Series Review: "The Raincoat Killer: Chasing a Predator in Korea" (2021).

From Netflix comes The Raincoat Killer: Chasing a Predator in Korea. This South Korean documentary series directed by John Choi and Rob Sixsmith. In the early 2000s, Yoo Young-chul hammered his victims to death and cast fear across Seoul. This docu-series recounts the hunt for a prolific killer.

From September to November 2003, the South Korean serial killer, sex offender, and self-confessed cannibal, Yoo Young-chul (유영철), killed several wealthy senior citizens by breaking into their houses and bludgeoning them with a hammer. To cover his tracks, Yoo made the scenes of his crime look like a robbery-homicide took place. However, no money was taken, which confused the police investigators. When the investigation started to intensify, Yoo switched to targeting female masseuses. From March 2004 onwards, Yoo called prostitutes to his residence in western Seoul and bludgeoned them after having sex with them. His prostitute victims were dismembered and mutilated to hinder their identification. They were buried in the mountains surrounding the city. Police recovered eleven bodies from the mountain behind Bongwon Temple after Yoo's arrest. On July 15, 2004, Yoo was taken into custody and confessed to murdering as many as nineteen people initially, specifically targeting affluent senior citizens and masseuses. On July 18, 2004, he admitted to an additional murder: the killing of a forty-four-year-old male street vendor. Yoo eventually confessed to killing twenty-six individuals the next day, several days after his arrest, although no details were given. The list of purported victims included several individuals that did not match his prior pattern of wealthy seniors or masseuses. Friends of two of the masseuse victims, whose bodies had been recovered, claimed they were not involved in massage therapy, meaning that Yoo could have other, unreported victims. Although the "Rainy Thursday" murderer was active contemporaneously starting in April 2004, stabbing multiple women late at night in southwest Seoul, police were unable to link Yoo to those murders. Several days later, Yoo also confessed to killing a young woman (a worker in a clothing store) on 6 February 2004 in Imun-dong after he suspected her of being a prostitute. Yoo had approached her for questioning by pretending to be a police officer. Approximately a month after his arrest, Yoo confessed to eating the flesh of his victims, although no evidence to prove this was available. After he admitted to the murders of multiple people, mostly prostitutes and wealthy old men, the Seoul Central District Court convicted him of twenty murders. One case was dismissed on a technicality: this case from Yimoon-dong was committed by another serial killer, Jeong Nam-gyu. Yoo burned three and mutilated at least eleven of his victims, and admitted that he ate the livers of some of them. Yoo is currently detained at the Seoul Detention Center.

Disturbing but not salacious, the series does a good job of showing how hard the Seoul Metropolitan Police went into finding Yoo Young-chul, whose methodology was all over the place, and thus more difficult to profile.

Simon says The Raincoat Killer: Chasing a Predator in Korea receives: