Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) was 25 years old when she arrived at the house of her former boss, democracy activist Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), to find the slain bodies of his 6-year-old twin daughters and his 60-year-old mother. His 9-year-old daughter had sustained critical stab wounds but survived.
Tomorrow marks the 46th anniversary of these murders. The tragedy occurred during the White Terror in Taiwan, an era of repression led by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that was defined by martial law and the violent suppression of political dissent. At the time of the murders, Lin was in prison for his role in the Kaohsiung Incident, a crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations that occurred the year prior. His family’s house in Taipei was under 24-hour surveillance by the military police.
Tien decided to reopen an old wound to tell her story, even though speaking about it in detail prevents her from sleeping at night. She fears that the massacre is at risk of being forgotten or misremembered.
“In the process of Taiwan’s democratization, I see kindness in people. I see bolder, braver choices made by the public when they know the truth,” Tien said at an event organized by the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club on February 25.
A two-year investigation into the murders by the National Security Bureau; Taiwan’s military police, the Taiwan Garrison Command; and other agencies yielded no suspects, although investigators put forward several theories, including that the perpetrator was another democracy activist, a family friend or a foreign agent. The case has been reopened multiple times to reexamine physical evidence without success.
It remains a cold case today. But Tien has her suspicions. Reports published by the Transitional Justice Commission, a now-defunct independent government agency, in 2020 and the Control Yuan in 2023 found evidence that authorities interfered with and misdirected the investigation.
For one, intelligence agencies did not seriously pursue the possibility that the order was carried out by the regime or by rogue security personnel. Declassified documents suggest that evidence was destroyed or hidden by the National Security Bureau, including flushed phone records of a call from inside the house to a restaurant at the time of the murder. The reports also concluded that intelligence agencies deliberately misled the public regarding the identity of the perpetrator.
“When you paint all the clouds, you have the moon,” Tien said.
The Lin family massacre was one of a series of assassinations that occurred in the 1980s as the KMT regime began to lose legitimacy and the democracy movement picked up momentum. In 1981, Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), a Carnegie Mellon professor from Taipei, was found dead on the National Taiwan University campus after being taken in for questioning by the Taiwan Garrison Command. In 1984, Henry Liu (劉宜良), the biographer and critic of then-President Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), was assassinated by members of the Bamboo Union gang at his home in California. A tape-recorded confession by the gang leader reveals that state authorities directed them to conduct the hit.
Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), a leading pro-democracy figure and the Vice President during Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration, said at a 2017 press conference that a former intelligence officer told her that the hit on the Lin family was ordered by the intelligence agencies. They were seeking revenge for an attempted assasination of the son of a prominent KMT security official, which occurred just 10 days prior in California. The assasination attempt was linked to overseas Taiwanese independence groups.
Whether the result of a top-level directive or an element of the KMT regime gone rogue, the Lin family murders may never be resolved. But the story still speaks to the human toll of KMT rule before democracy. “People often talk about Taiwan’s bloodless political miracle of transitioning into democracy, but there was blood,” said Jimmy Chia-hsin Hsu (許家馨), a research professor at Academia Sinica who specializes in democratization and the theory of punishment.
The story of the massacre returned to forefront of the public consciousness this month because of controversy surrounding a new movie about the tragedy, titled “Murder of the Century” (世紀血案). Government officials, scholars, local media, online commentators and even the actors involved in the project have raised several concerns, including that Tien and the Lin family were not consulted. The director is also the grandson of a former spokesperson for the Taiwan Garrison Command. And local media has reported suspicions about the funding for the movie, noting discrepancies between the size of the production company and the reported cost of making the movie. The head of the production company used to be the chief executive of Yum China, the parent company of KFC and Pizza Hut in China. The production company was also involved with another controversial movie about the shooting of Chen and Lu, the former president and vice president, on the eve of the 2004 elections. A leaked script for “Murder of the Century” insinuates that another democracy activist was to blame for the murders.
Chiheng Su (蘇致亨), a PhD candidate at National Taiwan University specializing in the history of Taiwanese film, thinks one reason controversy over “Murder of the Century” has resonated with so many is because it sparked a concern about potential Chinese influence over Taiwan’s collective memories. The memory of the Lin family massacre is particularly sensitive because it’s so gruesome and so central to Taiwan’s democratization story. The controversy has driven people to learn more about the White Terror period, with prominent figures like the president of Taipei 101, Janet Chia (賈永婕), coming out with their own stories about re-learning Taiwan’s history. A two-hour interview Tien conducted earlier this month about the massacre has racked up nearly one million views on YouTube.
At the Jingmei White Terror Memorial Park, a museum that used to house the detention center where Lin was being detained and tried on the day his family was murdered, a plaque reads: “Only by remembering the past can we ensure it will no longer happen again.”
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