Advertise on podcast: Strangeland

STRANGELAND is a new series from audiochuck that is reexamining cases in immigrant neighborhoods. These investigations go where the police couldn’t to uncover the real story behind a headline crime.

On May 5, 2003, Chi Hyon Song, a 30-year-old mother, along with her two-year-old son, and their 56-year-old nanny Eun Sik Min, were all slain, execution-style, in their modest apartment in Koreatown.   LAPD detectives first suspected Song’s husband, but his alibi was air tight. With no other suspects, the case goes cold. That is, until 2008, when a law enforcement DNA database turned up a new connection to the case.

Who is this new suspect that the LAPD has pegged for the brutal Koreatown triple murder? A modest family man from the South Korean countryside who has some dark secrets — over two-and-a-half million of them. Do they add up to a motive for murder?

LAPD detectives take their first crack at their new suspect. However, things just aren’t adding up for the cops — or for Robin Cho. Afterward, Cho leads the police on a wild ride across Los Angeles and exhibits some very suspicious behavior.

LAPD investigators pounce on Cho, interrogating him twice in the same day. After hours of getting nowhere, emotions boil over in the interrogation room. The cops eventually arrest him for murder… but they may have missed their chance to make the case. 

The man dubbed “The Koreatown Killer” heads to trial, and the prosecution presents its case — with no witnesses, no weapon, and no concrete motive. The jury must decide if one piece of evidence is enough to send Robin Cho to Death Row.

After almost eight weeks of trial and deliberations, there’s a verdict. However, though the jury has reached a decision, they don’t seem very confident when it comes to sentencing Robin Cho.

As part of Strangeland’s reinvestigation, Ben and Sharon have been keeping a list that goes way beyond culture clashes and misunderstandings. It shows that the prosecution’s already-tenuous motive for Cho is even less solid than they thought. At the same time, Cho’s behavior doesn’t do him any favors.

It’s courtroom 101: the prosecution’s trying to make a case, the defense is trying to get their client off, and it’s the jury’s job to figure out the truth. But how much of the science that’s presented at court is actually scientific? Ben and Sharon look closely at specific pieces of evidence presented at trial and find out that some of the bedrock assumptions about evidence and crimes… could be wrong. 

Ben and Sharon visit the lab that did the DNA testing that led to Robin Cho’s conviction. While touring the facility, they learn of DNA from the crime scene that’s never been tested.

The results of the new DNA tests are in, with big implications for Robin Cho, Byung Song, and the victims of this crime. So, the question is, will justice be served and how?