Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
adamantly denies ever having claimed or thought any such thing. An
open media statement from her in 2008 says it all:
I was the sole surviving eyewitness of the murders that took place in my
home. I alone saw the assassin. Yet in an effort to divert attention away
from the KMT, the KMT controlled media of that time began to circulate
a description of a “man with a bushy beard.” Though I never once men-
tioned the assassin as having any beard, every media reporting repeated
over and over again this image of a heavily bearded man. Eventually, a
bearded foreigner was exiled from Taiwan. The assassin in my home
did not have a beard and was not a foreigner.
Fast forward to the year 2003. Just four years ago, 24 years since the
murders of my family members, I accepted an interview with TVBS
Magazine. I appeared on the cover of the magazine and was their main
story for that issue. In large captions, the headline of the article stated:
“Judy Lin says, 'I have forgiven the bearded murderer.' ” Though I
never once used the word “bearded,” 24 years later, some one from the
KMT still wants to make sure that the murderer is not associated with
the KMT.
Several months after that interview, the reporter who penned the
article saw me on the street and came running up to me. She wished to
ask for my forgiveness. She said it was the decision of her superiors to
put words in my mouth, but she still felt responsible. All I could do
was smile, expressed [sic] my forgiveness, and pray to God for ultimate
Because nobody wanted to occupy or own a house in which such
grisly murders had taken place, the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan
bought the home and converted it into the Gikong (I-kuang) Presby-
terian Church, which today has a small congregation and additionally
functions as a historical site or shrine related to Taiwan's struggles for
democratization. Lin Yi-hsiung himself is still alive and has now with-
drawn from political life, having chosen instead to work in a nonpoliti-
cal capacity for environmental and political reforms. He is very widely
admired and respected in Taiwan and is perhaps the closest thing the
island has to an elder statesman or national hero.
The murderer of the Lin family members is still at large. According
to investigative journalist David E. Kaplan, a shadowy group called
the “Iron Blood Patriots” was behind the murder, and behind the
group was likely Chiang Hsiao-wu (Alex Chiang, 1945-1991), the no-
good, ne'er-do-well second son of President Chiang Ching-kuo and
grandson of Chiang Kai-shek himself. Although Chiang Hsiao-wu
was, according to Kaplan, “a friend of gangsters and spies,” his
