An Unsolved Mysteries Case

The murder

 

In 2006, The five children of Liu Chih-chin (劉志勤), 48, and his spouse Lin Chen-mi (林真米), 35 were discovered dead in the bathroom of their Hualien residence.

The children were discovered with their hands and legs tied with rope, sticky tape on their faces, and plastic bags over their heads. The windows and the door of the washroom were shut with adhesive tape.

 

Parents are missing.

 

The five dead include Liu's 18-year-old and 17-year-old sons and 12-year-old daughter, all from Liu's previous wedding, and a nine-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son from his marriage to Lin.

 

Liu's car was found by authority on Saturday placed near the Chian (吉安) Township train station in Hualien County.

Police originally believed that Liu and Lin killed their children, then drove to the train station, left their car there, and left the township by train.

 

The weird details:

 

The doors of the house had been locked from the inside, with steel bars put across the doors to seal the lock. Since there is iron grinding over all of the house's windows and no other possible ways out, authority can't solve how the killers left the scene.

 

Second, police cannot figure out how the five children were murdered.

 

They initially believed that the children were already drugged and unconscious when the perpetrators tied their mouths and covered their heads since there was no clue of a struggle in the house or on the childrens' corpses.

 

Still, a result of a postmortem showed that the five were not drugged or poisoned. The postmortem also suggested that the five might not have been murdered on the same day.

 

Eventually, the police discovered two cigarette butts at the crime scene, but that DNA tests had indicated that the smoker was not Liu, his spouse, or any of the children -- suggesting that people outside the family were possibly involved in the killings.

 

No fingerprints were discovered in the house or on the bodies, so police think the killer or killers were wearing gloves as they committed the crimes.

 

The corpses were discovered roughly 3 days after their death according to postmortem. Yet around the same time, the mum was also reported by the teacher of children to have phoned and asked for them to be excluded from class due to illness.

 

Probable connections

 

Liu was declared to have debts of around NT$3 million (US$91,254), which may have been a basis in the incident. Police believed the killings may have involved Liu's creditors.

 

Liu ran a traveler photography business in Hualien. Authorities tell that Liu went heavily into debt to broaden his business, which led to serious financial problems for his family.

 

Several of Liu's relatives, neighbors, and colleagues questioned by police have told that Liu appeared to have psychological problems.

 

Remains of the parents discovered 

 

Taipei, Hualien County, June 15, 2015, a pair of skeletal remains have been recognized as belonging to a couple believed of having killed their five children in Hualien in 2005.

 

A local hunter found the remains in a hilly region of Hualien on June 10.

 

Forensics explains that the couple might have taken their own lives by hanging or ingesting poison.

 

Opinions

 

The data on this case was rather restricted. I could only discover so much. Still, from what i can gather, there are certain points that I believe are important:

 

Mass family suicide is not unusual in the east. Still, the method employed here was downright strange. Poison would be the most common technique, not suffocation.

If it was suicide, why were the children's hands and legs tied? Why the sticky tape?

Why would the parent went away to commit suicide elsewhere? Why not go out with their kids? As with most other cases? Also storing the corpses in the bathroom is an odd thing to do, not to mention the tapes and plastic bags.

Why no fingerprints? If you are going to murder yourself anyway, why worry hiding your fingerprints?

The truth there was no clue of struggle yet also no indication of poison or drug is also weird.

If i were to think, I would say the family had a run-in with the mafia from the debt. The debtors possibly liked to make an example out of the family. The parent possibly found their children's bodies and ran away in fear before was finally tracked down and murdered.

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