7th charged after Korean woman’s body found in trunk, with 1 suspect saying he was a victim too

ATLANTA (AP) — A seventh person has been arrested on murder charges in the death of a South Korean woman whose body was found decaying in the trunk of a car in suburban Atlanta.

Police arrested Mihee Lee, 54, on Wednesday. She’s the mother of three others already accused of murder in the death 33-year-old Sehee Cho, Gwinnett County police said.

Investigators believe Cho moved to the United States from South Korea in July to join a religious organization, known as Soldiers of Christ. The suspects referred to themselves as members of the group, investigators said.

Cho’s body was found Sept. 12, wrapped in a blanket in a car parked outside a popular spa and sauna in Duluth.

Investigators said they believe Cho was held against her will for weeks in the basement of the Lee family’s Lawrenceville home, where Cho was beaten and denied food until her death. Mihee Lee limited the victim’s water intake and prevented her from leaving or seeking medical care while she underwent “religious training,” according to an arrest warrant.

A lawyer one of the other suspects in the case said he was actually a victim of the same kind of torture that Cho was subjected to.

Mihee Lee is charged with felony murder, false imprisonment, tampering with evidence, concealing the death of another and false statements or writings to the government.

Facing charges of felony murder, false imprisonment, tampering with evidence and concealing the death of another are Eric Hyun, 26, of Suwanee; Gawon Lee, 26; Joonho Lee, 26; Joonhyun Lee, 22; Hyunji Lee, 25, and a 15-year-old, all from Lawrenceville.

Those six also face multiple gang-related charges. Georgia’s broad street gang law allows any group of three or more people who engage jointly in criminal activity to be charged as gang members.

Mihee Lee is the mother of Joonhyun Lee, Joonho Lee and and the 15-year-old, police said Wednesday.

No lawyer is listed for Mihee Lee or Gawon Lee in court records. Lawyers for Joonhyun Lee and Hyunji Lee didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Wednesday.

At a bond hearing for Joonho Lee on Wednesday morning, WAGA-TV reports that Gwinnett County Assistant District Attorney Han Chung told a judge that Cho had been dead for nearly a month before her body was discovered. She weighed around 70 pounds (32 kilograms) at her death.

Joonho Lee has no criminal record and is a student at Emory University, and his lawyer, Scott Drake, said by email that he believed Lee met the requirements for bail. Drake said he didn’t have enough information yet about the case to say whether Lee deserved charges including murder.

Police say Hyun parked the car that contained Cho’s body. A lawyer for Hyun, David Boyle, said in a Wednesday statement that the Lees tortured Hyun in the same basement at the same time they were abusing Cho, including sanding skin off his chest to “indoctrinate him into their religious extremism.”

“He was beaten with a belt in his genitals and face until he was knocked unconscious,” Boyle wrote. “He was stripped naked and shot with an airsoft gun all over his body, causing over a hundred wounds.”

The lawyer said Hyun escaped with Cho’s body after he was coerced into wiring tens of thousands of dollars to South Korea and borrowing money to buy a house in Suwanee, another Gwinnett County suburb, intended as a church for the group. Boyle says the Lees also used Hyun’s credit cards to pay for clothes and restaurant meals.

Police said Hyun called a relative after parking the car to take him to a hospital. When he asked the relative to return to the parked car and retrieve a personal item, he discovered the woman’s body in the trunk and called 911, police said.

Hyun wasn’t taken to the Gwinnett County jail until Sept. 24, officials said. Boyle said he was hospitalized until then and is now in the jail’s medical wing.

“If Eric had not escaped from the Lees’ house, he would have also died,” Boyle said. “Eric Hyun is innocent of these charges and I am confident that he will be cleared of these charges once that investigation is complete.”