The Black Widower - Taiwan (1985-2003)

On a cool spring morning in May 2003, deep in the misty mountains of central Taiwan, a chilling discovery was made. Near a scenic forest trail in the Shanlinxi resort area of Nantou County, the body of a young woman was found lying at the bottom of a ravine.

At first, local police wondered if it was a hiking accident. But as they surveyed the scene, unsettling details emerged: the woman's wrists bore marks as if they'd been tied, her skull was crushed by a blunt impact, and her belongings – including jewelry and cash – were missing.

This was no simple fall, it was a murder, and unraveling this tangled web would reveal a man driven by desperation and greed – a "black widower" who turned his own household into an 18-year insurance scheme of horrifying proportions.

Investigators identified the victim as 23-year-old Chen Yi-ling, an insurance sales agent from Chiayi County. Almost immediately, suspicion fell on someone close to her: Chen Rui-qin, a 54-year-old man she had recently begun dating. Just the day before, Chen Yi-ling had set off with him on what was supposed to be a leisurely weekend trip.

Now she was dead, and Chen Rui-qin had vanished. Police urgently tracked Chen Rui-qin down, and within days they found him – not on the run, but in a hospital bed. He had been beaten up by gangsters over unpaid gambling debts and was recovering at Chiayi Christian Hospital. Officers moved in and arrested him on suspicion of murder.

A Patchwork of Tragedy

Chen Rui-qin was no stranger to misfortune – or so it seemed. A former technician for a state-run oil company, he appeared to friends and neighbors as a mild-mannered family man who had suffered more than his fair share of tragedy. Over the previous two decades, Chen's life had been marked by an uncanny series of family deaths. His first wife had died in a bizarre accident. A teenage stepson perished suddenly. His young son was killed in an apparent hit-and-run. His second wife lost her life in a car crash. And a third wife's son also died tragically.

Five close relatives of Chen Rui-qin were gone, one after another, between 1985 and 1998. At each turn, Chen had been the grieving husband or father left behind, collecting condolences – and, as would later be discovered, collecting insurance payouts totaling over NT$18 million (more than $600,000 USD). For years, no one had connected the dots. Each death had been written off as an accident or natural misfortune. But now, with Chen Yi-ling's murder bringing new scrutiny, investigators began to see a pattern too disturbing to ignore.

The Oil Company Man

Chen Rui-qin's story begins in rural Chiayi County, Taiwan, where he was born in 1949. By the late 1970s, Chen seemed to be living a normal, respectable life. He was educated in agriculture and had served as an air force officer before settling into a civilian job at the state-owned Chinese Petroleum Corporation. In 1974, at age 25, he married Tseng Pi-hsia. Together they had three children – a son and two daughters – and settled into family life. Outsiders saw Chen as a hard-working husband and father. But behind closed doors, Chen struggled with a crippling gambling habit. He was addicted to underground lottery games and frequently in debt to loan sharks. This hidden desperation would soon turn deadly.

New Year's Day, 1985

On New Year's Day 1985, tragedy struck the Chen household. According to Chen's later statement, that day his 31-year-old wife Tseng Pi-hsia was at home when she slipped in the bathroom and suffered a concussion. She was laid to rest in bed to recover. But instead of helping his injured wife, Chen Rui-qin decided to seize an opportunity.

In what he would later admit was a cold-blooded act, Chen pulled Tseng off the bed and slammed her head onto the floor repeatedly, causing severe head trauma. Tseng Pi-hsia died from the injury. Chen claimed to everyone – doctors, police, family – that his wife must have accidentally fallen out of bed during the night. Since Chen was the only witness, authorities at the time accepted his story that it was a freak accident.

There was no thorough autopsy or murder inquiry. Instead, friends and relatives offered the grieving widower their sympathies. Not only did Chen escape any suspicion of foul play, he also quietly collected about NT$3.5 million in life insurance money on Tseng's death. No one in the family had known that Chen had taken out a substantial insurance policy on his wife's life. In fact, as would later come to light, he had purchased policies on Tseng without her knowledge, naming himself the sole beneficiary. The first payoff from murder had been made, and Chen's financial problems were temporarily solved.

A Hasty Remarriage

Barely six months after burying Tseng, Chen Rui-qin did something that, in hindsight, seems brazen. In mid-1985, he remarried with startling haste. His second wife was Wang Shu-ying, a thirtysomething elementary school teacher who had a young son from a previous marriage.

Wang likely saw Chen as a reliable widower with a stable job who could provide for her and her child. She moved into Chen's home in Chiayi along with her 12-year-old son Chen Yi-chi (whom Chen adopted as his stepson). To the outside world, Chen seemed to be rebuilding his life – a widowed father finding love again and taking responsibility for a new family. Nobody suspected that the death of his first wife had been anything other than a terrible accident.

If Wang Shu-ying had any private reservations about how quickly Chen wanted to remarry, or any inkling of his gambling debts, she didn't show it. By all accounts, the newly blended family settled into routine. For the next couple of years, nothing tragic happened. Wang continued teaching; Chen worked at the oil company; the children went to school. Perhaps those who knew Chen thought the dark cloud over his life had passed. They were wrong.

The Boy Who Came Home Late

In October 1988, another sudden calamity befell the family. Chen's stepson, 15-year-old Chen Yi-chi, died unexpectedly after an incident at home. The official story given later was that Chen Yi-chi had fallen and struck his head, resulting in fatal brain damage. But the circumstances were murky. One version reported to authorities was that the boy had come home late one night from cram school and was scolded by Chen for misbehavior.

