Investigation Report on the Lin Family Massacre

On February 28, 1980, while the Formosa Incident (the 1980 Rebellion Case No. 2 involving Huang Hsin-chieh and others) was undergoing a preliminary hearing at the Jingmei Military Law Bureau, Lin Yi-hsiung's wife, Fang Su-min, went to the bureau to attend the hearing. Around noon, the Lin residence located at No. 16, Lane 31, Section 3, Xinyi Road, Taipei, was broken into. The assailant attacked Lin Yi-hsiung's mother and three daughters, resulting in a tragedy of three deaths and one serious injury that shocked Taiwanese society. Nearly forty years have passed since the Lin Family Massacre occurred. During this period, in addition to the initial investigation led by the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB), reinvestigations were launched by the CIB and other agencies in 1996, 1998, 2007, and 2009. However, no significant progress was made. Due to the long-standing inability to solve the case, the Lin Family Massacre became a cold case.

In May 2018, the Transitional Justice Commission (hereinafter referred to as the Commission) was established. It promptly launched a reinvestigation into major political cases in accordance with Article 2, Paragraph 2, Subparagraph 3 and Article 4, Paragraph 2 of the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice. There has long been a suspicion in Taiwanese society that this case was not a simple criminal matter, but rather a "political murder."

Further inferences are largely as former Vice President Annette Lu stated in her book "Re-examining the Formosa Incident": "In broad daylight, especially when the families of those involved in the Kaohsiung Incident were under close surveillance... if the killer were an ordinary petty criminal, they would have been caught long ago. How could they be allowed to enter as if into an uninhabited place and be permitted to brutally kill four people in succession?" Attorney Chang Cheng-hsiung, who defended Lin Yi-hsiung during the Formosa Incident, also provided four reasons in an interview with the Commission for believing the massacre was not an ordinary case: 1. The method of killing Lin's immediate family was shocking and meant to terrorize; 2. Choosing February 28th to commit the crime carried a political warning; 3. The perpetrator acted with impunity in broad daylight and remained in the house for 80 minutes, showing an understanding of the family's schedule and suggesting surveillance, and even dared to call and report the results afterward; 4. Killing two people was not enough, as the killer waited on-site for the third and fourth victims, indicating a mission-oriented nature. Consequently, the Lin Family Massacre is one of the important tasks for the Commission to restore historical truth. For the public, the truth of the massacre remains insufficiently clarified despite multiple investigations, and the investigation processes themselves have added many doubts to the case.

Therefore, the Commission hopes to use the perspective of transitional justice to restore historical truth as the main axis of the reopened investigation. The goal is to clarify whether the state bears responsibility for the massacre itself and the failure to reveal the truth despite multiple investigations, and to respond to public skepticism.

To this end, the primary task is to clarify whether the state fulfilled its investigative obligations based on past investigation files and related archives. Over the past year, the Commission has actively coordinated with various agencies regarding the declassification and retrieval of archives, achieving phased results. Regarding "responding to public skepticism," the Commission attempts to address whether the state was aware of, intervened in, or even participated in the process of the incident. In this regard, based on "surveillance of Lin Yi-hsiung’s family and the Lin residence itself," the Commission has thoroughly cross-referenced relevant archives, supplemented by other investigations, to present specific findings in this report.

The reason "surveillance" is considered key is that it addresses both "clarifying state responsibility" and "responding to public skepticism." Investigations following the massacre failed to include "whether the Lin residence was under state surveillance" as an important context or direction. This not only missed early investigative opportunities but also led to the potential loss of evidence that could have revealed the truth. As Academia Sinica researcher Wu Nai-teh stated: "For decades, it has been common political knowledge that intelligence units closely monitored political dissidents. After leaders of the democratic movement were arrested, their families also found intelligence personnel following them like shadows. What kind of person would have the ability to conduct such a high-risk operation in a busy area during the day under strict surveillance?" Previous investigations either ignored this consideration or could not obtain relevant data to confirm or deny this hypothesis. For private scholars and experts who have long followed this case, answering the prerequisite question of whether the Lin residence was under surveillance at the time of the crime is also helpful in researching whether the case was indeed a "political murder."

Accordingly, highlighting the theme of "surveillance" to remedy the deficiencies of previous investigations is the main axis established by the Commission from the perspective of transitional justice. Based on this, it also hopes to respond to the unresolved doubts that surfaced during the investigation process.

The Investigation Report on the Lin Family Massacre is divided into three chapters. The first chapter is an overview, explaining the connection between the Commission's reinvestigation and transitional justice work, and presenting the exploration of state surveillance as the main thread. The second section of this chapter explains the domestic and international situation in the 1970s prior to the massacre and the details of the incident. The third section reviews previous investigations, and the fourth section briefly describes the planning and methods of the Commission's reinvestigation. Chapter 2 is the Commission's factual investigation of the Lin Family Massacre, which clarifies doubts from previous investigations and presents evidence of surveillance found by the Commission. Chapter 3 is the conclusion.