A police official formerly in charge of the investigation into the 1991 double murder of a Hsichih couple said in court yesterday that authorities never did find any direct evidence to link the Hsichih Trio to the crime.
Chen Wei-ting (
"We saw on the floor, at the door to the room, smears in a pool of blood that appeared to have been made by a towel. I guessed the murderer[s] had tried to clean up the scene," Chen said. "We tried hard to search for evidence, but we did not find any evidence against [the trio] then."
Chen, along with four more policemen from the same precinct, were summoned to testify on their investigations into the case, which the defense team has long alleged involved duress and torture.
In a bid to avoid collusion, the court had intended to hear separate testimonies from all the members of the investigation team yesterday. However, Chen's testimony lasted so long that the court decided to postpone hearing the other witnesses until the court's next session.
Since it has contended the three defendants -- Su Chien-ho (
Chen said they arrested Wang Wen-hsiao (
"After he was arrested, [Wang] first admitted that he was the sole perpetrator, but the prosecutor, after examining the murder scene, determined that there was more than one killer. We went on to ask him whether there were any accomplices, and he finally confessed that his younger brother and friends of his brother were also involved," Chen said.
"We arrested Wang's brother and he eventually told us everything about the case and named his friends, the three defendants here," he said.
Wang Wen-hsiao was found guilty of the murder and executed in 1992. However, he was never questioned together with the other defendants before his death.
Wang Wen-chung, his brother, was sentenced to two years and eight months for being a lookout while the others were committing the murders. But he has retracted all his statements against the three defendants and claimed his previous confessions were extracted under duress.
The three defendants were convicted on their own confessions, corroborated by those of their co-defendants, and have been on death row since 1995.
The Hsichih Trio, like Wang, have accused the police of using torture to extract their confessions.
In the proceedings, however, the 41-year-old police official flatly denied the accusation, upon which Su's mother cried out in the courtroom, "He is lying. I saw it in person."
Chuang Kuo-hsun (
The police claimed the coins were stolen by the defendants from the couple's home on the day of the murder. But Chuang claimed yesterday that the 24 coins were money he and his brother had saved and hidden behind their closet.
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