Kaohsiung judges yesterday approved a request by prosecutors to detain Sun Wei-neng (孫偉能) for his alleged involvement in the murder of Chang Tsu-neng (張子能), a Taiwanese businessman based in the Philippines.
“We only received the case yesterday and will update the press after questioning Sun further. At the moment, we can only confirm that Chang was murdered sometime around April 15,” said Chung Chung-hsiao (鍾忠孝), spokesman for the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office.
Kaohsiung prosecutors filed a request for Sun’s immediate detention after Criminal Investigation Bureau officers discovered Chang’s body, which had been cemented into a large iron barrel and dumped into the river under Mingsheng Bridge on Highway 17 in Pingtung County on Tuesday.
Chung said that Ilan prosecutors were initially investigating the case because Chang’s family lives in Ilan, but the case was transferred to Kaohsiung after Sun confessed to the crime. Sun told police the murder was committed in Kaohsiung.
Chung said coroners had examined Chang’s body after fishing it out of the river. He said the body was already decomposed, although they did not discover any visible injuries. They said Chang’s body had been bent over and stuffed into the barrel before the cement was added.
Chung said that Sun told police that Chang arrived in Kaohsiung to meet Sun’s friend, Wang, a major shareholder in Chang’s company. Sun and Wang met Chang in Sun’s car. Sun said he and Wang strangled Chang after he failed to give Wang satisfactory answers to his questions about the company’s murky financial situation.
Sun told police that Wang fled to the Philippines the day after the murder and that the bureau was working with Philippine police to repatriate him.
Chung said that Chang was a retired career army officer and a sandstone businessman before he started a mining business in the Philippines eight years ago. In addition to Sun and Wang, prosecutors said they were looking for three or four other suspects.
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