In the course of this "discipline," it was said, Chen Yi-chi stumbled or fell against a wall and was knocked unconscious. He was rushed to a local hospital in Chiayi City, but his condition deteriorated. Despite treatment, the teenager died the next day from what doctors recorded as a cerebral hemorrhage – a catastrophic head injury. Chen Rui-qin once again appeared to be the distraught parent of a freak accident victim.

In reality, as Chen would only confess many years later, this was no accident at all. Buried under layers of lies was a horrific truth: Chen had killed his stepson Yi-chi with his own hands. Investigators eventually learned that Chen's gambling losses had mounted again by 1988. Desperate for cash, he decided to turn on his new family. On the pretext of punishing the boy for coming home late, Chen slapped the teenager hard – so hard that the boy's head slammed against a concrete wall. When that blow didn't immediately kill his stepson, Chen took further steps.

While Yi-chi was hospitalized in a fragile state, Chen waited for a moment when his wife Wang was out of the room. Then, in an act almost beyond imagining, he grabbed the unconscious boy's head and smashed it against the wall of the hospital room to ensure a fatal injury. By the time Wang Shu-ying returned, her son was dying. The boy succumbed to his injuries, and Chen feigned shock and sorrow.

Blood Money and Quiet Whispers

This second death in Chen's orbit might have raised more eyebrows if anyone had noticed the pattern. But the two tragedies were three years apart and involved different circumstances. One was a middle-aged woman's odd household accident; the other a teenager's fall after a scolding. No obvious link connected them in the eyes of the police. Importantly, no forensic autopsies or criminal investigations were pursued. And again, Chen profited: he had insured his stepson Yi-chi with multiple life insurance policies from five different companies, and he swiftly claimed about NT$4–5 million in payouts after the boy's death.

In fact, records later showed Chen had insured the boy at least five times over without informing his wife or the child – an enormous amount of coverage on a 15-year-old that should have been a red flag. But at the time, insurance companies handled each claim separately and didn't yet see the full picture. So Chen collected the money, paid off his gambling debts, and carried on.

To the people of his community, he was now twice unlucky – a man who had lost a wife and a son in succession. Some quietly whispered that Chen's family might be cursed or that bad feng shui plagued his home, because the string of misfortunes seemed so inexplicable. Little did they know these "misfortunes" were carefully engineered murders.

Father of the Year

By the early 1990s, Chen Rui-qin was living what looked on the surface like a quiet life in Chiayi. After the loss of her son, Wang Shu-ying remained married to Chen and continued working as a schoolteacher. The couple had a child together – a son named Chen Chien-hung, born in the early 1980s. Chen's two daughters from his first marriage were also part of the household.

Neighbors might have thought that Chen's family was moving past the earlier tragedies. But Chen's secret gambling habit persisted, and so did his financial troubles. Each time he ran up debts, his macabre solution was to stage yet another "accident" – this time targeting someone even closer to him.

By 1994-1995, Chen Rui-qin's gambling debts had once again spiraled out of control. He owed large sums to underground loan sharks and was under threat from debt collectors. Facing intense pressure, Chen selected his next victim: his own biological son, Chen Chien-hung, who was about 15 years old in 1995.

The teenager, by some accounts, had begun rebelling – there were rumors he was interested in joining a local gang. Chen later claimed this caused arguments between father and son. But whatever the pretext, Chen was plotting something far more sinister than discipline. He quietly obtained a hefty life insurance policy on Chien-hung, again without the boy's knowledge or consent. Then Chen waited for the right moment to strike.

One night in 1995, Chen lured Chien-hung out, possibly under the guise of a driving lesson or a father-son outing. At a secluded spot, Chen carried a heavy ornamental brick or stone – weighing several kilograms – and crept up behind his son. With a single brutal motion, Chen smashed the rock into the back of Chien-hung's head, cracking the teenager's skull. He left his gravely injured son to be "discovered" by passersby as a victim of a hit-and-run car accident.

Indeed, when help arrived, the scene suggested that the boy had been struck by a vehicle: Chien-hung was found near a road, badly hurt but with no car in sight. He was rushed to a local hospital and actually survived through the night.

Doctors treated him and even released him to recover at home, not realizing the true cause of his injury. Tragically, the following day Chien-hung slipped into a coma and died in his bed. The official cause of death was noted as complications from a traumatic head injury, assumed to be from the reported car accident. Chen's deception had worked. The death of his son was recorded as yet another accidental tragedy, and no one in authority challenged his version of events at the time.

Chen's second wife, Wang Shu-ying, was now the mother who had lost her only child. It is hard to fathom the grief and confusion Wang must have felt – first her stepson in 1988, now her biological son in 1995, both gone suddenly. Wang had also been unaware that her husband had insured Chien-hung's life for a large sum shortly before this "accident." Chen filed claims on his son's policies and received approximately NT$4.7 million in payouts.

As always, he used the money to pay off gambling debts and sustain his habit a while longer. If Wang noticed that Chen's financial stress seemed miraculously alleviated after their son's death, it may not have aroused suspicion – perhaps she assumed some of the money came from a settlement or donations. We can only imagine the psychological control and intimidation Chen may have exerted in his household to keep his wife from questioning too much. He had now killed three children under his care (one stepchild and two of his own sons) over the span of a decade. Each time, he played the role of the unlucky father and profited from the loss. And shockingly, he was not done.

The Staged Crash

Less than a year after Chien-hung's death, another deadly "accident" struck the family. In late 1996, Chen Rui-qin turned on his wife, Wang Shu-ying. Wang was 40 years old and in good health, with a stable career as a teacher. She also had significant financial assets – insurance coverage and even a pension, as Taiwanese schoolteachers enjoy government pension plans. Chen knew that if his wife died, not only could he claim life insurance on her, but he might also receive a lump-sum survivor's death benefit from the government for a deceased public servant. In Wang's case, this benefit was quite sizable. To Chen, who was again in debt, his wife's life was worth more dead than alive.

In December 1996, Chen suggested a road trip to his wife – perhaps a drive through the countryside to relax. Wang Shu-ying agreed, unaware of the trap being set. The couple drove out of town toward a rural stretch near Xingang Township in Chiayi County.

According to Chen's later confession, at some point on a quiet road Chen pulled the car over, claiming there was a problem, or perhaps initiating an argument to create a pretext. Then, Chen retrieved a long wooden stick he had hidden under the driver's seat. In the confined space of the car, he suddenly attacked Wang, beating her viciously with the club until she was bludgeoned to death.

With Wang's lifeless body in the passenger seat, Chen quickly staged the scene to look like a car accident. As he later demonstrated to police, Chen dragged his wife's body into the driver's seat of the vehicle and then pushed the car off the road, ramming it into a roadside guardrail. The idea was to make it appear that Wang had been driving, lost control of the car, and crashed. Chen himself did not remain at the crash scene. To complete the deception, he flagged down a passing motorist and hitched a ride home, claiming his wife's car had broken down and that he needed to go get help. He left Wang's body in the crashed car, confident that when authorities found the scene, they would conclude it was a single-car accident.

That is exactly what happened. Wang Shu-ying's body was discovered in her vehicle along a remote road, with fatal head wounds. There were no witnesses to any altercation, and the damage to the car suggested a crash. Investigators noted some oddities – for instance, why had Wang's car crashed with no other vehicles involved, and what had caused her massive head trauma beyond what a minor collision might inflict? Chen was interviewed as the husband and he explained that Wang had been driving alone and must have accidentally wrecked the car.

Perhaps, he suggested, she fell asleep at the wheel or swerved to avoid an animal. Chen even feigned remorse that he wasn't in the car too: he told police he had gotten out earlier to run an errand, leaving Wang to drive by herself, which is why he survived. With no evidence to the contrary, Wang's death was officially recorded as a road accident. Once again, Chen escaped all legal consequences for a murder he had meticulously planned and carried out.

In the aftermath, Chen saw a huge financial windfall. He filed claims on Wang Shu-ying's life insurance policies and received around NT$11.37 million in payouts – by far the largest single sum he had collected to date. Additionally, because Wang was a public school teacher, Chen was entitled to her government pension and death gratuity, which he indeed began to collect. This income would continue for years, intended to support the surviving spouse of a dedicated educator. Instead, it went into the pockets of her killer. By early 1997, Chen Rui-qin had rid himself of his debts once more, at the unthinkable cost of murdering his wife and teenage son within a year of each other.

For those keeping count – not that anyone publicly was at this point – Chen had been the beneficiary in four suspicious deaths by 1996: two wives and two sons. He had become, in essence, a serial killer preying on his own family members. Yet remarkably, no police investigation had ever connected these cases. Each death occurred in a different context and jurisdiction (some at home, some on the road, some at hospital), and over a span of more than a decade.

The victims were all immediate family, which sadly is not unheard of for genuine accidents (spouses do die, children tragically do have accidents). And Chen was careful to space out his crimes and vary his methods just enough to avoid obvious pattern recognition.

Furthermore, forensic pathology standards at the time in Taiwan were such that unless foul play was strongly suspected from the start, full autopsies were not always performed on accidental deaths. Chen manipulated this by staging causes of death (falls, crashes, etc.) that would not automatically trigger a criminal probe. In short, he exploited the trust of his community and the loopholes in the system perfectly.

The Widow Who Ran

Within his family circle, however, at least one person began to harbor grave suspicions. Yan Li-qin was a woman who knew Chen tangentially – she ran a small clothing boutique in town that Wang Shu-ying used to frequent. After Wang's untimely death in late 1996, the widowed Chen started visiting this boutique, striking up conversations with Yan Li-qin.

She was a 40-year-old widow with two children of her own. Chen, ever the chameleon, played the part of a heartbroken yet devoted husband who just couldn't bear his loneliness. He courted Yan persistently – visiting her shop, bringing small gifts, offering help. Within a couple of months, Chen's attentions wore down Yan's reluctance and she agreed to date him. Just over a month after Wang Shu-ying's death, Chen Rui-qin married Yan Li-qin in early 1997. It was his third marriage in 13 years, and like the others, it happened quickly on the heels of a tragedy.

Yan moved into Chen's home with her two children: a 17-year-old son Chen Tsung-ching and a younger daughter (name not widely reported). Initially, Yan Li-qin was unaware of the full history of deaths surrounding Chen.

She knew, of course, that his second wife (her predecessor) had died in a car accident. She likely also knew that Chen had lost a son recently, since that would have been local news in the community. But Chen presented himself as a double victim of fate – a poor man who lost a child and a wife so close together. Yan sympathized with him. She also probably saw a practical match: Chen had a decent salary and Wang's pension money; Yan had children to support and perhaps thought Chen could provide. The marriage went forward, and for a brief time, all was well.

However, Yan Li-qin proved to be far more alert and cautious than Chen's previous partners. Not long after moving in, she noticed some unsettling signs. Chen was overly interested in insurance matters. In fact, unbeknownst to Yan at first, Chen had immediately taken out life insurance policies on her and her two children soon after their marriage.

He insured 17-year-old Tsung-ching with no fewer than seven different insurance companies, totaling NT$15.5 million in coverage. The premiums on such policies were steep – reportedly over NT$20,000 per month in total – which was unusual for a modest household. When Yan discovered these policies (perhaps by finding paperwork or through a bank statement showing premium payments), she grew alarmed. Why was her new husband insuring her children for such enormous sums without even discussing it with her? It was not normal behavior, and it set off warning bells in Yan's mind.

Meanwhile, Chen was already formulating his next move. In late 1998, roughly a year into this third marriage, Chen was again deeply in debt from gambling. Seeing the large insurance coverage now on his teenage stepson Tsung-ching, he decided to act. One day, Tsung-ching complained of a severe headache. Chen kindly offered some medication – or so it seemed.

In truth, he gave the 17-year-old a sedative, likely a sleeping pill, under the guise of a painkiller. When Tsung-ching became groggy and fell into a deep sleep, Chen hoisted the boy up, slung him over his shoulder, and carried him toward the staircase of their home. In a horrifying replay of his earlier methods, Chen dropped the unconscious teenager head-first down the stairs, ensuring a massive head injury. He then rushed Tsung-ching to the hospital, claiming that the boy had tripped and fallen down the stairwell by accident.

Tsung-ching suffered severe brain swelling (cerebral edema) and, despite medical efforts, died from his injuries shortly thereafter. Chen attempted to claim a whopping NT$15 million in insurance payouts for this death, presenting it as an unfortunate household accident.

But this time, things did not go entirely according to plan for Chen. The insurance companies hesitated. They had started to see something suspicious about Mr. Chen Rui-qin. By now, multiple insurers across Taiwan had paid out large sums on different claims involving Chen's family members. When Chen filed this new claim for his 17-year-old stepson's tragic fall, one company's adjuster noticed a disturbing coincidence: several of Chen's relatives had died of head injuries in recent years, each insured for significant amounts.

This raised a red flag. In fact, the insurer on Tsung-ching's policy initially refused to pay the full benefit. They conducted their own quiet investigation, uncovering that Chen had forged Tsung-ching's signature on the insurance application (since the policyholder or insured's consent is normally required). The company paid only a token sum of NT$250,000 to Chen – a small fraction of the claim – citing irregularities. Suddenly, Chen's easy money pipeline was choked off. Even more importantly, the insurance industry as a whole finally woke up to the pattern of deaths surrounding Chen.

For Yan Li-qin, the death of her son Tsung-ching in 1998 was the final straw. Not only was she devastated by the loss, but she also strongly suspected that Chen had murdered her boy. The circumstances made no sense to her – a healthy teenager fatally falling down stairs in the middle of the day? Her shock turned to fear when she learned about the large insurance policies Chen had secretly placed on both her and her children. It was clear that Tsung-ching had been worth a fortune to Chen if he died. Yan realized with horror that she and her daughter might be next on Chen's list.

In early 1999, summoning remarkable courage, Yan Li-qin left Chen. She initiated divorce proceedings and, incredibly, Chen tried to extort a "breakup fee" of over NT$1 million from her during the split. Yan paid him off just to sever ties and save her and her daughter's lives. She "escaped with her life," as later media reports put it. But she did not stay silent.

After getting away, Yan began speaking to authorities and anyone who would listen about her suspicions. She was convinced Chen had killed her son and possibly others, and she wanted justice. "Chen Rui-qin should be torn to pieces!" Yan Li-qin said angrily of her ex-husband, expressing the depth of her revulsion and hatred. Her cries for help were finally about to find receptive ears.

Hiding Under the Table

By 2000, Chen Rui-qin's murderous activities were drawing serious scrutiny. The insurance companies, alarmed by the string of claims, took action that year. A consortium of life insurance firms banded together and lodged a joint complaint to authorities about Chen. They provided details: five of Chen's close relatives had died in unusual accidents between 1985 and 1998, and Chen had been the beneficiary of policies on each of them. In total, they noted, Chen had received an estimated NT$20–22 million in insurance payouts from these deaths.

This was highly irregular and suggested a pattern of insurance fraud or worse. The case caught the attention of a legislator named Chen Chao-jung , who was then a member of Taiwan's Legislative Yuan (parliament). Legislator Chen took the complaint very seriously. In September 2000, he held a press conference to publicly air the allegations that a Chiayi man was murdering family members for insurance money. This was explosive news, and it put an unwelcome spotlight on Chen Rui-qin, who until then had managed to avoid public suspicion.

What happened next was a remarkable confrontation. Determined to get to the bottom of things, Legislator Chen Chao-jung personally traveled to Chiayi and paid an unannounced visit to Chen Rui-qin's residence. He essentially ambushed Chen, likely accompanied by media or investigators, demanding an explanation for the series of deaths. Chen Rui-qin, upon seeing the lawmaker and realizing that his murderous secret might be exposed, panicked. According to later reports, the 51-year-old Chen was so frightened that he literally crawled under his dining table to hide.

He refused to come out or speak to the legislator. Instead, he sent his then-wife (Yan Li-qin, who had not yet divorced him at that moment) to the door to shoo the visitors away and insist that her husband was being falsely accused. This bizarre scene – a grown man cowering under a table to avoid questioning – was a strong indicator that Chen had plenty to fear. Legislator Chen publicly accused him of killing his wives and children for insurance, warning that such evil acts could not go unpunished.

However, despite these dramatic accusations, the legal outcome in 2000 was frustrating. Local police and prosecutors reviewed the five past deaths, but each case was old and had been officially ruled accidental. The evidence of murder was thin – no autopsies had been done at the time, and bodies had long been buried or cremated.

