A man has been jailed for 25 years for a series of rapes and burglaries over two decades, with advances in forensic investigation leading to his capture.
The High Court last week said that Tu Ming-lang (涂明朗) had committed at least 11 burglaries, breaking in to homes and stealing valuables.
On eight occasions, he sexually assaulted women and girls who were at home at the time, the court said.
Photo: Yang Kuo-wen, Taipei Times
The court found Tu guilty on eight counts of sexual assault and burglary and ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
It said he posed a high risk of recidivism.
Investigators said that they had collected forensic material at the crime scenes, including bodily fluids and fingerprints, but no match was made for many years, as Tu apparently paused his criminal activity in 2005.
He lived alone and did not use a mobile phone, investigators said.
Tu’s criminal activities were committed mostly in the Taipei area, investigators said.
An initial probe linked him to cases dating to 1998.
He would scout wealthy households and break in when he thought nobody was home, investigators said.
However, he would sometimes encounter lone females in the home, they said.
He would rape them at knife-point, they said, adding that one was aged 11 and one 16, while others were migrant workers who lived in the home as carers, investigators said.
It was not until the Criminal Investigation Bureau’s Forensic Science Center was upgraded in 2018 and a national database of data was compiled that a breakthrough was made in the case, they said.
Through DNA profiling, a burglary case in 2014 was matched to DNA collected in eight previous cases, which led investigators to obtain fingerprints from the crime scenes.
The fingerprint work led to a match to a burglary case in which Tu had been identified as the perpetrator, leading police to pinpoint him in 2019.
However, his whereabouts could not be determined immediately, investigators said.
In April last year, he broke into a home in Taipei, they said.
Police launched a search using surveillance camera footage and tracked him to an abandoned military compound the following month, they said.
Tu, who was 60 when he was arrested, was kept in custody due to high risk of flight and likelihood of committing more crimes.
He appealed, with the second ruling reducing the term to 25 years, as the judges said there was a lack of evidence for the charge of raping the 11-year-old.
Tu’s DNA was found on the girl’s chest, but not on her sexual organs. Tu had told the court he had not raped her.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported
RSS