killing Deanna.
Because these pictures clearly showed Deanna was impaired compared to the earlier pictures on the camera roll.
And the only reason these pictures existed is because Virginia wanted a trophy from the killing because she was actually an uncaught serial killer that went around killing people and cashing in their life insurance policies.
One of her victims even included her own three-year-old daughter.
BJ would actually die during his trial. As for Virginia, she was found guilty and sent to jail for life.
Our next story is called Psychopath. In 2008, 28-year-old Chris Smith was an up and coming star in the lead generation business.
Lead generation is not a flashy business.
Basically, you create these ads that are designed to generically help people with things like lowering their mortgage payments or reducing their credit card debt.
And in these ads, you leave behind a 1-800 number for anybody interested to call.
And the people that do call, their information is taken down.
And then the lead generator, the person who made that ad, they sell that information to mortgage brokers and debt consolidators and anybody else that wants access to that lead.
Chris's ability to create these really compelling ads and get people to call said number was so good that it caught the attention of another up-and-comer in the lead generation space, a man by the name of Ed Shin.
Ed worked for a lead generation company called LG Tech in Southern California, and Ed wound up hiring Chris to come onto their team as a consultant.
Right away, Chris and Ed totally hit it off, despite being very different people.
Chris was a surfer bro who wore flip-flops and t-shirts every day and never went to college.
Ed was a very sharply dressed, college-educated father of three who went to church every Sunday.
But where they overlapped was their shared desire to become fabulously wealthy.
After working together for a little while at LG Tech and doing quite well for themselves, they realized they could actually make a lot more money if they left LG Tech and formed their own lead generation business.
And so in early 2009, they did just that.
They left LG Tech and they formed a new company called 800 Exchange.
And right away, it took off, generating millions and millions of dollars in revenue, 80% of which was profit.
During this incredible time, Chris used some of his money to buy a brand new Range Rover and a beautiful condo in Laguna Beach, and he fell in love with this beautiful ballet dancer named Erica.
By and large, Chris seemed to be putting his roots down and really building a life for himself.
As for Ed, despite his squeaky clean outward appearance as being this all-star family man and father, he was using his cash to party and gamble in Las Vegas.
When Ed was at LG Tech, he would regularly go to Las Vegas to generate business.
And while he was there, he developed a gambling addiction.
When he and Chris formed 800 Exchange, Ed continued to go to Las Vegas to drum up business.
It was something he was good at. But when he and Chris started making money hand over fist, his gambling addiction grew tenfold and he went completely off the rails.
Ed was spending so much money in Las Vegas, sometimes up to six figures an hour, that one of the main casinos there would fly him in their private jet out to Las Vegas, and they would put him in their very best suite, fully comped.
It's unclear how aware Chris was of Ed's crazy spending habits, because Chris rarely went to Las Vegas with Ed.
The men were living their respective dreams until October of that year when Ed was charged with embezzlement.
Their former employer, LG Tech, had alleged that Ed had siphoned off about $2.5 million from their business to fund his wild Las Vegas lifestyle.
Ed told Chris these allegations were totally false, but Chris was shaken.
He was worried that if he didn't do something about this, Ed could potentially embezzle money from 800 Exchange.
And so Chris went out and got a lawyer to begin protecting himself from his business partner.
Over the following few months, Ed and Chris attempted to run 800 Exchange before Ed's trial date, but it was just too difficult because the trust had been totally destroyed by these allegations.
And in May of 2010, Ed was convicted of felony embezzlement.
In order to avoid jail time, Ed had taken a deal that meant he would need to pay roughly $800,000 of restitution to LG Tech. but Ed did not have $800,000.
The only way he could make this payment would be if 800 Exchange, the business, fronted the money.
But in order to do that, he would need Chris to sign off that he was okay with that because he owned half of the business.
When Ed approached Chris, Chris said, no, I'm not signing that.
I'm worried you're going to take advantage of me too.
But after a couple of weeks of talking to his lawyer, Chris finally told Ed that he was ready to meet up with him and come to some sort of agreement.
