A police officer who said he had spoken by phone with a missing woman has been found to have lied. At the time of the call he described, the woman was already dead.
The Jeju Provincial Police Agency said on the 27th that Sergeant A, who was arrested on charges of falsely closing a missing-person case, was summoned to the agency for intensive questioning that day, following the arrest on the 25th. Sergeant A had maintained that he spoke directly with Jang Mi-ran, 37, who was reported missing on May 15. But an autopsy on Jang's body estimated that she had died around the early hours of the 13th, before the missing-person report was filed.
No Call Records, No Credibility
Sergeant A has not backed down from his claim that he spoke with Jang, even after the autopsy findings were released, according to police. Yet no trace of any call between the two was found on either of their mobile phones.
Cornered, Sergeant A changed his account and denied the charges, saying he had made a safety-check call but could not remember which communication device he used.
Police searched every incoming and outgoing communication device available in his work environment at the time, as he had described, but no call records have turned up so far. Investigators are also considering bringing in a profiler to determine his motive.
The falsehoods did not end there. As soon as he closed the case, Sergeant A deleted the entries on Jang from the management list of the missing-person profiling system and entered a code indicating she had died in a traffic accident. In other words, while telling investigators he had confirmed her safety by phone, he had recorded her in the system as already dead.
Repeatedly Delayed Summons Led to Emergency Arrest
Ko Pyung-gi, commissioner of the Jeju Provincial Police Agency, told reporters after a command meeting that day that Sergeant A had repeatedly put off appearing for police questioning even after he was booked on the 14th, and that he was arrested on an emergency basis on the 22nd, the day a man in his 60s was found dead.
The commissioner added that because Sergeant A immediately closed the first missing-person report on Jang in May, senior officers at the time were never informed that Jang had gone missing at all.
Sergeant A was arrested on charges of falsely closing the first missing-person report on Jang on May 15 and of falsely closing a missing-person report on a man in his 60s on the 2nd of last month.
