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Posted in: Uncategorized by Tony on October 14, 2008
Murdered Korean backpacker’s body found
By GILES BROWN - The Press | Wednesday, 15 October 2008
JAE HYEON KIM: Disappeared five years ago.
Police have found the body of missing South Korean backpacker Jae Hyeon Kim at a remote spot on the West Coast.
The announcement was made during a depositions hearing at the Greymouth District Court regarding the murder of Jae Hyeon Kim.
Investigation head Detective Inspector John Winter said police hoped to recover Mr Kim’s body in the Four Mile River area near Charleston today.
It is understood the body has now been found.
Kim, a 25-year-old South Korean backpacker, disappeared in 2003 and a man yesterday pleaded guilty to murdering him and mutilating his body.
A 31-year-old pleaded guilty to the murder at a depositions hearing in the Greymouth District Court and is due to be sentenced in Wellington on December 5.
A third man on Monday admitted there is a prima facie case against him, but the charge and other details against him have been suppressed.
NAZI BELIEFS
Yesterday the depositions hearing for Shannon Brent Flewellen, 29, also heard from witnesses that he believed in the supremacy of the Aryan race and used to discuss Adolf Hitler and World War 2.
Flewellen is jointly charged with the murder, along with the 31-year-old man whose name is suppressed.
On Monday, Crown prosecutor Chris Lange alleged that Flewellen and the other man picked up Kim, 25, on the road from Westport to Greymouth between September 29 and October 22, 2003.
Lange said they stopped the car near the township of Four Mile Bridge and pretended it needed a push to get it going. As the economics student pushed, Flewellen allegedly had put him in a choker hold from behind and strangled him while his accomplice held his arms.
Yesterday, the court heard from two former associates of Flewellen.
One said Flewellen had told her how he and the co-accused had picked up an Asian man on a West Coast road and killed him in 2003.
Flewellen allegedly said he placed his boot across the man’s throat and cut off his head with a spade.
“He was relaxed, like he was telling us he had changed his socks or something,” she said.
The witness also said a backpack and a pair of tramping boots had been kept in a shed belonging to Flewellen. He had told her they belonged to the Asian man they killed. She also recalled seeing Flewellen burning clothing and documents which he told her had belonged to the same man. At the time she had been too scared to tell the police and had not wanted to believe Flewellen, whom she described as a “spinner”.
“You just didn’t know what to believe from Shannon. He talked crap,” she said.
A second witness said she had noticed a change in the way Flewellen presented himself during 2003.
He had “cut his hair down to the skin”, changed a tattoo on his body and shaved his eyebrows. They had discussed skinhead music and books.
When asked what aspects were discussed, the witness said: “You know, Hitler, the war.”
This involved a “belief in the Aryan race and keeping things pure”.
She said Flewellen mentioned the man they killed was due to leave New Zealand at the end of the year.
Kim’s visa was due to expire in December 2003.