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Mo Wen Lin, also known by the alias Xiao Wen, was a girl whose dismembered and charred remains were found on the side of the road alongside the body of a black dog in Taiwan. She was initially considered an older woman until her identification years later.
In 2019, following a call from a man who claimed to be haunted by her ghost, she was identified as Mo Wen Lin. Her coworkers, Changhong "Chang B" Wu, Yushi "An Qi" Chen, Ruhua "Baby" Chen, and her boss, Zijian "Xiao Pan" Pan, were all charged with her torture and murder.
Case[]
Discovery[]
On the evening of 9 December 1998, a villager who lived on Fudan Road in the Pingzhen District of Taoyuan, Taiwan, began his daily walk back home after finishing his farm work. However, when he reached Section 4 of the road, he noticed something burning in the grass 10 meters away. He described it as smelling like a mix of gasoline and burning meat. Curious, the man ventured into the grass and noticed four people standing around a burning pile. The four people looked nervous and left shortly after he began spying on them, leaving behind ropes and white buckets. Given that this section of the road was sparsely populated, the man did not recognize these people as locals.
Getting a bad feeling about what the four people may be burning, the villager hurried home and called authorities alongside his neighbor. Police were quickly dispatched to the scene and extinguished the fire. Upon pulling out what looked like human remains from the charred pile with pliers, more authorities were called to the scene to aid in the investigation. It was quickly ruled that the charred pile was the burned corpse of a young woman who was completely unrecognizable.
Authorities described the scene as bizarre due to the decedent being bound with her hands folded on her chest and holding the corpse of an adult black dog. Dog blood had been sprinkled across her body, making police realize the inclusion of the dog was for spiritual purposes. In Taiwan's folk traditions, black dogs are seen as evil and can be used to ward off or exorcise spirits. Sprinkling the blood of a black dog on a corpse is meant to bar a spirit from being reincarnated for eternity or taking the form of a ghost.
Due to the decedent having valuable jewelry on her body, robbery was quickly ruled out as the motive. It was suspected the murder was from jealousy, though police could not establish a further motive at the time. Due to the limited DNA technology of the time, the decedent could only be identified as a female who was likely between 25 and 30 years old. She had died within 24 hours of being found, had been tortured severely, and had been dismembered. Authorities published the case in newspapers and TV hoping to see the decedent's family but received no results. Afterwards, the decedent was buried in Shuanglianpo Cemetery under the inscription "Unknown Female Corpse, Section 4, Fudan Road".
Identification[]
Over 20 years later, on the morning of 3 May 2019, a man named Yihao Liu made a call to the Miaoli police. He told the operator that he wanted to speak about a murder he had witnessed 20 years ago, claiming that "she" had been haunting him for nearly half a year. He recounted that a teenage girl named "Xiao Wen" was killed in the Pingzhen District of Taoyuan. She worked at a shop that specialized in selling betel nuts, otherwise known as areca nuts, which can be used as a stimulant and are used in cultural practices in the area. According to Liu, Xiao Wen suspected that her boss, Zijian "Xiao Pan" Pan, was selling illegal drugs. Pan reportedly discovered this and got his other employees, Changhong "Chang B" Wu, Yushi "An Qi" Chen, and Ruhua "Baby" Chen, to aid him in beating and killing Xiao Wen. After she was murdered, they reportedly dragged her body to Section 4 of Fudan Road, killed a black dog they found, and burned her body with the corpse of the black dog after sprinkling its blood on her.
When asked how Liu knew about all this, he recounted that he and two female friends liked going to a rented house on Xinsheng Road in Taoyuan's Zhongli District when he was 15. There, they witnessed Xiao Wen being held in a betel nut stall, and the three were forced to beat her several times. Liu was scared to ask what happened to Xiao Wen after she disappeared from the stall. A few days later, he had seen a report on the news about a female body being found on Fudan Road and knew it was Xiao Wen. However, he was too scared to call the police at the time.