Other than suspicious insurance patterns and Yan Li-qin's testimony of her suspicions, authorities had no concrete proof to charge Chen Rui-qin then. The deaths were years apart and in different jurisdictions, making it challenging to piece together a prosecutable case. As a result, the investigation stalled. Eventually, the storm blew over and no charges were filed in 2000. Chen Rui-qin even had the audacity to claim he was being slandered; he threatened to sue the legislator for defamation, loudly protesting his innocence and portraying himself as a victim of baseless accusations.

For the families of the victims – like Yan Li-qin, or Wang Shu-ying's relatives – this lack of action must have been infuriating. They knew something was terribly wrong, but the system had not yet caught up with Chen. Police privately continued to suspect him, but with no hard evidence, they could only watch and hope for a breakthrough. In the meantime, they quietly alerted insurance companies and local officials to be wary of Chen.

Indeed, multiple insurers took the rare step of effectively blacklisting Chen Rui-qin – deciding not to issue any new policies on anyone close to him. Chen had become too risky; his name was synonymous with dubious claims. This pressure and publicity may have had one positive effect: it saved Yan Li-qin and her daughter's lives.

After the confrontation, Yan discovered that Chen had insured both her and her daughter for large sums as well. Having already been wary, Yan immediately divorced Chen (as noted earlier) and got herself and her daughter out safely. She paid him off and cut ties, effectively depriving Chen of any further targets within the family.

By the end of 2000, Chen Rui-qin was alone. He had no spouse (divorced by Yan), no remaining sons (he had murdered all three male children under his care), and his two daughters from the first marriage were grown and apparently not in his custody. He was also essentially barred from profiting off insurance on any more relatives – no company would touch him now. One would think that with the spotlight on him and having run out of insurable family, Chen's deadly career would have ended there.

And for a while, it did go quiet. But Chen's "demon", as he might have thought of it, was his gambling addiction. Despite everything, he continued to gamble and rack up debt into the early 2000s. By 2003, Chen Rui-qin was once again in dire financial straits, borrowing from loan sharks and facing violent debt collectors.

Unable to take out more insurance on relatives, Chen turned to a new scheme: outright robbery. He would find a victim with money, kill them, and steal their cash and valuables. In other words, having exhausted killing his own kin, Chen was prepared to kill an outsider for profit. Fatefully, he set his sights on the young insurance saleswoman Chen Yi-ling, a woman whose very job was selling life insurance policies.

One Last Victim

In the spring of 2003, Chen Rui-qin became acquainted with Chen Yi-ling. Despite sharing a common surname, the two were not related; "Chen" is a very common last name in Taiwan. Yi-ling was an insurance agent in her mid-20s, described as an attractive and outgoing woman. It's possible Chen sought her out under the pretext of buying an insurance policy – ironically so, given his history – or perhaps they met through a chance encounter.

In any case, Chen Rui-qin courted Chen Yi-ling quickly and aggressively. She was significantly younger, but Chen presented himself as a relatively well-off, if somewhat lonely, older man. He still had some trappings of respectability – a government pension from Wang's death coming in, perhaps a car (he owned a black Jeep SUV), and involvement in local religious volunteering which made him seem pious. Yi-ling may have seen him as a decent prospect or at least a generous suitor.

After only a brief acquaintance – reportedly just two days of knowing each other romantically – Chen Rui-qin put his final murderous plan into action. He learned that Chen Yi-ling had substantial savings, possibly commissions from her insurance sales job. In early May 2003, he asked her to lend him money to help with a mortgage payment, playing the part of a boyfriend in need. Yi-ling was hesitant but said she would consider it. Unbeknownst to her, Chen wasn't interested in a loan; he intended to take everything she had.

Into the Mountains

On May 9, 2003, Chen Rui-qin invited Chen Yi-ling on a day trip. He suggested they visit a famous temple – Wuxian ("Five Immortals") Temple – in the town of Zhushan, Nantou County. Perhaps framing it as a scenic drive and spiritual outing, he coaxed her into his black Jeep for a ride into the mountains. Yi-ling did manage to call a friend or two that day, mentioning she was with Chen, which later would aid investigators. The pair were seen on CCTV cameras leaving Chiayi and heading toward Nantou – one camera caught Chen's Jeep license plate number 3M-5283 on the road to Zhushan.

At some point during their excursion, likely once they were in a remote area, Chen put his prepared plan into motion. He had brought along a bottle of Baogan pills (a kind of traditional herbal sedative). While they stopped, perhaps for a picnic or rest, Chen surreptitiously opened a capsule and filled it with a strong sleeping powder. He gave this doctored pill to Chen Yi-ling, maybe under the guise of a motion sickness remedy or a health supplement. Trusting her new boyfriend, Yi-ling swallowed the pill. It wasn't long before the drug took effect and she fell into a heavy, groggy sleep inside the car.

Seizing the moment, Chen tied up Yi-ling's hands tightly with nylon rope so she couldn't escape when she woke. He then drove further into the secluded mountain area, eventually stopping at a desolate spot near Daan Mountain in Zhushan. When Chen Yi-ling began to regain consciousness, she found herself bound and at the mercy of Chen.

It's reported that Chen cruelly taunted her by saying he "wanted to play" – a terrifying statement that preceded a vicious beating. Chen Rui-qin punched and struck Yi-ling until she lost consciousness again, either from the blows or strangulation. During this assault, Chen later admitted, he became sexually aroused. He attempted to rape Chen Yi-ling while she was unconscious or semi-conscious. Due to his own issues with sexual dysfunction, he was unable to complete the act in the usual way, but he did sexually assault her – an act of utter depravity against a defenseless victim. For this, Chen would later be additionally charged with rape.

