Murder Trial Focuses on Alleged Father-Son Conspiracy

UPDATED: Not guilty verdict in murder trial

A few years after he moved to the United States from Korea, Ho Young Jun moved in with his elderly uncle, who taught the teenager how to fish, drive a car and open a bank account. 

Now prosecutors allege that, as an adult, the young man conspired with his father to murder his uncle, Kwang Sup Hur, of Dale City, in order to cash in on a $1 million insurance policy. His trial on charges of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder opened Monday.

"Sometimes when morality and decency butt up against greed, greed wins. And on , greed won," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney James Willett said, during opening arguments. 

Murder for money?

Ho Young Jun's father, Jung Min Jun, 59, pleaded guilty in November to strangling Hur. In February, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. 

But Willett contends that Ho Young Jun, plagued by years of financial troubles, wanted to cash in on Hur's life insurance policy—which Ho Young Jun owned. Willett argued that Ho Young Jun plotted with his father to kill Hur.

"Mr. Hur, elderly gentleman that he was, wasn't cooperating by dying," Willett said. 

'No son should pay for the acts of his father'

Defense attorney Olaun Simmons argued that Ho Young Jun had taken out an insurance policy with the intent to sell it after a few years. He said that Ho Young Jun had taken out another policy on Hur just a few years before the fatal attack, and sold it for a sizable profit. 

"He's a 28-year-old man who had a business idea. He wanted to make money by selling an insurance policy," Simmons said. 

"No son should pay for the acts of his father," he added. 

Much of the evidence and testimony prosecutors presented Monday dealt with Jung Min Jun's role in the murder, and his wife's subsequent attempts to cover it up. Jung Ok Jun pleaded guilty last year to obstruction of justice.

Victim 'fought with everything he had' during attack

Jung Min Jun made two trips from New York City to Hur's residence at the River Run Senior Apartments in Dale City within the space of a week in 2011. A taxi driver testified that on the first trip, Jung Min Jun stayed at the residence for just a short while. He then returned to the vehicle because Hur wasn't home. 

The cab driver brought Jung Min Jun back again on Sept. 1, the day that he killed Hur. 

An autopsy suggests that Jung Min Jun pulled a thin cord tightly around the man's neck, and pulled as the man struggled to release himself. At 5'4", and 105 pounds, the frail Hur never stood a chance. 

"Given his age, his physical stature, I believe he fought with everything he had," Shane Chittenden, an assistant chief medical examiner for the state of Virginia, testified Monday. 

Jung Min Jun then returned to New York, where his wife, Jung Ok Jun, paid the taxi driver $1,000 for the two trips, according to testimony from the driver, Hyung Koo Chin. 

"She was telling me that if anybody contacted me, to just tell them I don't know anything about that," Chin said on the stand, speaking through an interpreter. "I felt kind of strange about it, and I asked her why. She said, 'Just tell them you don't know anything.'" 

Now a Prince William County jury must decide whether Ho Young Jun was just a young man with a business idea gone horribly wrong—or a conspirator with his father to kill Hur.

Read more tomorrow: Kwang Sup Hur's killer testifies that his son had nothing to do with the crime.