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양회정 "유병언 회장 밝은색 점퍼 입는다.. 소주병 이상" 주진우 기자 인터뷰서

July 30, 2014 - 18:07 By 신용배

유병언(73) 전 세모그룹 회장의 운전기사로 알려진 양회정씨가 29일 검찰에 자수하기 전날밤 시사IN 주진우 기자와의 인터뷰에서 유병언 전 회장의 최후 행적과 심경 등을 털어놔 화제가 되고 있다.

양회정씨는 자신을 금수원 옆에 있는 오곡리 별장 및 차량 관리인이라 소개하며, 유병언 전 회장과는 5월24일을 끝으로 소식이 끊어졌다, 돈의 행방은 듣도보도 못했다, 유 전 회장이 자살할 가능성은 절대 없다는 등의 사실을 털어놨다.

양회정씨는 시사IN과의 인터뷰에서 자신은 유병언 전 회장의 차량 벤틀리를 관리해왔다며 5월3일 저녁부터 유병언 전 회장, 김엄마, 이재옥 헤마토센트릭라이트 이사장, 신윤아씨, 추모씨 등과 순천 등지에서 도피 생활을 시작했다고 밝혔다.

그러다 5월24일, 별장에 유 전 회장과 신윤아씨를 남겨두고 헤어져 소망연수원으로 와 잠이 들었을 때 낯선 인기척이 느껴졌고, 그 길로 무작정 고속도로를 타고 동서가 있는 전주로 향했다, 동서에게 유 회장을 모시러가자고 했다가 포기한 이후 안성으로 차를 돌렸고, 지금까지 금수원에 있었다고 말했다. 유 회장과는 5월24일 본 것이 마지막이었던 셈이다.

양회정씨는 돈 가방의 존재에 대해선 "돈을 본 적도 없고 생각도 못했다. 문고리도 만들고 들어와서 해보시라고 이야기하니 들어오셨다. 둘이 들어갔다. 가방이 있는 거다. 뭘로 좀 덮어 놓아라 하시더라. 그때 가방 있는 걸 처음 봤다. 지저분했던 2층 거기에 오래된 모기장 있던 그 자리에 모기장만 덮어놓았다."며 존재 자체를 모르는 것 같았다.

유병언 회장의 차림새에 대해 그는 "평소 벙거지가 아닌 빵모자를 썼다"고 말했고, 평소 밝은 색을 잘 입고, 청색이나 어두운 색은 입지 않는다"고 설명했다. 신발은 유병언씨의 것이 맞다고 확인했다.

그러나 시신의 주변에서 소주병이 발견된 데 대해선 이상하다며 이의를 제기했고, 겨울 잠바를 입고 있으면 방수되는데 저체온증이라는 게 납득이 안 간다며 의아해했다. (onlinenews@heraldcorp.com)



<관련 영문 뉴스>

Opposition party raises doubt over Yoo’s body


Opposition lawmakers visited the state-run forensics service Wednesday to inspect the identification process of the recently discovered body of Yoo Byung-eun, the fugitive owner of sunken ferry Sewol.

The visit by the members of the parliamentary committee on the Sewol probe was prompted by strings of suspicions swirling around Yoo’s body, which include a recent allegation claiming that the body is actually someone else.

“A police official who was present at the scene of the body’s identification told me that judging from the looks, he was ‘certain’ it was not Yoo,” Rep. Park Beom-kye, the spokesperson of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy said Tuesday. While the National Forensics Service said the deceased was 159 centimeters tall, the corpse was only 150 centimeters tall, he added.

“It’s also strange that the authorities were able to identify him via a fingerprint sample from his right hand in July, when the hand was supposedly so decayed that it was impossible to obtain a sample in June,” Park said.

Last week the NFS announced that the body of an unidentified man recovered in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province on July 12, was that of the 73-year-old businessman. It added that the postmortem had failed to discover the cause of death, inducing an array of conspiracy theories involving Korea’s most wanted man.

Rep. Park Jie-won of the NPAD even raised allegations that the body in question was actually discovered before the Sewol plunged into the ocean on April 16, leaving over 300 dead or missing. He quoted five residents in the area adjacent to the site where the body was found.

According to a survey by polling agency Real Meter, 57 percent of the people said they did not trust the results announced by the NFS.

Contrary to the rampant conspiracy theories, experts are saying that there is no doubt that the body is that of Yoo.

“The DNA testing shows that the deceased and Yoo Byung-eun’s brother had the same mother, and the fingerprints from his finger matched that on Yoo’s ID card. The dental records from the body also match those of Yoo, who had very unusual records of having 10 gold teeth,” said Pyo Chang-won, a renowned criminal profiler. “There is very little possibility that it (body) is not Yoo, unless it’s an avatar clone of him.”

The evidence that the body is Yoo is overwhelming, said Yoo Seong-ho, a professor of forensic medicine at Seoul National University.

“It’s him. My wife suspects it too, but there is no doubt,” he said. “There are three primary identifiers we use on dead bodies: fingerprint, DNA and dental records. And all three of these identifiers pointed to Yoo.”

Earlier in the day, police officials said the NFS had told them DNA testing on Yoo’s eldest son Dae-kyun -- arrested last week -- confirmed the paternal relationship between him and the dead body.

“Visual examination is not accurate, and neither are testimonies of eyewitnesses. But the DNA testing, you can’t really fake that,” said professor Yoo.

The height disparity mentioned by Rep. Park Beom-kye can be accounted for, he said, as the cited measurement was done with three of the neck bones missing from the corpse. The measurement itself is not 100 percent accurate because the height of the body was estimated using the length of the femur bone.

Science can also explain the mystery of the fingerprint sample suddenly appearing a month after the body’s acquisition.

“When an initially wet body is dried up after time, the ridges in the finger reappears to allow forensic officials to obtain a fingerprint sample,” he said.

According to the professor, this process could have been completed artificially within a day.

“I’m just speculating, but the police must have given up trying to identify the body after one try. The incompetence by the officials coupled with misunderstanding (from the public) is presumed to have led to the conspiracy,” he said.

Some of the blame behind the conspiracy theories should be placed upon the government agencies themselves, Pyo said. Rather than focusing on discovering the truth, they attempted to cover up the misdeeds by those in power.

“A lot of the times, the public had good reason to raise suspicions. The investigators often worked as henchmen for the ones in power, which result in people losing faith in what the state agencies or authorities tell them,” he said.

(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)