After this assault, Chen faced a choice: he had subdued Yi-ling and could simply leave her tied up, or he could finish his crime. He contemplated throwing her off a cliff alive, to stage an accident, but worried she might survive or later identify him. Ultimately, Chen decided to kill her. Before he did, though, he made sure to rob her of all valuables.

He took from Chen Yi-ling everything of worth she had on her: her gold Rolex watch, a jade necklace, rings, her wallet containing NT$1 million in cash, credit and ATM cards, two mobile phones, and even blank bank checks she carried. Satisfied with gathering her riches, Chen then lifted a large stone and smashed it into Yi-ling's head, inflicting the fatal blow. He dragged her limp body out of the vehicle and hurled her off a steep cliff into a wooded ravine, several dozen meters deep. Chen Yi-ling's body disappeared into the brush below.

Chen Rui-qin left the remote scene, blood on his hands but a bag of stolen loot in his car. In a final act of callousness, he picked up another woman – a casual girlfriend he had on the side – and with her, he drove to Taipei as if on a carefree trip. On the way, he even gifted the stolen Rolex watch to this other girlfriend, likely spinning a lie about how he acquired it. However, Chen encountered a snag when he tried to access the cash in Yi-ling's bank accounts.

He had her ATM and credit cards, but he didn't know her PIN codes. Attempts to guess them failed, and the bank's system flagged the attempted withdrawals. This was a trail that would soon lead authorities right to him. Chen had committed a brutal murder, but he hadn't covered his electronic tracks.

Meanwhile, back in Nantou, Chen Yi-ling's disappearance had not gone unnoticed. When she didn't return home that night or answer calls, her family grew concerned. By the next day, May 10, 2003, a missing persons report was likely filed. Search efforts in the mountain area were underway by local police who retraced the couple's path. On May 12, 2003, hikers discovered Chen Yi-ling's body at the bottom of a ravine in the Shanlinxi forest – exactly where Chen had thrown her.

It was a ghastly find: Yi-ling had severe head wounds and her hands were still bound with rope. Investigators at the scene knew immediately this was a homicide. Nantou County prosecutors took charge of the case. They quickly identified Chen Rui-qin – the last person seen with Yi-ling – as the prime suspect. Cell phone records showed multiple calls between Yi-ling and Chen on the day of the murder, and CCTV footage confirmed his vehicle had been in the area. Additionally, bank alerts on Yi-ling's ATM card led police to realize someone had tried to use her accounts in the hours after her death. All signs pointed to Chen.

A manhunt ensued. But as it turned out, Chen did not get far. On May 22, 2003, just 10 days after the body's discovery, police arrested Chen Rui-qin at Chiayi Christian Hospital. In a stroke of poetic justice, Chen had been beaten black and blue by debt collectors – the very loansharks he was trying to pay off with his crimes – and he had checked himself into the hospital for treatment of his injuries. He was essentially hiding in plain sight. When officers arrived, Chen did not resist. He likely knew the gig was up. He was taken into custody, initially on charges of robbery and murder for Chen Yi-ling's case, under the jurisdiction of the Nantou District Prosecutors' Office.

"I'll Tell You Everything"

Once Chen Rui-qin was under arrest, the floodgates opened. Investigators from Nantou and Chiayi counties teamed up, along with officers from the National Criminal Investigation Bureau, to re-examine every suspicious death connected to Chen's past.

At first, Chen denied everything except involvement in Chen Yi-ling's death. During early interrogations, he admitted to killing Chen Yi-ling – claiming they had quarreled about his financial problems during the drive and he "lost control" – but he insisted that the deaths of his family members were coincidences. In fact, he specifically denied harming his second wife Wang Shu-ying at the outset, sticking to the story that her crash was an accident.

However, the evidence against Chen was mounting and the net was tightening. Investigators confronted him with the pattern: five dead relatives, large insurance payouts, and his presence in each case. They had long conversations with Chen, pressing him for the truth. According to Nantou County's chief prosecutor at the time, Wang Ching-chieh, an overnight breakthrough came after persistent questioning. On May 28, 2003, in the early hours, Chen Rui-qin finally broke down and confessed – in chilling detail – to multiple murders beyond Chen Yi-ling.

Chen admitted that four of his family members' deaths were his doing, motivated by his desire to collect insurance money. He still tried to omit one: he bizarrely maintained that Wang Shu-ying (his second wife) had not been murdered by him, perhaps clinging to a shred of denial or hoping to spare himself one charge. But for the others, he laid out the heinous truth:

Chen confessed he pushed his first wife, Tseng Pi-hsia, out of bed when she was injured, causing her fatal head injury in 1985.

He admitted he choked his 15-year-old stepson to death at home three years later.

He confessed that after staging the car accident in 1995, he personally beat his son's head with a brick to ensure he would die.

Chen admitted he slammed his third wife's son, Chen Tsung-ching, head against a wall to cause the deadly brain damage om 1998.

These were shocking admissions, but they confirmed what investigators had suspected. Chen also acknowledged the extensive insurance fraud behind each case – he had secretly insured all five relatives and made himself sole beneficiary on every policy, forging signatures when necessary. This meant none of the victims even knew they were insured, nor consented to it. It was pure predation.

Armed with Chen's confession, prosecutors moved swiftly to corroborate and reconstruct the crimes. They organized crime scene re-enactments, taking Chen Rui-qin out in chains to each relevant location to demonstrate how he committed the murders.

