Man pleads in murders of 5, including 2 kids

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles man has unexpectedly pleaded guilty in the samurai sword stabbing and bludgeoning deaths of a woman, her two children, her boyfriend and a NASA scientist, prosecutors said today.

Steve Kwon, 44, pleaded guilty Thursday as a jury was being chosen for his trial in the grisly 2008 killings in Quartz Hill, 40 miles north of Los Angeles. Prosecutors say Kwon and his best friend, Jae Shim, beat and stabbed Shim's ex-wife, 34-year-old Young Park, her two children and the two men before setting some of the bodies alight and burning down the house.

Kwon and Shim had planned on framing Park's boyfriend, Si Young Yoon, a 34-year-old tae kwon do instructor, but the pair accidentally left the baseball bat and samurai sword they used in the killings in the home before they set it on fire, said Beth Silverman, a prosecutor with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

Kwon and Shim ditched their original plan to bury Yoon in the Angeles National Forest and fled to Mexico, where they dumped the body before their car got stuck in the desert, which eventually led to their capture and extradition to Los Angeles.

Silverman said the crime was one of the worst she's ever seen.