And so on June 4th, the two men met up at the 800 Exchange office and Chris decided to just sell his portion of the business to Ed for about a million dollars.
And then Ed can do whatever he needs to do with the business account to pay down his debts.
Despite how crazy the situation was, Chris actually felt like this was kind of a win for him.
He got a $1 million payday and now he wanted to go out and celebrate.
And so a couple of days after this meeting with Ed, Chris emails his family and says he's gonna go on a three week vacation to South America and just go surfing the whole time.
He's chartered this 45 foot yacht, he's hired a captain, he's hired a cook.
It's gonna be this dream vacation. He also regretted to inform them that he had broken it off with his girlfriend Erica, but he had a new girlfriend who'd be coming with him on this vacation, and she was a former Playboy playmate named Tiffany.
His family was really surprised to hear the news about Erica because they really believed they were going to get married.
But the trip itself was not really out of character.
Chris had always said for the longest time that once he made it big and had millions of dollars in cash, he would just sail off into the Pacific and go surfing and just be off the grid and live his life in peace.
And now he finally had a chance to do that.
And so his family said, have fun, stay safe, and we'll see you when you get back.
But three weeks went by and Chris did not return to his condo.
Instead, he emailed his family again and just told them he was having this great time, that this was the best trip he could have asked for, and that instead of coming home, he was just going to keep sailing around the world and enjoying this time that he has disconnected from society.
And again, his family said, okay, have a good time, stay safe, and we'll see you when we see you.
But over the following weeks and months that Chris extended this vacation, his emails took a dark turn.
Chris started to act depressed, and he alluded to taking drugs, and then at one point, he talked about doing the unthinkable, referencing harming himself.
His parents were very concerned and told him he should come back home or at the very least, they should arrange to meet up somewhere.
But every time they said this, Chris would just suddenly change the tone of his email and seem really upbeat and cheerful and said, oh no, I'm actually just fine and I just need some time to myself.
Finally, in December of 2010, so six months after Chris has gone on this vacation, he reaches out to his brother Paul and asks him if he'll come to Costa Rica the following February to go surfing with him.
Paul was excited and said he would go, and he and the rest of his family breathed a collective sigh of relief that now one of their family members would get to see Chris and actually check in on him.
Shortly after this email exchange, Chris told his family that he was headed off into the Congo to sell some gold coins to a trader who was prepared to buy them at a 30% markup, and Chris was really excited about it.
After this, there were no more emails. The family was concerned that this gold buyer potentially had kidnapped or hurt Chris, but Chris was going long periods of time between his emails to family.
And so they figured, you know what? Paul's trip to Costa Rica where he's going to meet up with Chris is coming right up.
So let's hold off doing anything drastic until then.
But when February of 2011 rolled around and it was time for Paul to fly out to Costa Rica to meet up with Chris, before Paul left, he called the hotel in Costa Rica to confirm the reservations Chris had supposedly made.
And the hotel said, we've never heard of Chris Smith.
There are no reservations under his name.
And so Paul tried to contact Chris, but to no avail.
And so Paul told his family about it and they decided it was best for Paul not to go to Costa Rica because probably Chris wasn't there.
And the family instead got in touch with the State Department and asked them if they could help them find their son, their brother.
And right away, the State Department discovered Chris's passport had never left the United States.
And his family said that was impossible because for the past year, Chris has been sailing around the world.
But the State Department said, this is what we got.
So Chris's dad, who used to be a cop, drove out to California to speak to Ed, who was the last person to see Chris before he left on this vacation. and Ed would say he has no idea where Chris is.
However, he did say Chris had a fake passport, and that might be why his passport was not showing up as leaving the country.
Chris's father didn't really know what to make of this information, and so he decided it would be best to just file a missing person report and put the investigation in the hands of the police.
Shortly after the report was filed, the police brought Ed in for questioning, and Ed reiterated that he didn't know where Chris was and that he did have this fake passport.
And he also said that they had not ended on good terms.
They were kind of fighting and bickering at the end, and that's why he hadn't heard from Chris since he left.
Ed was cooperative and didn't really have much to give police, and so the police let him go.
