Police in Taichung county yesterday announced they had solved two high-profile kidnapping cases after detaining the chief suspects in both.
Police said they arrested Wu Lien-tsung (
Chang was kidnapped on March 2 when four men broke into his house and dragged him away at gunpoint. The kidnappers had asked for as much as NT$30 million in ransom -- apparently because they believed that as the chief of Tungshih township, one of the worst-affected areas in Taiwan by the 921 earthquake, Chang must have profited handsomely from subsidies allocated by the government.
Chang himself is widely believed to be involved with organized crime in the township.
In the end, Chang was released unharmed after his family paid a ransom of NT$7.95 million.
After more than a month of investigation, police arrested Wu and two of his subordinates and placed them in the custody of the district prosecutor's office yesterday. Taichung County Commissioner Liao Jung-lai (廖永來) awarded the police NT$200,000 for solving the case.
In Taichung City, meanwhile, police said yesterday they had cracked another kidnapping case, this one involving Chi Shui-shu (
For Chi, who has been released unharmed, the story was familiar, as it was the second time in three years that he had been kidnapped.
Chi's family paid NT$20 million ransom for Chi's release the first time he was abducted in 1997. The story gained considerable notoriety at the time, after the ransom money -- which had been placed in a garbage bin at the kidnapper's request -- was discovered missing by police. The kidnapper apparently came up through a sewer vent to grab the cash -- a stunt made famous in the movie Speed.
This time it took the police only one day to arrest the suspect, while also retrieving most of NT$3 million ransom paid by Chi's family.
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