Sentence for coffee shop killer officially reversed from death penalty to life in prison for murders committed in 2013
Taiwan News
Date: 2017/04/19
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A female manager of a coffee shop who had been convicted
Monmouth Coffee shop killer Hsieh Yi-han in handcuffs.(By Central News Agency)
for the robbing and murder of a couple in 2013, has been given life in prison, reversing the original death sentence she faced that year.
Today, the Supreme Court dismissed the prosecution’s appeal of a life sentence handed down in 2015 to Hsieh Yi-han (謝依涵), 31, on the grounds that she confessed and that a psychological assessment found that Hsieh had made a clean break with her past errors and was at low risk of repeating her crime.
In October 2013, Hsieh had originally been sentenced to death by the Shilin District Court in Taipei for the murder of Shih Chien University assistant professor Chang Tsui-ping (張翠萍), 58, and her husband, Chen Chin-fu (陳進福), 79, before dumping their bodies in the Tamsui River in suburban Taipei in February 2013.
Hsieh had befriended the couple when they visited the Monmouth Coffee (媽媽嘴咖啡) she was managing. Coveting the couple’s large fortune, she laced their drinks with sleeping pills, stabbed them to death, and dragged their bodies into the river. Hsieh then withdrew NT$350,000 from Chen’s bank account, but failed in her attempt to withdraw money from Chang’s account by passing herself off as the murdered woman. The case came to light when the couple’s bodies were discovered near the riverside cafe. [FULL STORY]