On June 6, 2003, for example, Chen was brought to the rural road in Xingang where Wang Shu-ying had died. In front of police and camera crews, Chen re-enacted how he drugged Wang, beat her with a stick, placed her body in the driver's seat and rolled the car to fake the accident. Investigators had him repeat the motions – swinging the length of wood, pretending to strike – while they documented the process.

They even prompted him with questions: "What did you do next?" an officer asked. "I just kept hitting down like this," Chen replied coolly, demonstrating his blows. The officer asked if the second hit was harder. "Yes, from behind, I struck," Chen explained. Watching this play-acting of murder must have been harrowing for the victims' families who were present.

Chen also showed how he killed his stepson Tsung-ching: dragging the drugged teen to the staircase and smashing his head on the concrete floor. Five deaths that had once been deemed "accidental" were now clearly proven to be intentional homicides – "the true causes finally came to light," as one news report put it.

Understandably, emotions ran high during these re-enactments. The families of the victims were invited to observe, perhaps for some closure or confirmation. They had to watch the man who murdered their loved ones nonchalantly demonstrate his evil deeds. Many were overwhelmed with anger. According to reports, armed police provided heavy security during the re-enactments to prevent any relatives from attacking Chen on the spot. Some family members shouted that they wanted justice.

One victim's daughter cried out to the press, "My mother was killed by them (him and his accomplices). I hope the prosecutor can help vent our anger!". The pain and fury were palpable. Yet, not a hair on Chen Rui-qin's head was harmed during these procedures – the law would take its course, and vigilante revenge was not allowed.

The re-investigation also looked beyond the known five family murders. Authorities suspected Chen in at least two other disappearances of women. Years earlier, two female friends of Chen's had vanished under strange circumstances: one was Huang Xin-cheng, a colleague of Chen's second wife, who went missing after withdrawing NT$600,000 from a bank; the other was Cheng Weng-qiu-xiang, a co-worker from Chen's oil company, who vanished one night after going out for a late snack with Chen.

Chen denied involvement in these cases, claiming someone else abducted them, and there was no concrete evidence tying him. Investigators noted his denials, but kept the cases open in case new clues emerged. Ultimately, those two women were never found and remain unsolved mysteries. If Chen did harm them, he never confessed to it. Thus, the total suspected victims of Chen Rui-qin stands at up to 8, though he was formally charged with 6 murders (the five relatives plus Chen Yi-ling).

Chen's openness didn't last forever. After his initial confession and co-operation in re-enactments (likely motivated by a hope of leniency), he eventually grew fearful of the looming punishment. Once the full weight of charges came down – including multiple counts of murder, plus robbery, plus rape – Chen tried to recant.

He suddenly claimed that, actually, he had nothing to do with the missing women (which authorities already suspected), and he even retracted some family murder admissions, perhaps thinking it would help if any evidence was lacking. He cynically offered to assist in finding the missing women if prosecutors would spare him, but this bluff was called – investigators knew he was just trying to bargain for life. The evidence and earlier confession were more than enough to proceed.

Five Times Condemned

In July 2003, the Nantou District Prosecutors' Office formally indicted Chen Rui-qin for the rape, robbery, and murder of Chen Yi-ling, seeking the death penalty for that crime. Around the same time, in Chiayi, prosecutors indicted him for the murders of his relatives, though the handling of those charges was legally complex because of the time lapse and the fact that Chen had confessed (which under Taiwanese law could be considered a form of voluntary surrender that might reduce the penalty). Chen was now facing the ultimate judgment for his decades of deceit.

The legal proceedings for Chen Rui-qin's case spanned several years and involved multiple trials and appeals. Given the number of murders and the intricacies of the law, the courts had to decide how to sentence a man who had killed so many people over such a long period. Public sentiment was strongly in favor of the harshest punishment – Chen had become one of Taiwan's most reviled criminals, dubbed the "Chiayi Demon" by the media for his cruel crimes. But the court also had to apply the law as written, which included considerations for confessing to crimes.

In December 2004, the Chiayi District Court delivered its verdict in the family murders case. Chen Rui-qin was found guilty of five counts of murder (for Tseng Pi-hsia, Chen Yi-chi, Chen Chien-hung, Wang Shu-ying, and Chen Tsung-ching) and one count of insurance fraud. The court initially sentenced him to five death sentences and one life imprisonment (the life term presumably for one of the murders or as a combined penalty).

Effectively, he was condemned to death five times over – a strong statement, albeit symbolic since one execution would suffice. Meanwhile, for the Nantou case of Chen Yi-ling's murder, Chen was also sentenced to death in a separate trial, because that murder involved additional heinous elements (sexual assault and robbery).

However, Taiwan's judicial system allows for multiple levels of appeal, and Chen utilized every avenue. The case moved to the High Court and back and forth in retrials. In a controversial twist, at one point the Tainan Branch of the Taiwan High Court (which heard the appeal for the Chiayi case) decided to reduce Chen's penalty for the family murders. In what was the fifth trial on those charges, the High Court judges ruled that because Chen had cooperated with investigators, demonstrated some remorse, and because of amendments to the law regarding voluntary surrender/confession, he qualified for a reduced sentence.

They sentenced him to a 20-year fixed prison term for the five murders of his relatives. This meant that, unbelievably, for killing two wives and three children, Chen would serve just 20 years and potentially be eligible for parole in the distant future. This decision outraged the victims' families and the public. Many felt it was a miscarriage of justice that someone who so coldly plotted the deaths of his kin for profit would escape the death penalty on a legal technicality.

