Call from my Father

My father got an accident this AM while playing tennis and went to Urgent Care Center. He was running backward and twisted his leg and fell = =;;

Read Full Post »

Interesting Cases

In April 1997, a gang led by Chen Chin-hsing, who would become the most notorious criminal in Taiwan’s modern history ,kidnapped Pai Hsiao-yen, the seventeen-year-old daughter of television variety show hostess Pai Ping-ping. Demanding $5 million in ransom money, the girl’s captors sent photos of her, bound with tape, along with her severed finger. They murdered her while her mother was still trying to raise the money, dumping the body in a drainage ditch. Some of his accomplices were quickly captured or killed, but ringleader Chen remained at large for months. Police had jailed Chen’s wife and brother-in-law, who were suspects in the Pai case. While eluding a massive manhunt, Chen wrote it police arguing they were innocent and threatening to commit more crimes unless they were released. In the summer of 1997 Chen and another seasoned felon kidnapped a businessman and collected ransom money. They allegedly forced a Taipei plastic surgeon to alter their appearance and then murdered the surgeon, his wife, and a nurse in October. WTF!! In November Chen invaded the home of Colonel McGill Alexander, South Africa’s military attache, and held hostage Alexander and his family, including an infant Taiwanese foster child. Chen demanded freedom for his relatives, making his case during an interview with television journalists while hundreds of police surrounded the house. Chen finally surrendered and released his hostages after a twenty-four hour standoff, including a shootout in which Alexander and his twenty-two-year-old daughter, whom Chen used as a human shield, suffered bullet wounds = =;;. Taipei offered the govt. of South Africa a formal apology after the incident. Chen was finally shot by a firing squad in October 1999. Even then his execution was controversial: Chen was convicted under the auspices of a statute known as the “bandit law" that had technically lapsed in 1945.

Roy, Denney. “Corruption, Crime, and the KMT." Taiwan: A Political History. New York: Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2003. 205-208.

Read Full Post »