The body of a third victim who allegedly died while being held by a local extortion ring that kidnapped and tortured dozens of people was found Sunday on a roadway slope in Nantou County, according to police in New Taipei.
During a police raid on a criminal gang in Taoyuan’s Zhongli District last Friday, 32 men and women were found imprisoned while information on computers at the scene indicated that another three persons had died in captivity, according to the New Taipei Police Department.
The remains of two of the three deceased were found in mountainous areas in Taoyuan’s Guishan District, police said Saturday.
On Sunday, during a further search, the body believed to be that of the third dead was found in a suitcase on a mountain road near the 74.4-kilometer mark of the Taiwan Provincial Highway No. 21, according to police.
The remains were later identified by a forensic expert to be that of a man surnamed Huang (黃), 38, who is believed to have died after falling from the 11th floor of a building last month, police said.
Huang’s remains were taken to the mountain road near the Sun Moon Lake in Nantou, according to police citing a suspect connected to the criminal ring.
The deaths of the three people were linked to the criminal organization which allegedly kidnapped and forcibly detained job-seekers after luring them on the pretext of interviewing for high-paying jobs, according to police.
Police have arrested at least 20 suspects, including three in charge of abandoning the bodies of the three deceased.
Meanwhile, a main suspect, identified as Chen Hua-wei (陳樺韋), 35, has been detained and held incommunicado after the Shilin District Court granted a request by prosecutors Sunday.
Police have identified the two deceased in Guishan as a 45-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃) and a 57-year-old man surnamed Lin (林).
The two bodies have been moved to a government-run funeral parlor in Taoyuan for an autopsy in a bid to determine the cause of the death, police said.
Police first conducted a raid in New Taipei’s Tamsui last Wednesday that rescued 26 captives, then carried out another raid in Zhongli on Friday where another 32 captives were found, according to the New Taipei Police Department.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel