THE TAIWAN HISTORY PODCAST – FORMOSA FILES

TRANSCRIPT

S5-E5-S9 - Magistrate Mass Murder and Gangsters in Government

Release Date: April 17, 2025

Time: 29:38

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S5-E9 - Magistrate Mass Murder and Gangsters in Government

Okay, John, if you'll indulge me, I want to do a little reenactment here. Maybe I'll even add some sound effects. Okay.

----RADIO PLAY STYLE---

Quiet, quiet. The Minister of Justice, Liao Cheng-hao, is about to speak about gangsters and organized crime members in elected positions. Thank you for attending this press briefing.

As you all know, under the instruction of our first directly elected president, Lee Tung-hui, the government has been working hard to root out organized crime in politics. But as we come to the end of the year 1996, I'm afraid the situation is more dire than many understand. The connections between so-called Hei Dao, or underworld elements, and elected officials are... Um... Deep.

Uh, Minister Liao, could you be more specific? Uh, yes, yes, I can. I can be extremely specific. Out of the 858 city and county councilors across Taiwan, 286 of them have known connections to organized crime or some Hei Dao background.

858 to 96... Wait, are you saying that basically a third of Taiwan's elected officials are gangsters or criminals? That's one way of putting it. But that's insane! Indeed, and it gets worse. We estimate 25% of provincial assembly members and 5% of legislators and members of the National Assembly have, well, let's just say, shady backgrounds, and... There's more?! Um, yeah.

We think that perhaps around 200 town or township representatives are affiliated with organized crime. So, what are the government's plans for dealing with this shameful mess? We will crack down hard. Another crackdown? Yes, we will do as many crackdowns as needed, because, and listen carefully, if this problem is not dealt with swiftly, Taiwan could become another Sicily.

Not another Sicily! Yes, another Sicily!

--- END OF RADIO PLAY ---

Okay, John, I hope you enjoyed that little radio play. I did, immensely. But that wasn't an audio reenactment, was it? Not exactly, no.

There was a Justice Minister Liao, and he did give those figures in 1996, and he did say we were on the road to becoming another Sicily. A place where people live long lives, filled with close friendships, nourished over glasses of wine, after an honest day's toil in the olive groves. Okay, works for me.

No. You've seen the Godfather movies, yeah? No, actually, just clips of it. I know it's a highly regarded film, but for some unknown reason, I have an irrational dislike of the movie.

Interesting. So, you're snobbish about the Godfather as well. I said I don't know the reason why I dislike it so much.

Probably because everybody else loves it. Huh. No, no, no.

Anyway. You know the story of the Godfather? Yes. Okay, so the Sicily that Liao was talking about was the one where a mob boss can make one of those wrinkled faces before a subtle nod, and then goons with machine guns riddle your house with bullets before feeding you to the fishes.

You've got quite an active imagination, but yes, I get it. I understand. Taiwan was on the path to becoming a failed democracy, essentially.

I mean, if you have a third of your elected officials being, I don't want to use the word mobsters, but let's say, what's the modern term? Mobster adjacent. For a third of them, a mobster adjacent, how long before it's a half or two thirds? Exactly.

The Taiwan History Podcast, Formosa Files, is made possible through the generous sponsorship of the Frank C. Chen Foundation.

But you notice the year I mentioned, right? This is 1996. Yeah.

Lee Tung-hui has just gotten into his last, but first, directly elected term. Martial law has been gone for almost a decade. Aren't things supposed to be getting better as the disinfectant of freedom does battle with the viruses of totalitarianism and the light of democracy illuminates the gutters of the underworld? A new broom sweeping clean and all that.

Okay. I think you're trying to bait me with all those mixed metaphors of just ones you invented. But you know what? While I wasn't watching The Godfather, I was reading the dictionary.

I'm going to call you on the use of totalitarianism. That's when the state dominates every single aspect of your life. Think North Korea.

We never had that. You can call it authoritarianism if you want. Okay.

So, what about the viruses of authoritarianism then? I get your point. Okay. So, here's the question.

How is it that in less than a decade that Taiwan had gone from a near police state to something out of The Godfather? Back in the 1960s, there were a couple of major gang wars. Mainland organized crime groups were battling Taiwanese less organized crime groups. And then in the mid-1980s, thousands of people got busted for hooliganism.

They were shipped off to detention centers in Southern Taiwan for two or three years of re-education through detention. Re-education through detention. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. It's a huge pendulum swing. Okay.

