Pok Yeo Kim, a 52-year-old Korean woman, was killed in Atlanta on August 1, 1997, in what online accounts describe as a robbery at her husband’s store. She was working behind the counter that afternoon when the gunman came in, shot her, and took money from the register, leaving behind a case that quickly stood out because the attack had been caught on surveillance video.
In the first days after the killing, the image of the suspect became one of the most important pieces of evidence, giving investigators and the public a face to focus on while the city was still reeling from the violence.
The case did not remain open for long. Online sources say the suspect was Charles Lee Duffy, and that he was identified after the surveillance images were broadcast and recognized by his own mother, who turned him in. He was apprehended on August 5, 1997, only days after Kim’s death. Reports tied him not only to her killing but also to the fatal shooting of Gwendolyn B. Wyche two days earlier, with authorities believing the same gun had been used in both attacks. In that sense, Kim’s death became the last chapter in a brief but brutal stretch of violence that finally gave investigators the break they needed.
As the case moved forward, the story shifted from a search to a confession. Online sources state that Duffy admitted killing Kim and Wyche, avoiding a full trial by pleading guilty in March 1998. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for those murders. Years later, he was also linked through DNA and confession to another 1997 killing, further cementing the view that Kim had been one of several women caught in a deadly spree. Based on the online record available, there was one identified suspect, one arrest, and a conviction through a guilty plea rather than a jury verdict.