Liu then told the authorities that half a year ago, he recalled Xiao Wen while drinking wine. When he questioned one of his female friends about her, she said that Xiao Wen had been burned. Liu became more frantic when he was asked why he didn't report the crime then, stating that the four suspects had been separated for ten years and that he was scared one of them knew where he was and would silence him if he said anything. After being offered protection, Liu hurried to the police station and recounted his story once more for their report.
When asked about Xiao Wen's true identity, Liu told authorities that he knew very little about her. He stated that he knew her surname was Lin, that she was Chinese-Japanese, and that she was from Miaoli. Once police went through Miaoli's missing persons files, they found a report from 25 December 1998 that matched the description of Xiao Wen. A man named Moucheng Lin, who had moved from Japan, reported that his daughter, Mo Wen Lin, had disappeared two weeks before his call. He only knew that she was likely in Pingzhen but did not know who she would be staying within the area. Thus, when the burned body found on Fudan Road came into question after Lin was reported missing, she was ruled out due to the body being believed to belong to an adult woman at the time. Her father also did not think the burned corpse belonged to her.
Following this, authorities went to retrieve the body of the decedent to see if her DNA matched Lin's. However, due to negligence from the cemetery and the police station in 1998, the location of her grave had not been recorded. Land shortages at the time had led to the cemetery creating tombs that acted as mass graves, complicating the search for the decedent's grave. The Taoyuan Police found that they had a DNA sample from the decedent and sent it to the Miaoli authorities to compare to Lin's DNA. The DNA matched, and the murdered girl from Fudan Road was identified as 17-year-old Mo Wen Lin from Miaoli. During her identification, the Taiwan Institute of Forensic Medicine reviewed the autopsy files from 1998 and reported that Lin had sustained contusions and lacerations on the occipital area of the back of her head. Additionally, she had sustained blunt-force trauma to her forehead and left temporal region, a large amount of second-degree burns, and probable injuries from sharp objects. Lin was thought to have died from either suffocation, blood loss, or brain injuries caused by blunt-force trauma. She had likely fallen into a comatose state or shock and had suffered a cervical dislocation.
Arrest of Xiao Pan and his former employees[]
Upon Lin's identification, authorities immediately began tracking down the suspects Liu had mentioned in his recollection. They had found that Chang B had left Taiwan after breaking up with Baby and had relocated to Jinshan, China, for work with a wife and daughter. Xiao Pan and An Qi were also found to have been a couple once. However, Xiao Pan moved to the Shilin District of Taipei after they broke up and opened a shop selling meat soups. An Qi had remained in Pingzhen and had opened a boutique. Xiao Pan, An Qi, and Baby were arrested quickly and were initially told they would be helping in another case to ensure they wouldn't alarm Chang B in China. Once in custody, when asked if they knew of a case of a girl being killed on Fudan Road, they reportedly bowed and murmured how sorry they were to Xiao Wen. Baby claimed that she wished she had died in Xiao Wen's place, but she wanted to have a child first and claimed that she would have turned herself in once her child reached adulthood. The three were allowed to burn incense in the direction of where Lin had been found to fulfill spiritual purposes before they gave their full confessions.
Reportedly, due to neglect from her father, Lin had the habit of drinking all day and going to clubs with "gangsters". Every three days, her father beat and scolded her. She then dropped out of school and met Xiao Pan, who hired her to work at his betel nut shop. Chang B, An Qi, and Baby were all employed there when Lin was hired, and she was soon referred to as Xiao Wen. Lin was often referred to as being beautiful by clients, making An Qi and Baby feel jealous of the girl. Lin was reported to have ignored this and admitted to Baby that she was romantically interested in Chang B despite him dating Baby. Hostility between the three girls grew, mainly since Lin lived at the betel nut shop. The day before her murder, Lin accidentally discovered that the shop had been selling drugs under the guise of selling betel nuts. She threatened to report Xiao Pan and his employees for this, though An Qi and Baby then accused Lin of stealing money from the shop. Fearing that Lin would go to the police, the women imprisoned Lin on the second floor of the betel nut shop with aid from Xiao Pan and Chang B. They claimed to have constantly threatened her and had shaved her hair off. Despite her treatment, Lin still threatened to go to the police and get the four arrested. Since Xiao Pan was in the military and faced more severe punishment for selling drugs, he became enraged alongside his employees. He organized a plan to kill Lin with his employees, though Lin managed to escape while this was happening.