So, we have answers to these questions, but let's pause our search for the hows and whys and hear a couple of classic crime stories. John, you want to do the honors of dramatizing this? I can try and set the scene, yes. Roughly 8 a.m., November 21st, 1996, Liu Bangyao, the magistrate of Taoyuan County is just getting settled in for a day of work at his residence.

It's a walled compound with a few buildings. The Taoyuan County Governor's residence is there. There are close to a dozen people on the premises that morning.

A visiting county counselor, a foreign maid, Liu's driver, his secretary and so on. Two armed guards. I'll let you take over after I utter the ominous phrase, the guards are about to change shifts.

Yes, nothing good happens when you hear the guards were about to change shifts. And yes, that's when it's believed two assassins entered the resident with combat knives or what some Chinese reports called Rambo knives. They overpower the two security guards with the Rambo knives, take the guards' handguns and ammunition, and then heard seven of the residents' occupants, including of course this Magistrate Liu, into a room.

And according to a report from the time in Taiwan Panorama, the attackers blindfold the soon to be victims by wrapping tape, you know, masking tape over their eyes, mouths and noses. The killers use tape to bind these unfortunate people's arms behind their backs. Then comes the order to kneel and Magistrate Liu and eight others are shot in the head.

Very execution style. The Chinese report said it was an assassination planned with, quote, military precision. As I understand it, eight people were murdered that morning and then one survived with serious injuries.

Yes, the reports are a bit unclear as there are so many names, but these shootings were the deadliest mass murder in modern Taiwanese history. And I think they still hold that horrible record for the deadliest single mass murder in modern times. The previous record holder was a mass killing all the way back in 1959.

A young army captain came back to his hometown in Nantou from his posting on the island of Jinmen and he was angry that a 19-year-old girl he was in love with didn't reciprocate the feelings. He grabbed two rifles and at 2 a.m. he broke into the house of the girl who had spurned him and he went on a killing spree. This army captain in 1959, he killed 10 people.

The young woman, her fiancé, her father, her two young sisters, her two younger brothers, a neighbor, and some others. And then he shot himself when the police officers arrived. Shocking, yes, but one of those crimes of passion that are at least understandable to a degree.

Yeah, I know what you mean. He killed the young woman who had spurned him on the morning of what would have been her wedding day and you think 2 a.m. probably alcohol was involved. Yeah, horrible, right? But these killings in 1996 are not about spurned love, nor are they similar to the other mass murder I can think of in modern times, the Carlton Barber Shop fire.

It was one of those barbershops where no one knows how to cut hair, you get my drift? Yeah, I've accidentally walked into one of those, yes. Code for a massage parlor, which is also code for other illegal things. So, this Carlton Barber Shop fire of 1993 claimed 20 lives and also was sort of understandable.

This guy running an illegal lottery, surname Liang, went to the shop to collect 700,000 yuan in gambling debts. But the boss of this barbershop on Songjiang Road in Taipei City refused to pay. Now, usually when someone refuses to pay, you kill them.

But this Mr. Liang set himself on fire in the basement of the barbershop and smoke from the fire took 20 lives, so 21 counting Liang. What a weird story, but perhaps Liang was not just selling lotteries, he was indulging in a lot of gambling himself and he was on the hook for really big debts and he knew that he'd soon be rounded up and subjected to a nasty end. So yeah, he went nuts, well, that's just off the top of my head, I don't know.

Yeah, it's a valid theory. So, both of those, right, very emotional. The two we just discussed involved anger, passion, desperation, and possibly very spur-of-the-moment decisions.

Not at all like the scene over in Taoyuan County, where the executions were carried out, to quote the article, with ruthless precision and cold efficiency. So, to try to simplify, here's the list of the deceased as I understand it. 1. Magistrate Liu 2. A Taoyuan County Councilor.

Back then there was a Taoyuan County and a Taoyuan City. 3. Magistrate Liu's secretary. 4. Magistrate Liu's driver.

5. Magistrate Liu's cook. 6. The wife of the Taoyuan County Agriculture Bureau chief. 7. And 8. The two guards, who seemed to have been either off-duty or former cops.

After the killings, the hit men fled in the car of the Taoyuan County Councilor. A woman working as a secretary for one of these officials was apparently waiting in the car. Oh, my goodness, what bad luck.

