My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 342

“Easy, honestly.”

Even just advertising herself as a woman online would attract plenty of guys, all trying to sweet-talk her into a one-night stand. These fleeting moments of flattery would be enough for them to project the image of a kind man onto the person behind the profile.

“You said there’s no way to identify the deceased?”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s a high probability they came from outside the area.”

If they were lured out through an app, they wouldn’t be local, making it nearly impossible to identify them no matter how hard we try.

Korean police tend to dismiss adult male disappearances as runaways, so they likely wouldn’t be registered as missing persons.

Ironically, even the police records from that time state, ‘Subject not on the missing persons list.’ This alone suggests they didn’t even bother checking the runaway list.

The problem is that even if the victim’s family reports them missing, the police often classify it as a runaway and shelve the case.

“There’s so much to look into.”

Song Pil-man sighed deeply at that. It’s true that a surprising number of men disappear, whether officially missing or simply running away.

Moreover, if they met through an app, the radius of possibilities expands even further.

“It’s not hopeless, though.”

“There’s a way?”

“Yes.”

There’s always a way. It’s just that the police don’t know it.

“We should start by looking at the parking lots.”

Park Do-joon’s unexpected statement left Song Pil-man staring blankly.

Dating apps—euphemistically called dating apps, but really just tools to scam guys looking for one-night stands. The method is simple: men have to pay to send messages to women they like, while women are free.

But these ‘women’ are mostly employees of the scammers. They act like they’re nearby or send suggestive photos to keep the conversation going, prompting the other party to make payments.

It’s blatant fraud, but the police often turn a blind eye. The problem is that these apps are full of men desperate to hook up with women, and we have no way of knowing which app they used. Last time, Park Do-joon managed to identify it by searching the victim’s phone, but now we can’t even identify the victim.

In that situation, Park Do-joon came up with a simple solution.

“Vehicles? I never would have thought of that.”

To search for impounded vehicles. It’s not impossible to track down towed vehicles or long-term abandoned vehicles in parking lots.

“It’s natural to take your car on a date.”

If you meet someone you like and need to move locations, women will ditch you if you say, ‘Let’s take the bus together.’

It’s not like they’re looking for a marriage partner; they just want a one-night stand. But even then, no woman wants to meet a guy who doesn’t have a car.

“Besides, Cheongdam-dong [an affluent neighborhood in Seoul] doesn’t have many parking lots.”

It’s an affluent neighborhood, and parking is ridiculously expensive. Plus, Cheongdam-dong is a specially managed area in Seoul, so towing happens frequently.

If it’s a four-year-old case, what happened to the car?

“It would have been towed and then abandoned.”

How are long-term abandoned vehicles handled? It depends on two situations. One is when it’s left in a paid parking lot. Paid parking lots aren’t under government jurisdiction, so individuals have to handle it themselves.

“But this doesn’t seem like a paid parking lot case.”

If it were a paid parking lot, there would have already been a lawsuit for unpaid parking fees, which wouldn’t have escaped the police’s radar. Especially not in Cheongdam-dong.

Paid parking lots in Cheongdam-dong are extremely limited and outrageously expensive.

Cheongdam-dong is the kind of place that serves canned ham and a few fried eggs as a bar snack and charges 80,000 won [approximately $60 USD]. If it had been parked long-term somewhere, it would have been dealt with somehow.

“The other possibility is that it was parked on the street and got towed.”

“You think it was towed?”

“That’s what I think.”

If it was parked on the street, there are two possibilities: it was left long-term or it was towed. But in Cheongdam-dong, long-term parking is practically impossible. The area is too well-managed.

It was probably towed, and the city would have stored it before getting approval to sell it or scrap it.

“The problem is that public officials don’t always do their jobs.”

“That’s true. You see a lot of abandoned cars in every neighborhood, right?”

“Exactly.”

Whether they scrap it or sell it, the government officials are the ones who get a headache if the car owner shows up later, demanding compensation and threatening a lawsuit.

In reality, there are cars that have been sitting on the street for six or seven years, and even if you report it to the city, they often don’t remove it. And even if they do, it’s often just moved from the street to a parking lot.

“You’re saying we should look for vehicles abandoned four years ago?”

Song Pil-man exclaimed. He hadn’t thought of that.

“Yes, there won’t be many vehicles parked for more than four years. And there’s something else possible too.”

“Something else?”

“If my profiling is correct, there’s likely more than one abandoned vehicle.”

Park Do-joon’s words made Song Pil-man and Lee Ji-soo’s faces stiffen.