While the police hit dead end after dead end in this missing person case, the property manager of the office building where the 800 Exchange business had been located was growing increasingly frustrated.
Shortly after Chris had sold his portion of the business to Ed and then gone on this vacation, Ed had moved 800 Exchange from that office building to another, and Ed had not paid his final rent, which was $40,000.
And this property manager had repeatedly tried to get in touch with Ed, but Ed was totally blowing him off.
One day, the property manager was griping about Ed and his delinquent payment to another tenant in the office building, a guy by the name of Joe DeLue, who just happened to be a private investigator.
And during this discussion, the manager was saying that not only had Ed not made this payment, but he had also been recently questioned by police about his missing business partner, who was still missing.
And so Joe is immediately intrigued by this, and he says to the manager, you know, it sounds like Ed is a pretty shady guy.
Would it be possible for me to just poke my head around their old space now that it's vacant?
Because you never know, there could be something in there.
And so the manager said that was fine. He opened the door to the old 800 Exchange space.
Joe walked inside and immediately found blood spatter on the doorframe of where Chris's office used to be.
He also found blood spatter on the ceiling and on the walls.
And so Joe called the police who showed up and sprayed luminol all over Chris's office and there was blood everywhere.
It would turn out Chris didn't sell his portion of the business to Ed.
On that day, June 4th, 2010, Chris did go into the office to try to reach some agreement with Ed, but when he walked in, Ed promptly killed him with a knife or some other blunt object.
Then he, or someone he hired, dumped Chris's body somewhere.
After that, Ed stole all of Chris's money to pay off the debt to LG Tech, as well as some other large debts in Las Vegas.
And then after that, Ed hijacked Chris's email accounts and pretended to be Chris for almost an entire year.
Chris never took a boating trip around the world.
He never broke up with Erica and had this new girlfriend from Playboy.
He just got killed inside of his office and Ed created this ridiculous elaborate lie that was designed to make his family believe that Chris had become unstable and that maybe he did end his own life or maybe he did get kidnapped or killed in the Congo.
Ed was just trying to create that seed of doubt that he had anything to do with it.
But in 2018, it all came crashing down for Ed when a jury convicted him of killing Chris and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
To this day, Ed maintains his innocence, and to this day, Ed still will not give up where Chris's body is.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time, my show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now.
Or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus.
Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now, much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, Redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light.
And it's called Lawless Planet. Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger. the systematic destruction of our planet.
From activists who vanish in the Amazon to whistleblowers uncovering billion-dollar environmental crimes, these aren't just stories about the environment.
They're real-life thrillers about people caught between powerful forces willing to kill to keep their secrets buried.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest.
Ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime.
To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free or head to amazon.com slash ballin.
That's amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-e-n. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
A Redacted Medical Mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
Listen now on the Medical Mysteries or Redacted feeds, or search A Redacted Medical Mystery wherever you get your podcasts.
The next and final story of today's episode is called The Pier.
At around 5.20 p.m. on August 31st, 2007, a young couple stepped onto the beautiful sand of Yelpo Beach, which is located at the very southern tip of South Korea.
The couple grabbed each other's hands and smiled in excitement as they looked out on the water and saw all these fishing boats that dotted the horizon, and then behind them were all these beautiful mountains.
I mean, this was a spectacular place. They couldn't believe that a place so gorgeous and so remote was located only a one-hour train ride away from the busy city where they went to college.
The couple's names were Kim and Choo. Kim was 21 years old, and he was an athlete and a very dedicated student.
And Choo, she was 20 years old and also very studious, but maybe unlike Kim, she was a bit more reserved and shy.
In fact, Kim was Choo's very first serious boyfriend, and she absolutely adored him.
And in fact, this was going to be the couple's kind of big first trip that they would take together.
It was a Friday, and Kim and Choo planned to spend the entire weekend exploring this place called Yelpo Beach.
Yelpo Beach is located right against this quaint little fishing village, and it's famous for its beautiful silver-colored sand.
In fact, the beach is so famous, lots of people come out here and just camp out on the beach, because it's just so beautiful.