And yeah, she made a convenient hostage. But rather miraculously, she was not harmed. They drove her out to a mountainous part of Taoyuan and warned her not to report the crime, or at least not to do it too quickly.

Yeah, it's not like it's going to go unnoticed though, is it? Correct. They left her there. Investigators said that they then abandoned the vehicle and escaped in another car, driven by an accomplice.

So, Magistrate Liu's wife and a foreign domestic worker, identified as Judy, were unharmed. I'm not sure why they decided to spare his wife and Judy. Yeah, and also not sure why one of the security guards was shot twice, while the others received a single fatal shot to the head.

But we are pretty sure, as quite quickly were the investigators, that this kind of deliberate, carefully planned attack wasn't a crime of passion. So, no love triangle, no simple gambling debts. This kind of crime scene just screams revenge.

And it also points to the mastermind knowing a whole lot about Magistrate Liu's household, schedule, the changing of the guards, etc. Revenge, yes. A dish best-served cold.

It requires calm, calculated actions. You bide your time. And another really good reason to suspect revenge, Liu had angered a lot of people over a long period of time.

He'd begun as a representative in the local Irrigation Association, before serving as a county and provincial councilor, I think. And during which time he'd been investigated for possibly embezzling, and this is amazing if true, 360 million, not NT, 360 million US dollars from the Zhongli Farmers Association. That's some high-quality embezzling.

Yes. Oh, it's also alleged he forged his master's degree. Cherry on the cake detail there.

Very much so. Yeah, Liu was dirty, if I can say that without getting sued. Yeah, I think I can.

Yeah, Liu was dirty. He was the magistrate of Taoyuan for seven years, during which time he got wrapped up in like over 100 disputes related to land speculation, zoning, rezoning, this, that. So over 100 conflicts with pretty powerful people.

And was it a coincidence that Liu was killed just days before he could carry out the demolition of unauthorized structures? So, a bunch of illicit entertainment venues in Zhongli City? Zhongli City back then fell under the jurisdiction of Taoyuan County. Taoyuan then, as now, is close to Taipei. And back then, it was booming as people bought up land for massive development and infrastructure projects.

So, we're recording in the year 2025, Taoyuan is still prime real estate. But in 1996, man, these land deals were enormous. And Liu is making decisions about things potentially worth many billions of dollars.

He was no choir boy. No. Luckily, Jiayi County doesn't have any of these problems.

Sorry, off-topic. Okay. This magistrate Liu had even told a few close friends about getting death threats.

And by all accounts, he wasn't just corrupt, but he was also a bit of a jerk. The article I have here says he was, quote, known for his blunt and confrontational personality. Liu never hesitated to make enemies across both legal and illicit spheres.

Huh. Sounds like a really nice guy. Quite a bit in common with that lovely olive oil importer from Sicily.

What's it? Vito Cora. Vito Corlone. Yes.

Godfather reference. Exactly. Yeah.

Liu wasn't just into stealing billions of US or anti-dollars or making shady land deals. He also faked diplomas. Yes.

Yes. That's alleged as well. But also alleged, Liu ordered assassinations.

During his tenure, he spearheaded the redevelopment of military dependence villages, tackled the county's waste management crisis, and famously oversaw the renovation of the Taoyuan Dome, which became the venue for Taiwan's first direct presidential inauguration ceremony. So, lots of fingers and lots of pies. But you know what they say about making an omelet.

You got to break some eggs. You're trying to set a record for mixed metaphors. Impressive.

Okay. So, some might say Liu had it coming. I would never say that.

I don't condone violence, especially killing cooks and drivers and secretaries. Yes. And this magistrate mass murder sent massive shockwaves across Taiwan.

President Lee Tung-hui, Vice President and Premier Lian Jian, Provincial Governor James Song, all the top brass, they demanded swift resolutions. And the Legislative Yuan promptly passed the Organized Crime Prevention Act, which was nice. But passing a law is one thing.

Actually, cracking down on gang influence is another. Yes. And business leaders start saying things like, is Taiwan a place where people get whacked if they tick off the wrong don? Among the biggest things Taiwan didn't need in the late 1990s was investors losing confidence over worries about basic safety and security, right? So, we've come back to now the Minister of Justice Liao, the guy who opened this episode, my radio play, telling people a third of elected officials were basically criminals or gangsters.

