A cook who murdered his sister for insurance claims was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday, after the Supreme Court maintained an earlier ruling and rejected an appeal out of concerns for the man’s mother.
The court rejected an appeal by Chiayi County prosecutors, who requested the death penalty, out of concerns for Chen Chia-fu’s (陳佳富) mother, saying the request would deprive her of another one of her children.
In June last year, the Chiayi District Court sentenced the 37-year-old to life imprisonment, saying that the prison sentence would serve to punish and reform Chen.
The murder was brought to light after discovery of the head, marinated with salt, of Chen’s younger sister in a public bathroom near a temple in Shueishang Township (水上) in Chiayi in March 2013.
Chen, who lived with his mentally ill sister, Chen Wan-ting (陳婉婷), in New Taipei City, told the police that he killed his sister in late 2012 because he was angry with her, saying she often flirted with taxi drivers, which was the cause of constant arguments.
However, investigators found that Chen, since late 2011, had taken out multiple life insurance policies in Chen Wan-ting’s name totaling NT$6.67 million (US$216,896).
The case drew a significant amount of media attention due to Chen Chia-fu’s bizarre behavior, with him traveling from New Taipei City to Chiayi by train to dispose of his sister’s head, only to later leave a message for the police with clues to its location.
Chen Chia-fu claimed he was mentally ill during the trial at the High Court’s branch in Tainan in January, but the court ruled out any major disorders, citing hospital examination results.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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