GI Flashbacks: The 1967 Private Eugene Taylor Murder Case
1967 is when the first US-South Korea Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was signed which handed over legal jurisdiction of crimes committed by US troops while off duty to the Korean authorities. The most serious case that was first tried in a Korean court involving a US servicemember was the 1967 murder of Chun-ja Kim by Private Eugene D. Taylor. Taylor was a cook assigned to Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry DIvision. Taylor was just days away from completing his tour of duty in Korea when he arrested for the murder of his Korean girlfriend on November 5, 1967.
From the November 27, 1967 edition of the Stars & Stripes.
Before redeploying to the US, Pvt. Taylor decided to go on a drunken bender at his girlfriend’s residence. For some reason during his drunken bender he decided to strangle and kill his Korean girlfriend, Chun-ja Kim that he supposedly had plans to return to Korea to marry. He committed this murder two days before redeploying to the US. This just shows that even back in the 1960’s soldiers at high risk of getting in trouble are those within 30 days of going home. It also shows that the old Korean complaint of GIs committing crimes in Korea and then getting away with them by flying back to the US was also not true back then.
From the February 8, 1968 edition of the Stars & Stripes.
The landlord of the home that Ms. Kim lived at discovered the body in the morning along with Taylor bleeding with a neck wound. He claims that when he woke up and discovered Kim’s dead body that he tried to commit suicide by slashing his neck with a piece of broken glass. It appears he was drunk enough to kill someone else, but not drunk enough to kill himself.
From the March 7, 1968 edition of the Stars & Stripes.
Ultimately Pvt Taylor was convicted of the murder of Ms. Kim and sentenced to 8 years in a Korean prison. It seems like a pretty lenient sentence, but the Korean court took into consideration the mitigating circumstances of him being a soldier deployed to defend Korea and the fact he was drunk. So being drunk back in the 60’s was considered a mitigating circumstance just like it is today in Korean courts.
From the April 11, 1968 edition of the Stars & Stripes.
Taylor’s crime is now long forgotten in the dustbins of USFK history, but he does have the dubious distinction of being the first American servicemember convicted and sentenced for murder in a South Korean court. This case shows that US servicemembers were held accountable for the crimes in Korean courts back then and continue to be held accountable today.
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If you want told know what happened, ask me. I was the jag officer who was tasked with taking Eugene through the trial (so-called), which, among other things, involved the judges consulting astrologers about what the verdict should be.
“involved the judges consulting astrologers”
Sounds like they had a star witness.
@1: So did they actually bring an astrologer into into the courtroom?
I bet the room was full of LEOs.
Sad case all ’round…
I want to hear your story.
Please Taurus more.
Sad story is right. And no, astrologer did not appear in court. Didn’t make much difference who appeared in court, Eugene’s ass was grass from the get-go. Then again, he did it. But the reports don’t tell all of the tale, which, of course, is usually the case with media reports. And in Korea in 1967, one might say the media was, shall we say, a bit unsophisticated.
But then, Eugenes case was not as eye opening as the morning I saw ROK officers toss an old Korean guy, who had been hit by an ROK jeep, off the bridge over the Imjin because he was holding them up.
There were a few more GI murder cases under Korean jurisdiction after Taylor’s:
H.K. Smallwood, charged with murdering a prostitute on 2-27-68.
“Richard D. Steet” (name from hangul sources [newspapers], actual name unknown), charged with setting a fire at his girlfriend’s house that killed a child on 4-26-68.
Frederick H. Bassett, charged with murdering Choi Kyung-hee on 1-12-69
Jack G. Abercrombie, charged with murdering a prostitute in May 1969.
James W. Walters and John W. Blount Jr., charged with murdering an alleged narcotics peddler and his wife on 3-4-70.
Stephen Bowerman, charged with murdering two women, one on June 12, 1977, and the other on July 13, 1977.