Liao says, yeah, we do have a problem and we're going to have to take it seriously. I like Liao, not only for the very specific numbers he gave, but also because following the Taoyuan murders, there were some reasonably important people who start talking about or calling for the legalization of firearms for self-defense in Taiwan, to which Liao quite sensibly said no, as more guns would only escalate crime rates in his view. Yes, that's often how it works.

But speaking of more guns, this deserves a closer look. Where are the bad guys getting all these guns all of a sudden? Much of the material we're using for this episode comes from an excellent book, Ke Lin Jin, He Jin, Organized Crime, Business and Politics in Taiwan. I definitely recommend reading this book if you're interested in the topic.

Agreed. It's a great book. So, the author of the He Jin book says that in the 1980s, Taiwan began to experience a dramatic rise in gun proliferation.

Why? Okay. In a nutshell, political liberalization led to weaker state control. Right.

So, Taiwan's one-party state authoritarian grip began loosening in the 1980s. Martial law, of course, lifted in 1987. And this liberalization weakened the centralized control mechanisms that had previously kept a pretty tight rein on things, including organized crime.

When you start on the road to freedom and you loosen the legality of police surveillance, well... The gangs say, awesome! Exactly. Under martial law, the KMT regime had the capacity to suppress dissent and criminal activity more forcefully. But democratization is slowly taking hold and law enforcement is having to change to the new environment.

And they're becoming more constrained by civil liberties. They're less coordinated. So, this creates some openings for criminal expansion.

Yeah. They hadn't figured it out yet, right? Like, can we tap this wire? Can we do this? Also, Taiwan's geographic location made things easier. We became kind of a way station.

So criminal hubs in China, the Philippines, Southeast Asia. Taiwan is kind of a perfect spot for a meeting place. And actually, Taiwan was listed as a strategic point for arms trafficking at one point.

During the 1980s, illegal maritime trade boomed. Taiwan was both a destination and a trans-shipment point. You've got fishing boats and cargo vessels coming in.

Some of them smuggling firearms. So, guns hidden in shipments of goods or arriving alongside drugs, other contraband, a layer of fish. You pull up the fish and there's amphetamines and guns.

Yeah. Add an economic boom to this liberalization, and you've got lots of money flowing here and there. Taiwan experienced huge growth in various sectors in the 1980s.

In private construction, entertainment, real estate, all of which attracted both legitimate businessmen and organized crime. Gangs saw an opportunity to protect these investments, often through extortion or violent intimidation. Access to guns became essential for turf wars between rival gangs and for enforcing criminal business arrangements.

And with money flowing, gangs could afford to buy weapons in larger quantities. Yeah. So, a short way of saying that would be lots of money equals the need to protect it equals guns.

Yeah. I remember asking this mini gangster guy I knew back in like 95, what a handgun would cost. And he said he could probably find one for like 500,000 NT.

I guess he didn't really have the right connections then. No, guns are more common and much cheaper than that. Although still not your American buy a gun at Walmart prices.

So, this becomes a vicious cycle, right? As organized crime grew more fragmented and competitive, especially in the absence of strong central authority, violence escalated. Firearms became standard tools for both offense and defense. According to this book, Heijin, drive-by shootings, assassinations, and public displays of armed violence became more common during this time.

And the police were often outgunned or unwilling to confront well-connected criminals. So Heijin refers to the entanglement of organized crime. So that's the “Hei” part “black” and “corrupt political funding” or “gold.”

So, if you look through all the words in Chinese, essentially connected to underground associations, mafia, something, hey, so hey, this, that. Black is the term used for that. And when Chen Shui-bian was campaigning for president in 99, 2000, he specifically promised to stamp out this Heijin element of politics.

Didn't quite work out that way. No, going back to the 1980s and 1990s, the growth of democracy here actually had a part to play in promoting gangster activity. As elections became more competitive, politicians increasingly relied on gangsters for muscle votes, you know, vote buying and funding.

So, in return, these gangsters received protection and access to state contracts. Gangsters began amassing political influence, including winning seats in local councils and even the parliament. Anyway, this leads to our 1996 press conference with the minister saying basically that we're looking like the Godfather film.

Wild stuff. But of course, today we rarely hear of assassins massacring magistrates. And while I can think of a few lawmakers and magistrates that have clear criminal records and are, I think the lawyers would prefer that I say, almost certainly tied to the hey world, the underground, things have changed.

