The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a 13-year prison sentence against Lee Tai-an (李泰安), one of two brothers convicted of conspiracy to murder a Vietnamese woman, who died when a train was deliberately derailed on March 17, 2006.
It was the final appeal in the case, which means Lee must now serve the 13-year sentence imposed by a lower court.
Lee was arrested in June 2006 and released on bail in November 2007.
He was later convicted on charges of sabotaging public transport systems and colluding with his now-deceased younger brother to murder his sister-in-law.
All the evidence indicated that Lee Tai-an and his brother Lee Shuang-chuan (李雙全) — a railway worker — caused the derailment of several trains on the South Link Line that connects Taitung and Pingtung counties, the Supreme Court judges said in a ruling.
Their motive was to kill Lee Shuang-chuan’s Vietnamese wife, surnamed Vguyen, to collect on her life insurance policy, the judges said.
Lee Shuang-chuan was found dead, hanging from a tree near his home in Taitung County, on March 23, 2006.
Investigators had listed him as a suspect in the derailment following which his 24-year-old wife died from internal bleeding.
The train driver and one other person were badly injured in the accident.
There were more than 200 passengers aboard when the express train derailed en route from Taitung to Kaohsiung. Three passenger cars tipped over and the engine was completely wrecked in the accident.
It was found that Lee Shung-chuan had injected his wife with an unknown poison during a visit to a Pingtung hospital when she was in intensive care after the accident.
Investigators also found that Lee Shuang-chuan, who lost NT$33 million (US$1.01 million) trading stock with two securities firms between January 2000 and June 2004, had taken out a NT$20 million insurance policy covering the accidental death of Vguyen — his third wife — just days before the derailment.
It was also found that his second wife, also Vietnamese, had died five years before of a snake bite, in circumstances described as suspicious.
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