Tuesday, April 29, 2008

'I'll kill everybody. I'll kill myself 'Slain woman had told police she was afraid of her husband

VICTORIA -- In a haunting videotape played in a Victoria courtroom yesterday, one of the victims of a multiple murder-suicide in Oak Bay said just a month before her death that she feared her husband would kill her and her family if she persisted in pursuing a divorce.

"I'll kill everybody. I'll kill myself," Sunny Park, 32, told police that her husband warned her he'd do if she left him. Asked why he would do that, she said: "Because there is no point for him to live without me."

Park's fears became reality last Sept. 4 when Peter Lee, 38, stabbed to death Park, their six-year-old son Christian and her parents, Kum Lea Chun, 59, and Moon Kyu Park, 66, before turning the 10-centimetre double-bladed knife on himself in their million-dollar home.

The videotape was played yesterday in the first day of a coroner's inquest into the grisly murders. The inquest was called just days after the murder-suicide amid mounting criticism of the province's handling of domestic-abuse cases.

Lee was on bail and under a no-contact order when he killed his family.

Police testimony and Park's videotaped interview portrayed Lee as an abusive, jealous man who carried knives in his jacket and car, had once had a gambling problem and was desperate that Park not leave him.

But Lee's sister, Lisa Yi of Coquitlam, described her younger brother as a kind, generous and very funny man.

Lee came to Canada with his three sisters and parents when he was eight. He met Park in 1999 and married her in 2004.

On Aug. 1, 2007, with her nose and forehead bandaged, the diminutive Park told Victoria Det. Isabel Ohman in a taped, hour-long interview that a day earlier her husband had told her to sit in the back, middle seat of their luxury SUV.

As they drove at the speed limit along a major Victoria street, Park told police, Lee asked her repeatedly: "Are you sure there is no hope we will get back together? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?"

"I said, 'No, no, no,'" Park told Ohman. She said Lee asked her one final time if she was certain.

Then he said, "Sorry, Sunny," and veered into a wooden utility pole.

Ohman told the inquest that police believed Lee intentionally drove into the pole to harm or kill his wife.

Park told police she had no doubt that Lee intended to hurt her. And she feared if police let him leave the hospital, he would go to their family home and harm her parents and sister, who was visiting at the time.

Lee, also in a taped interview conducted by police, denied he intentionally tried to hurt his wife.

Park's parents lived with the couple intermittently, as did Park's sister Jane. Park told police that Lee threatened her sister often and told her parents they would have to go back to Korea.

Yi said Park and her parents spoke fluent Korean, but Lee did not.

After the July 31 car crash, Victoria police recommended to the court that Lee not be allowed free on bail because he posed a "serious risk to his wife and family."

Nonetheless, prosecutor Laura Ford did not oppose bail -- her decision was signed off by justice of the peace Delaine Carey -- and Lee was released Aug. 15 with conditions. He was due back in court Sept. 4, the day he and his family were found dead.

James Morton

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

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