There's also a very busy open air seafood market right nearby, which is really cool because all the fishermen come in and literally offload their catch right onto the table and they sell it to people coming by.
And also up in the mountains, you could see these beautiful bright green crops, which were tea plantations that made the air in Yelpo Beach kind of floral and sweet smelling.
But before Kim and Choo began exploring all the kind of main tourist attractions, they wanted to go check out the fishing pier, which was not really a touristy attraction.
It was just a regular fishing pier. But, you know, Kim and Choo had been on this hour-long train ride and they wanted to stretch their legs and the sun was starting to go down.
And so they figured they could walk out on the pier, have a beautiful view of the water, then watch the sunset.
And then after that, they could go kind of explore the main areas.
And so Kim and Choo, still holding hands, began walking on the silver sandy beach in the direction of this fishing pier off in the distance.
And as they were walking, Choo pulled out her camera and was taking all these pictures.
But then at some point, Kim, who again is holding Choo's hand, he just abruptly stops and kind of squints his eyes and looks off in the distance towards the fishing pier.
And Choo, she puts her camera down and asks Kim, you know, what's going on?
But Choo, without even saying anything to her, just raises his hand and points.
And then seconds later, Kim and Choo were running down the beach.
The next day, Choo was supposed to call her mother and check in about how the trip was going so far, but she never did.
And so her mother eventually tried calling Choo later in the day, but it went straight to voicemail.
And then also when Choo's mother called Kim, Kim was also not answering his phone.
And so by the end of this day, when Kim and Choo's parents had not heard from their child, they did not wait for any more information.
This was so uncharacteristic of Kim and Choo, who were always good about checking in and letting their family know what they were doing, that the parents, they just immediately went to the police and filed missing person reports. police would launch an investigation very quickly but they didn't have much to go on all they knew was two adults were not answering their phone but that was it and so they started by trying to locate kim and chu's phones but neither phone was giving off a signal so they couldn't find them and so next the police went to yelpo beach and began talking to people who were there on the day that kim and chu were to ask them if they had noticed anything funny if they had seen the couple you know did you notice them fighting were they talking to anyone unusual i mean anything But nobody remembered anything out of the ordinary.
And the few people who had seen Kim and Choo on the day they were at Yelpo Beach, they said they seemed like a very happy, normal couple that were not fighting at all and were just enjoying their time in Yelpo Beach.
And so over the course of that weekend, the police tried everything they could to try to locate Kim and Choo and figure out what happened.
But they really made no progress whatsoever.
And Kim and Choo never checked in by the end of that weekend.
But everything would change on that Monday, September 3rd.
On that day, a fisherman spotted a body floating in the water near Yalpo Beach, and it was Chu's body.
And then two days after that, on September 5th, Kim's body washed up at a dock at a nearby fishing village.
Both Kim and Chu were totally unrecognizable after being submerged in water for as long as they had been.
Autopsies would show that Kim and Choo also had lots of bone fractures, but it wasn't clear if they were beaten by someone or something and that's what caused the fractures, or if they were just a product of being in the water for so long and smashing into rocks and boats and that kind of thing.
But the police thought, you know, this looks like there could be foul play involved.
You know, maybe they were murdered. And so the police went back and began scouring all the footage from all the cameras at Yalpo Beach to see if maybe they could find some clip that would show what happened to this couple.
And eventually, one of the detectives who was looking through all this footage found something really interesting.
He found a very short clip of the couple over at that fishing pier that they had been walking towards.
However, they were not up on the fishing pier like you would expect.
They were below the fishing pier on the sand.
And they were kind of standing next to each other, holding each other close.
And there was nobody else around them. It was like this totally weird thing.
Now, as weird as this was, because it made no sense for them to be below the fishing pier, there didn't appear to be any hazards or other people or anything near them.
It was like they just chose to be under there for some reason.
But regardless, the police would actually use this video clip to close the case.
The police would say that, you know, based on this clip, it appears that this was the final moment of the couple, you know, underneath this pier.
And then something happened, either an accident, they might have fallen in the water or something and they drowned.
Or maybe, you know, this couple elected to take their lives together.
And while Kim and Choo's families vehemently disagreed with the police assessment, there was nothing they could do.
The case was now closed. Nobody was trying to figure out what happened to Kim and Choo.
That is until four weeks later on September 26th, 2007, when two more bodies, two young women washed up on shore right around the same area where Kim and Chu had.
The two young women had a lot of similarities to Kim and Choo.
They were in their early 20s, they were tourists at Yalpo Beach, and their autopsies discovered that they had several bone fractures.
And so this was enough for the police to launch a much bigger investigation into what was going on at Yalpo Beach, which included reopening the Kim and Choo case.
And so a detective was assigned to go back through all the evidence in the Kim and Chu case and kind of re-examine it.
And so this detective did look through all these pictures and he would find one picture that broke the case wide open.
Back on the night that Kim and Choo were at Yelpo Beach and they began walking towards the fishing pier, Kim had abruptly stopped and raised his finger and pointed at something and then seconds later he and Choo were running in that direction.
Well, what Kim had spotted was a fisherman who was standing below the fishing pier and he was very obviously making his way over to his fishing boat to go back out on the water.
And Kim just felt like it would be really cool to go ask that fisherman if they could join him and go out on the water with him on his fishing boat to get a view of Yalpo Beach that way.
And Chu, when she heard this idea, thought it was a great idea.
And the two of them ran to the pier to try to catch this fisherman before he took off.
And so that was why there was footage of the couple standing underneath the fishing pier.
They were actually talking to this fisherman who could not be seen in frame.
The fisherman was a 70-year-old man named Woo Joon-Gwen, and he made his living selling octopus.
And at first, when Kim and Chu approached Woo and asked to go with him on his boat, he said, no, I don't want you to come with me.
But Kim and Chu seemed really desperate to go out with him, and finally he relented and said, okay, you can tag along.
Wu was very thin and short, but he had been working on fishing boats since he was a child, and so despite his appearance of being this kind of small, frail guy, he was actually really physically strong.
And despite Wu's kind of harmless-seeming exterior, inside, Wu was a very, very disturbed person.
The reason Woo did not want to bring Kim and Choo with him out on this boat is he knew he would have an urge that he would not be able to control.
But when they kept begging him over and over again to go with him, he finally just accepted that this was going to happen.
He allowed them on his boat, he brought them out onto the water, and sure enough, he would act on those urges.
Once Woo's boat was out on the water far away from the beach, he immediately pushed Kim overboard, and so Kim falls into the water, and then Woo grabbed this long metal grappling hook and began beating Kim in the water on his face, his arms, his hands, as Kim desperately tried to climb back in the boat.
And eventually, Woo literally beat Kim to death.
And at the same time, Chu is on this boat watching this happening.
And so after her boyfriend has been beaten to death, Wu turns on Chu and does the same thing to her.
He chucks her overboard and beats her until she dies from this grappling hook.
And then afterward, Wu just got back behind the wheel, putted back to shore, and sold his octopus like nothing had happened.
And Woo very likely would have gotten away with these first two murders, except four weeks later, it just so happened that two more tourists, those two young women, just happened to ask Woo the same question.
Can we go out with you on your boat? And he would kill them the same way he killed Kim and Chu.
Except one of those two young women, while they were out on the water in his boat before they were attacked, she sensed something was wrong and she sent a text message saying she was in trouble on a boat.
And when the police found these two women's bodies and found that text message, they immediately searched the registry that listed all the boats that had been out on the water near Yelpo Beach that day.
And because it was a holiday, there was nobody out on the water except for one boat.
That boat was Wu's boat. And this is where that photo the detective found on Chu's camera roll, when finally somebody looked through the photos, that's where that photo comes into play.
The last picture that Chu took is of Wu.
Wu is right in front of her, he's piloting the boat out into the open ocean, and Chu just took a picture of him, not knowing what was actually happening.
That this guy was driving her out to her death.
Ultimately, Woo would be convicted of the murders, even though he didn't really offer up any clear explanation as to why he killed these people.
He just kind of acted on these urges, so to speak.
And he would be sentenced to death. And he would become the oldest death row inmate in South Korea.
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