So, the question would be, did Taiwan get organized crime out of politics? Or did they, again, like Godfather 3, go legit? Okay, this answer gets to the heart of Taiwan's post-authoritarian transformation. I think it's a mix. So organized crime's not being purged out of politics, but has been marginalized.

Crime has adapted and adjusted. We don't see the violence so much anymore. I see what you're saying.

Also in that book, Hey Gene, other scholars also point out Taiwan's democracy basically co-opted, pressured, regulated gang-linked politicians rather than purging them perhaps. So let me try to simplify the way it played out. Number one, democratization introduces scrutiny.

Elections become freer. The media becomes more open in the 90s and the 2000s. And this makes it harder for gangsters turned politicians to operate in the shadows.

Investigative journalism and public watchdog groups start exposing people with criminal ties. Voters began demanding cleaner candidates, especially in urban areas. And this pushed many figures with gang backgrounds to sanitize their images, downplay their pasts, and rely more on white-collar methods of influence like donations and lobbying.

And many went straight or laundered their way into business. Many gangsters or their families reinvested their money in real estate, which had very good returns, construction, and the lucrative world of book publishing. Maybe not that one.

A sore spot for you there. So, they essentially became businessmen. I mean, they made more returns on real estate than smuggling cigarettes across the Taiwan Strait.

Right. So, we can say number two was many going straight in a crooked way. And number three, some went underground, some evolved and got smart.

So organized crime didn't vanish. It just got less visible. Many gangs stopped having members run for office directly and instead sponsored candidates, you know, quietly funding campaigns in exchange for favors, contracts, et cetera.

And they start outsourcing violence to third parties, distancing themselves from direct involvement. Smart. Okay.

Another factor that reduced organized crime was the crackdowns. There were high-profile anti-gang campaigns in the late 1990s and early 2000s, particularly after violent incidents such as that Taoyuan slaughter. Now, very embarrassing for the government.

And, you know, with the freewheeling, very active media here, it was important for them to respond to gangster incidents. You don't want, you know, investor confidence, diving, tourism, all of that. Yeah.

So structural corruption still exists in Taiwan. No question about it. Just in different forms.

This, you know, super clear Heijin-style black gold politics is less blatant today, but it persists, especially at the local level. Some gangsters or ex-gangsters now act as power brokers. They're the kingmakers now.

So, to summarize, it wasn't a clean break, but an evolution. Yes, that's fair. Taiwan didn't purge organized crime from politics.

It domesticated it. Democracy, media, and civil society disciplined it, turning gangsters into businessmen, shady businessmen, donors, or underground fixers. Public violence declined, but there's still influence here and there.

I mean, baseball, anyone? It's more than just a little. It's there, right? Not so blatant. We don't mix in high-money circles, so we don't really have much personal experience.

So those are some wild stories, John, but I think we've got many more that we're going to cover in the future, yeah? Yeah, there's a famous case, the murder of Henry Liu, an American citizen. Gangsters sent over from the Bamboo Triad to take him out. He had written an unflattering biography of Chiang Ching-kuo, and yeah, he was shot.

So, we're saying that the government of Taiwan essentially hired gangsters to murder an American citizen on U.S. soil for writing an unflattering biography of the president at the time, Chiang Ching-kuo. Wow. Someone in the government.

It wasn't like a whole cabinet. It wasn't a cabinet vote, yeah. But it still seems a bit extreme.

Couldn't they have just made him an offer he couldn't refuse? Oh, okay. Well, perhaps we should sign off before you have a chance to get in any more pop culture references or metaphors. Yeah, yeah.

Always remember, the house always wins. Unless you are the house. Okay.

Hey, Eryk, we're talking about murders. Should we have such a jocular tone on our episodes? I think it's a coping mechanism. Dark humor.

How else do you deal with nasty stuff? Yes, good point. But if you want to end on a positive note, the truth of the matter is none of this stuff happens in the daylight anymore. It's super rare, put it that way.

I can think of like maybe five incidents in the past 10 years where there's been something. And usually it's all minor, minor gangster stuff. Some idiot, you know, angry over some, but not the same as before.

Yes, yes. It's pretty minor stuff. Could be a dispute of betel nut territory.

All right. Yes, we better go. Thanks for listening to Formosa Files.

The book we've been referencing all through this is Heijin, Black Gold. Of course, there will be links in the show notes. I'm Eryk Michael Smith.

I'm John Ross. Bye.