Xiao Pan knew who Lin would go to before going to the police station and tracked her down before dragging her to the house in the Zhongli District, which was rented by Chang B. She was imprisoned in the betel nut stall and beaten before being subjected to cruel torture. The suspects recounted that they had let Liu and his female friends into the house during this time before forcing them to help beat Lin. They claimed to have clamped Lin's mouth shut with iron pliers alongside the beatings and slammed her into walls. Lin's torture occurred for two days, during which she was further beaten with baseball bats, had her lips clamped with iron pliers again alongside parts of her lower body, chopped her thighs with machetes, and beaten with wooden sticks and wrenches. When Lin looked like she was close to death, one of the men decided to sexually assault her with a towel, leading to the dislocation of her cervical vertebrae.
Once Lin had died, her body was stored in a refrigerator for a day while the four suspects decided how they wanted to dispose of her. She was dismembered, her body placed in a bag, and then the 4 found a black dog to kill. Once they had sprinkled the dog's blood on her, Xiao Pan rented a car and drove to Fudan Road, where Lin was dumped. Xiao Pan impulsively decided to burn Lin's body despite being in a residential area. Once he felt that they had done enough, they left Lin to burn there.
Trial[]
When the trial began, despite the three suspects confessing, they all refused to plead guilty to Lin's murder. They all claimed to have just watched from the sidelines and blamed each other for Lin's death. During the trial, the lawyer for the defense noted that the villager who reported Lin's body had mistakenly thought there were three middle-aged men at the scene of the crime, thus asserting that her body could have been burned by someone else. Additionally, the three suspects claimed they didn't want to kill Lin after threatening to report them, and their lawyer argued that Liu's testimony should only be seen as "hearsay" due to his not being present for the entire crime. Xiao Pan had no reports of leaving his military camp; his timeline implied they would have still imprisoned Lin on 9 December, and he claimed to have only confessed due to torture from the police. An Qi was also accused of trying to frame Xiao Pan after their breakup.
Despite the complications presented by the defense and the suspects, Xiao Pan and An Qi were named as the main conspirators of Lin's death. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment, while Baby was sentenced to 14 years and ten months in prison due to her being a minor at the time of the crime. A second trial was requested, and Xiao Pan and An Qi's sentences were reduced to 14 years and six months in prison, with the judge stating that they were "young and reckless" at the time of the crime. Baby's sentence was also reduced to 14 years and two months. Baby elected to appeal her sentence; however, she felt that her reduction was not satisfactory compared to the reduction Xiao Pan and An Qi received.
During this time, the courts denied a 1.77 million compensation claim for Moucheng Lin for his daughter's death. Moucheng died two years later and never received any money for Lin's death. Chang B was never caught nor extradited to Taiwan despite investigations finding that the betel nut shop had been selling drugs and firearms. No further information is available on whether or not Baby's appeal was accepted. As of 2024, Lin's grave has not been found.
Characteristics[]
- 5 cm long scar on her left wrist.
- All 28 teeth intact without any cavities or fillings.
- Slim build.
Clothing and accessories[]
- Short black skirt.
- Striped shirt.
- Short leather riding boots.
- Two 18-karat gold rings.
- Amber jade ring.
- Metal ring buckle.
- Metal chain resembling a leather bag strap.
Sources[]
- Weixin (Chinese)
- China Times (Chinese)
- CT Want:
- Article #1 (Chinese)
- Article #2 (Chinese))
- Article #3(Chinese)