Taiwan’s high court on Wednesday ordered two brothers — one of whom is dead — to pay $1.8 million over a train derailment they staged in an unsuccessful bid to kill the older man’s wife and claim an insurance payout.
Prosecutors claimed Lee Shuang-chuang so wanted his Vietnamese spouse dead that when she survived the crash he injected her with snake venom as she lay in a hospital bed.
Lee then committed suicide a week later, leaving his brother Lee Tai-an to face the music alone.
Lee Tai-an, meanwhile, is currently appealing against 13-year jail term for his part in the murder of the woman, whose death in a railway accident had reportedly been insured for $2.3 million.
The high court in Taipei on Wednesday ordered Lee Tai-an and the beneficiaries of Lee Shuang-chuang — his two sons — to pay around $1.8 million dollars compensation to rail authorities for the 2006 track sabotage that bounced three carriages down a slope and injured two people, as well as the elder Lee’s wife.
Taipei, March 9, 2011 (AFP)
