The first case on the Netflix reality show Crime Scene Zero is titled “Murder in the Abandoned Hospital.” Before going into the details of the case, let’s first understand the rules of the reality show. Five suspects (generally celebrity guests) kickstart an investigation that is headed by a lead detective. At the end of the investigation, once all evidence has been reviewed, the suspects cast their votes on who they believe the real killer is. The one receiving the most votes becomes the chosen accused. Also, the lead detective’s vote is counted as two votes, primarily because of his expertise in the subject matter. Now, if the chosen one is the real murderer, the ones who voted for him get prize money. But if the one who gets the majority of votes isn’t the real killer, then the real murderer gets the entire prize money (which is 10 million won, 2 million won for each suspect). Also, only the real murderer is allowed to lie during the investigation, and the other participants have an obligation to tell the truth. So, let’s figure out what the first case was about and if the participants succeeded in identifying the real murderer.
Spoiler Alert
Who were the suspects in The Abandoned Hospital murder case?
A murder had taken place in the Yeonjidol village and a doctor named Jang Je-in, the director of the local psychiatric hospital, was found dead. The hospital was abandoned in 2013, approximately 5 years ago in the current timeline, and the director had disappeared, and nobody had heard from her after that. Then, in 2018, she came back to the town and apparently tripped off the roof, but instead of falling to the ground, her body got entangled in the wires attached to the exterior wall of the hospital building. But the question was what the director was doing on the terrace of an abandoned hospital. Nobody knew why she’d gone missing, and how she had died. Doctor An, a house call physician; Cousin Jang, the victim’s cousin; Village Head Park; Shaman Park, a local spiritual healer/shaman; and Pretty Boy Kim, a sales representative, were the main suspects in the case. Detective Jang took charge of the investigation and asked everybody to start digging up evidence.
After a thorough search and an elaborate investigation was carried out, the suspects and the detective came to know a lot of things about the intentions of all the participants. Pretty Boy Kim suffered from erotomania, a special condition where the person felt that they were the object of another person’s desire. So even if somebody talked normally to Pretty Boy Kim, he felt that they were flirting with him. That was probably the reason he felt that the victim was in love with him. Village Head Park, back in the day, had been a part of a gang named Dualipa. He had come to the village, taken the identity of another man, and committed a murder or two in the past. In fact, the village head had made a deal with the victim: Jang Je-in conducted illegal frontal lobotomies on her patients to treat them for mental disorders. She sent these patients to work for Village Head Park, who made them work under deplorable circumstances. The victim wanted to prove to the world that her lobotomy technique was a potent cure for mental disorders. One of her patients had survived the procedure and expressed to him that she would present him in front of the world and prove that her methods were not wrong. But before that could happen, Village Head Park killed the patient, as he had gotten to know that the victim was going to expose his real identity too.
Jang Je-in had been fired from her earlier job for that reason, and she later came to Yeonjidol and became a director at the local hospital. Doctor An was an ex-colleague of the victim, and she too was involved in a lot of shady practices. She ran a website called Love Dive, where people who wanted to be euthanized approached her for her services. That’s how the doctor had made a fortune for herself. She had started illegally euthanizing her clients after the local hospital closed, which was why she could afford such a swanky lifestyle, as her rich patients paid whatever amount she asked for help escaping the pain forever. Cousin Jang wanted to buy the hospital land, as he believed that his family had buried gold bars somewhere around that area.
Who did the players vote as the murderer?
Basically everybody had a motive to commit the murder, but Detective Jang and the other suspects hadn’t been able to find any incriminating evidence against Shaman Park. All the detective knew was that Shaman Park was collecting money for the eye treatment of her son, and then she had to spend a chunk of the amount on a case filed against her by the victim. Apparently, the victim didn’t like how Shaman Park earned that money, and she reported her to the authorities. But still, that was not reason enough to conclude that Shaman park was the killer. The detective, together with the suspects, was able to figure out that there was a hidden floor in the abandoned hospital building, where the victim used to conduct her secret operations. It came to be known that, apart from performing lobotomies on her patients, she was also involved in organ trafficking. So the organs of the patients who didn’t survive the experimental procedure were removed and sold on the black market. One startling revelation was made when Shaman Park’s shrine was being searched. The dead body of her younger brother was found under one of the idols. She had mummified it so that it didn’t rot. Nobody knew why she would do such a thing, but obviously it was proof enough that she was up to something. Also, Detective Jang figured out that the mummified corpse was not of Shaman Park’s brother, but of her son. For some unknown reason she had hidden the fact she’d had a child from all the people.
The final voting happened after a detailed examination of all the evidence. Detective Jang and Pretty Boy Kim cast their vote on Shaman Park, i.e., they believed her to be the killer. As per the rules, since Shaman got 3 votes (as stated earlier, the detective’s 1 vote counted as 2), she was put behind bars. According to the rules of the game, if Shaman Park truly turned out to be the killer, then Detective Jang and Pretty Boy Kim were supposed to get 2 million won each. But if they were wrong, the real murderer could claim a staggering 10 million won.
Who Killed Jang Je-In? And Why?
Detective Jang and Pretty Boy Kim were not wrong, as Shaman Park was the killer. Shaman Park and Jang Je-in went to high school together. The victim, who came from an affluent background, bullied Shaman Park and made her life miserable for no reason. In senior year, Shaman Park decided to take revenge on her, and she put a dead mouse in her school bag. Jang Je-in was so scared after seeing the dead rat that she developed a heart condition. As a result, Shaman Park was thrown out of the school, and she knew that even if she’d tried putting forth her arguments, nobody would have listened to her. Shaman Park moved to Seoul after that incident, as she wanted to become financially independent. She fell in love with a guy, and he too treated her in the worst possible manner. Shaman Park got pregnant with his child, and he left her. He told her that she was free to do whatever she wanted with her baby, and he was not going to take any responsibility for it. That same man then fell in love with Jang Je-in, and that was the worst possible thing that could have happened to Shaman Park.
Shaman Park gave birth to a blind baby, and it felt as if the gods were cursing her for no apparent reason. Shaman Park got to know that her son could get his eyesight back, but the operation would cost around 500 million won. She collected that amount, but then Jang Je-in filed a complaint against her, and she was taken into custody. Shaman Park was detained for 10 days, and when she came out, her world had been destroyed by Jang Je-in. Park’s baby was missing, the hospital had shut down, and Jang Je-in had vanished into thin air. In a state of paranoia, Shaman Park figured out that the hospital had a hidden sixth floor, and that’s where she found her son’s dead body. She realized that Jang Je-in had taken her child’s heart since she desperately needed a heart transplant. Shaman Park preserved her son’s dead body, as she wanted to perform the proper ritual to make sure that his spirit made it to the afterlife. Because the child had died such a painful death, it was possible that his spirit turned vengeful and never left the mortal world. Shaman Park needed her child’s heart to perform the proper burial, and so she waited for 5 long years. One day, she realized that Jang Je-in had come back to town and she was staying at a local hotel. Shaman Park bugged her room and came to know that she was going to meet one of her patients named Survivor Han at the same abandoned hospital. Shaman Park left a note at the hotel, pretending to be Survivor Han. She asked Jang Je-in to meet her half an hour early at the same spot.
Once Jang Je-in reached the hidden floor, Shaman Park attacked her. She intended to kill her there, but before she could do that, Jang Je-in tripped from the sixth floor, and instead of her body falling to the ground, it got entangled in the wires. Still, Shaman Park felt that she would have to take her heart once she was buried. But obviously that opportunity did not come to her, as she was caught by Detective Jang and Pretty Boy Kim.