“There are abandoned vehicles.”

There are quite a few vehicles abandoned since four years ago. A total of 40 abandoned vehicles.

“I didn’t think there would be this many.”

“It’s Cheongdam.”

“Are they all dead?”

“I don’t think so. Cheongdam is an expensive neighborhood. In other words, there are many people who handle large sums of money, like those running businesses.”

“Ah!”

If a business fails and they have to run away in the night, they can’t take their vehicles with them. They might have been seized, or driving the car around could reveal their location.

“But we should be able to narrow it down.”

“How?”

“The perpetrator seems to be targeting victims in their 20s and 30s.”

The autopsy records confirmed this, stating the victims were in their mid-20s to early 30s.

“It’s unlikely someone in that age range would have a failed business, so we can easily find the car owners by checking the vehicle registration.”

Comparing that list with missing persons reports should make it easier to identify the victims.

“I just hope the number isn’t too high.”

But Park Do-joon had a feeling that wouldn’t be the case.

# The Missing Men

People live with many misconceptions. Sometimes they misunderstand common sayings, or they believe genuinely flawed statistics.

In criminology, one of the most common misconceptions is that ‘women don’t commit violent crimes’ and ‘women are mostly the victims of violent crimes.’

“But both are wrong.”

“That’s true.”

Women do commit violent crimes. It’s not that women are too kind to commit violent crimes; it’s that most women are overpowered early on when attempting a violent crime, so they don’t get the chance to commit it.

For example, if a woman tries to attack someone with a knife, most men can subdue her the moment they realize it.

So it’s not that they can’t commit violent crimes, but that they are subdued before they can. In fact, when women overpower their victims through alcohol or drugs, there are a significant number of dismemberment killings or brutal revenge killings.

The misconception that women are mostly victims is also wrong. Statistics actually show that men are slightly more often the victims of violent crimes than women.

This is because women run away, while men stand and fight. As a result, the survival rate is inherently lower for men.

“It’s the same with these cases.”

Certainly, cannibals are more often men, but women are not absent.

“There are seven suspicious vehicles.”

Song Pil-man’s voice was trembling. This was because, based on the victim characteristics Park Do-joon had identified—car owners in their 20s and 30s, abandoned vehicles, and missing persons reports—seven vehicles had been identified.

And that meant that, in the worst-case scenario, there could be seven victims.

“There may be more victims than that.”

“More?”

“Yes, if the meetings didn’t only happen in this area, they could have been towed to other areas.”

There are more than one or two storage facilities that tow vehicles impounded in Seoul. Although this location is the primary suspect, we can’t rule out the possibility that they left their car elsewhere and took a taxi here.

“And there are paid parking lots too. Right, Detective Song?”

“Right. If it’s a paid parking lot, it wouldn’t show up in this investigation.”

If they parked in a paid parking lot, the owner or manager of the parking lot would try to investigate the contact information or seize or sell the vehicle through a lawsuit.

If a lawsuit is filed, the family would naturally find out, and they would likely have retrieved the vehicle.

“Realistically, we can’t track those vehicles from here.”

Of course, even if the families inform the police of these facts, would the police really investigate properly?

‘Of course not.’

It’s common practice for the police not to investigate missing adult men. Even if a vehicle has been abandoned for a long time, it’s not direct evidence of murder, so the police will likely just take the report and not investigate further.

“Still, thanks to you, we’ve roughly identified the perpetrator’s age.”

The perpetrator is in their 20s or 30s, likely abused at home, living alone, but with a lot of family wealth, according to Park Do-joon’s prediction.

“Haa~.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I just wish other police officers would help with this.”

“They all refused?”

“It’s a cold case, after all.”

Cheongdam-dong is an expensive neighborhood, and most of the complainants are wealthy. As a result, the police are too busy appeasing the wealthy complainants who are causing a fuss right now, so they’ve drawn a line and said they don’t have the manpower to invest in unsolved cases that no one cares about anymore.

“It would be nice if we could listen together and solve it together.”

“Well, the reality in Korea isn’t that easy.”

Prioritizing immediate problems over long-term solutions is unavoidable.

“We have to do it ourselves, at least.”

“That’s true, but it’s too sudden.”

Song Pil-man scratched his head with the pen he had been using to take notes.

“There are many women in their 20s and 30s living alone, but still…”

There are quite a few people living alone around that age. But the problem is the other part.

“But having a lot of wealth… that’s really…”

“To be precise, they probably don’t live in apartments. They’re more likely to live in houses, especially in their own homes.”