The High Prosecutors’ Office is continuing to investigate the infamous Lin (林) family murders from 1980 in the hopes that an unmatched fingerprint could bring a breakthrough in the cold case.
The case of the Lin family murders is one of the highest-profile homicides in modern Taiwanese history.
A new movie titled Murder of the Century (世紀血案) has brought renewed awareness to the case after it emerged yesterday that the production was shot without the family’s consent.
Photo: Taipei Times
On Feb. 28, 1980, while democracy advocate Lin I-hsiung (林義雄) was jailed and awaiting trial on charges of rebellion for his participation in the Formosa Incident, an unknown person entered his house.
The Formosa Incident, also known as the Kaohsiung Incident, refers to a police crackdown under the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime on a rally held by Formosa Magazine and opposition politicians on Dec. 10, 1979, to mark Human Rights Day.
The perpetrator stabbed and killed Lin’s mother, who was in her 60s, and his twin daughters, seven, while his eldest daughter, nine, was severely injured.
The perpetrator was never found.
At the time of the incident, investigators collected six palm prints and 12 fingerprints from the scene, with all except two matching the victims or relatives and friends of the family.
As DNA testing was unavailable at the time, police used blood type analysis to find that all blood samples collected from nine locations on the victims’ bodies matched their blood types.
No bloodstains believed to belong to the perpetrator remained.
The case was investigated for two years without identifying a suspect.
Investigations were reopened twice in 1996 and 1998, but no progress was made.
In March 2007, the Criminal Investigation Bureau re-examined the physical evidence using the latest forensic technologies available at the time.
They matched one of the unknown fingerprints to a forensic officer from the Taipei Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division, while the other remained unknown.
The investigation was reopened for a fourth time in March 2009, with the High Prosecutors’ Office instructing the bureau’s fingerprint division to check once again with the fingerprint database, although no matches were found.
The unmatched fingerprint is regarded as one of the most critical pieces of evidence in the cold case.
As forensic analysis continues to advance, the Control Yuan in February 2024 formally requested that the Ministry of Justice form a special task force to continue investigating the case.
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