It's important to note, though, that Chen still faced a separate death sentence for the murder of Chen Yi-ling. The High Court did not spare him in that case; given the brutality of the rape-murder and the fact that it was a direct, recent crime (not one he confessed to before being a suspect), the courts maintained that capital punishment was appropriate.

In 2009, Taiwan's Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for the murder of Chen Yi-ling, rejecting all of Chen's appeals in that case. This finalized his fate: no matter how the other sentences played out, he would be executed for the Nantou case at least.

Chen Rui-qin did not give up trying to save himself. Between 2011 and 2013, while on death row, he filed at least eight petitions for retrial and various appeals, essentially throwing every possible argument at the courts to delay or overturn his execution. All of these efforts were denied. The judiciary had had enough – the evidence was overwhelming and every proper procedure had been followed. There was no doubt as to Chen's guilt.

Finally, on April 19, 2013, after a decade of legal wrangling, the ultimate justice was carried out. The Minister of Justice at the time, Tseng Yung-fu, signed the execution order for Chen Rui-qin. That evening, at the Taichung Detention Center where Chen was held (formerly Taichung Prison), the sentence was implemented. In Taiwan, executions are traditionally done by shooting, with the condemned first given a strong anesthetic to render them unconscious. Chen Rui-qin, 63 years old, was offered a last meal, which he refused to eat – perhaps out of anger or despair.

He was then brought to the execution chamber. As the lethal drugs flowed, Chen reportedly took a deep breath, bracing himself. The anesthetic alone did not kill him, so as per procedure, once he was comatose, executioners placed him face-down on a mound of sand and shot him once in the head, ending his life. Thus, after 18 years of committing murders and another 10 years of legal battles, Chen Rui-qin was finally executed.

Chen's execution was one of six carried out in Taiwan that day (Taiwan often executes several death-row inmates at a time). With his death, the case that had haunted so many for so long reached its final conclusion. Yet, even in death, Chen managed one last act of ignominy. Having murdered all his male heirs, no one came forward to claim his body. In traditional Chinese culture, typically a son would handle funeral rites for a father, but Chen had killed his only son and both stepsons.

His two surviving daughters, understandably, wanted nothing to do with him. Even the ex-wives' families and extended relatives shunned his remains. Chen had signed consent to donate his organs, perhaps hoping to make a final gesture of atonement, but no hospital would accept the organs of an executed serial killer. As a result, his corpse remained unclaimed in a morgue freezer, a Jane Doe in all but name, until the authorities eventually disposed of it quietly. It was a lonely, unmourned end for a man who had shown no mercy to those closest to him.

No One Claimed the Body

The Chen Rui-qin case left an indelible mark on Taiwan's collective consciousness. This was a man who violated the most fundamental trust – that between family members – turning love and kinship into instruments of profit. The sheer cold-blooded calculation involved in murdering five relatives over so many years earned Chen epithets like "Black Widower" and "Poisonous Husband" in the Chinese press.

National newspapers ran lurid headlines about the "Insurance Murder Demon" who had finally been brought to justice. As details emerged during the trial, people were horrified by how Chen had masked his cruelty with a facade of normalcy – he was an unassuming engineer who even volunteered at a temple and appeared devout, all while plotting murders. It prompted a lot of soul-searching in Taiwan about whether one can ever truly know what goes on behind closed doors.

Families of the victims expressed both relief and lingering anguish after Chen's execution. Yan Li-qin, the third ex-wife who survived, voiced bitter satisfaction. "Nobody should collect the dead body… This person should have died long ago… Late justice is not justice," she told reporters, criticizing how long it took to finally punish Chen. To Yan and others, the fact that Chen lived freely for years after his crimes, and then even got a reduced sentence initially, was a painful delay.

But ultimately, seeing him face a firing squad did offer some sense of closure. The daughter of Wang Shu-ying (Chen's second wife) and the relatives of Tseng Pi-hsia likely felt similarly – a monster who destroyed their family members was gone for good. There was sorrow too, especially for those two missing women (Huang and Cheng) whose fates remain unknown, leaving some questions unanswered.

The case also had an impact on Taiwan's insurance industry and law enforcement. Insurance companies, embarrassed at having been duped, tightened their procedures for issuing policies on someone's life. It became harder to secretly insure another person without their knowledge; companies instituted stricter identity verification and cross-checks, so that a single person taking out many policies on relatives would draw attention.

In fact, Chen's scam unveiled that in the 1990s, insurers often did not share data, allowing one person to stack multiple policies across companies. After 2000, the industry improved information-sharing to catch unusual patterns sooner. There was also a call for more rigorous autopsies in accidental death cases when large insurance sums are involved – essentially, to treat high-payout "accidents" with a bit more skepticism to rule out foul play.

In Taiwanese criminal history, Chen Rui-qin's name is now firmly listed among the most notorious. The fact that his motive was greed, not passion or impulse, and that his victims were his own kin, makes his story particularly heinous. Criminologists and psychologists have pondered how a seemingly ordinary man could compartmentalize such evil for so long.

He even tried to bribe police with NT$4 million during his arrest, offering them land or money if they let him go, saying he could extort his ex-wife for more cash if needed. Of course, the officers rejected this outright, appalled by his audacity.

Chen's gambling habit was the root that led him down this path. In Mandarin, they say "out of ten gambles, nine you lose" – and Chen's life exemplified that.

Chen's life ended ignominiously, and his ghost, if one believes in such things, carries the weight of six innocent souls he sent to the afterlife.