Husband of slain student not buying insanity plea

LAFAYETTE -- The husband of a Purdue University graduate student who was murdered says he doubts the former doctoral student who pleaded guilty to the crime is mentally ill.\nZhan Yin, 27, of China pleaded guilty but mentally ill to two counts of murder and other charges for the deaths last year of Yeunkyung Woo, 31, and her sister Hyo Kyung Woo, 29, both of South Korea.\nHe could have faced the death penalty if he had been found guilty at trial. A judge has taken the plea agreement under advisement pending a June 28 sentencing hearing.\nHyuk Jong Lee, husband of the late Yeunkyung Woo, told the Journal and Courier in an e-mail from South Korea that he had serious reservations before ultimately agreeing with plea agreement that spared Yin from the death penalty.\nBut Lee said in the e-mail that he remained skeptical of Yin's mental state.\n"He planned it for quite a long time," Lee wrote. "I believe what he did was too cruel and intentional to attribute it to mental illness. How could he plan in details and rationally if he was paranoid?"\nYin confessed that he went to the West Lafayette campus apartment of Yeunkyung Woo Aug. 2 intending to kill her because he was under the delusion that she and other students meant to harm him.\nWhen Woo's sister answered the door, he hit her in the head with a hammer and stabbed her to death, then later did the same to Yeunkyung Woo when she returned home.\nYin had first told investigators that the murders stemmed from an incident of road rage.\nLee said he was angered by a letter published in Saturday's Journal and Courier from Yin's mother, Anning Wei. She spoke highly of Yin while apologizing to the victims' families.\nWei described a history of mental illness in their family, and recounted a brain injury that Yin suffered during a bicycle accident when he was 8.\n"All these past tragedies brought up the new one today," she wrote. "Because of that, he destroyed these otherwise happy families, and he himself was the victim of this tragedy as well."\nThose words did not sit well with Lee.\n"How could she say he is also a victim?" Lee asked. "Nonsense."\nLee said he and other members of the victims' family still do not believe Yin deserves to live. But they reluctantly approved the plea agreement.\n"I came to think that letting him live in the U.S. (prisons) forever while feeling regret would give him greater pains than a death penalty," Lee said. "To die is too easy to him"