Actor Lee Wei (李威) was released on bail on Monday after being named as a suspect in the death of a woman whose body was found in the meeting place of a Buddhist group in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) last year, prosecutors said.
Lee, 44, was released on NT$300,000 (US$9,148) bail, while his wife, surnamed Chien (簡), was released on NT$150,000 bail after both were summoned to give statements regarding the woman’s death.
The home of Lee, who has retreated from the entertainment business in the past few years, was also searched by prosecutors and police earlier on Monday.
Photo: CNA
Lee was questioned three times last month as a witness in the case.
Police received a report in late July last year that a woman was lying motionless in a first-floor property on a residential block on Siwei Road in Taipei.
Police found the woman, surnamed Tsai (蔡), a member of the religious group that met at the property, with no vital signs.
An autopsy determined that she died of rhabdomyolysis, a complex medical condition involving the rapid dissolution of damaged or injured skeletal muscle.
It is most often caused by direct traumatic injury, according to the National Library of Medicine, a Web site run by the US National Institutes of Health.
Surveillance video footage showed Lee, the religious group’s chief executive, surnamed Wu (吳), a woman surnamed Chiang (姜) and Tsai attending a study session at a restaurant in Taipei on the evening of July 24 amid Typhoon Gaemi, prosecutors said.
The footage showed that after the meeting, Wu, Lee and Chiang pushed Tsai’s body in a trolley from the restaurant to the property and left it there without calling emergency services, prosecutors said.
After a probe and two rounds of searches, prosecutors and police named Wu, Buddhism writer Wang Yun (王薀) — who was the group’s spiritual leader — and others as suspects in Tsai’s death.
Four of the suspects, including Wang, have been detained due to their suspected involvement since last month.
Chinese-language media reported that Tsai had been an accountant for the group, whose members were mostly white-collar professionals.
After her death, Tsai’s bank accounts, which combined had more than NT$2 million, were empty, the reports said.
Lee, who rose to fame after starring in the drama Toast Boy’s Kiss (吐司男之吻) in the 2000s, became a follower of Buddhism after leaving the entertainment business.
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