For four hours Thursday, Amos Mun sat at a long table, staring forward, waiting for the judge to tell him how much of his life will be spent in prison.

The 65-year-old in prison whites, his gray hair pulled into a short ponytail, listened to recovering junkies and a federal agent tell a judge how Mun rented rooms to drug dealers and users and how he charged them hundreds and thousands of dollars in “taxes.” He heard stories about how he stalked the premises with pistols, baseball bats, metal pipes; how he warned dealers and users when cops were on site; and how he hired drug users to clean up when he knew code inspectors were coming.

Mun saw videos, too, of junkies tying off in so-called trap rooms in his motel called the Han Gil Hotel Town; and pictures of him collecting cash and looking down the barrel of a rifle. He saw the faces of the young men and women from Coppell who drove to Dallas to die in his motel. And, without expression, he watched as prosecutors flashed on a giant display a photo of a decomposing corpse — the 20-year-old woman who investigators now say was likely sexually assaulted and murdered in his hotel before being dumped in Oak Cliff last December.

And after all that, after that grim onslaught that left a crowded courtroom dazed and drenched in tears, Mun still refused to take any responsibility or offer any apology. He pleaded guilty in August only to “maintaining a drug-involved premises.” And on Thursday, Mun said that his single misjudgment — in all his 65 years — was buying a motel, which sits next to an apartment and a Dallas ISD elementary, in “a bad part” of Dallas.

After that, U.S. District Judge Karen Scholer sentenced Mun to the maximum allowed by federal guidelines — 240 months behind bars.

Federal prosecutors say this is Amos Mun collecting cash in one of the "trap" rooms in his Han Gil Hotel Town. It's one of many photos taken from videos entered into evidence.

Tom Pappas, Mun’s attorney, tried to argue over four hours that his client sold no drugs at the Han Gil and had nothing to do with the horrible things that happened there. He attempted to make the case that Mun deserved but a few years in prison. The judge seemed disappointed she couldn’t give him more than the 20 years allowed under federal sentencing guidelines.

The Han Gil, she said, “was a hotel of horrors.” The judge, too, blamed him for allowing “the torture, the overdoses, the deaths and the murder” that occurred there from at least the end of 2017 until federal agents raided the motel in March.

Now, finally, the owner of the Han Gil has been sentenced, two months after one of the main pushers, the man called Stuff, was given a 30-year sentence — also, the max allowed. Scholer also agreed to turn over possession of the Han Gil to federal prosecutors eager to raze the structure by no later than spring.

But even with a small pile of guilty pleas, this story will not end. Investigators and agents spoke Thursday about how this case has tentacles that keep multiplying and spreading. Closure will not come just because Amos Mun is being locked away or the Han Gil will eventually be dismantled and thrown into a landfill.

Nor does Thursday’s sentencing erase the pain Mun and his motel brought to those families whose loved ones’ lives were destroyed at the Han Gil.

An image from one of the Han Gil videos shown in court Wednesday. In the video you can see several of these customers trying off while waiting to get their heroin.

At Thursday’s hearing I sat next to Brian Goudy, whose 21-year-old brother, Justin Bruckman, overdosed at the motel in June 2018. In front of us sat 22-year-old Maddison Brekke, a former user and dealer at the Han Gil who was Justin’s lifelong best friend and, for a moment long ago, his girlfriend. Brekke, who helped bring down the Han Gil after she was arrested in August 2018, began using heroin after a car accident at 15 left her hooked on hydrocodone.

On June 26, 2018, Bruckman and other friends from Coppell had gone to the Han Gil to visit Brekke, who testified Thursday that she had two rooms at the Han Gil from which she and a boyfriend sold everything from weed to Xanax to meth to heroin. Brekke said she was with Bruckman when he overdosed and that Mun and Stuff wouldn’t let anyone dial 911, lest the cops show up.

Stuff, she said, sent his “clean-up crew,” and Bruckman was instead put into a car and driven to a hospital. He did not survive the trip.

Pappas asked Brekke if she felt responsible for her best friend’s death. “Of course,” she said, choking on tears.

Another woman also testified — Guadalupe Arias, 49, her hair the same shade of orange as the jumpsuit she wore to court. Arias, also a self-admitted addict trying to get clean, pleaded guilty only three weeks ago to possessing drugs with the intent to distribute.

Justin Bruckman was 21 when he overdosed at Han Gil Hotel Town in June 2018. (Courtesy Brian Goudy)

She told the judge that she found the Han Gil in late 2017 and that it had such nicknames as Old New Jack City and Han Hell. She explained the operations and talked about how she was a “cutter” — someone tasked with cutting up the heroin for packaging — and how others worked the tables or stood guard as doormen. We even saw her dealing heroin in one of the videos displayed in the courtroom.

Arias said she eventually went to work for Mun, cleaning up rooms and warning dealers whenever code inspectors were coming. In exchange, she said, her rent was free.

Mun’s attorney asked Arias if she was testifying in exchange for a lesser sentence. She said absolutely not. Pappas asked why, then, was she on the witness stand.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she said. “People lost their lives.” And for that, she had to take some responsibility.

Unlike the man who owned the place.

Almost four hours after the hearing began, Mun finally spoke. And when he did, it was in a low, hoarse whisper — loud enough only for the translator standing at his right to hear him.

He said yes, he rented rooms at the Han Gil, but that he “formally worked at that location for three months.” Mun insisted he “did not know much about what was going on in those rooms” and said he spent most of his time at a meat market he owned on Harry Hines Boulevard until last year.

An image from another video made at the Han Gil, which DEA special agent James Henderson said shows a dealer bringing an assault rifle into the hotel.

“What I have to say won’t make any difference at this point,” he said. Perhaps not, but Scholer pressed him anyway.

Mun, who was born in South Korea, said that he’d been in this country for 40 years and that he worked hard all of his life. He said only that he should have never bought the Han Gil, because it is in a bad part of town.

“When I bought the hotel, I did not know that,” he said.

The judge appeared to be appalled by Mun’s testimony.

“You saw it, walked by it, encouraged it, profited from it,” Scholer said of the awful things that happened in a place he alone owned and controlled. And given every opportunity, Mun still made no apologies for doing so. So she gave him the longest sentence she could.

“Twenty years is nothing compared to what you have done and the scars you left on so many,” Brian Goudy told Mun when he was allowed to offer what’s called a victim impact statement. “God’s got a plan, however. Where you’re going is just the beginning of the hell you will burn in.”

He folded his remarks, took his seat and tried not to cry. Before we left the courtroom, I asked Goudy for a copy of the paper. Only later did I notice what he’d typed at the top: “FOR JUSTIN.”