In short
Rotten Mango Podcast Episode #305 Summary
Episode Title
Chef Brother Caught With Missing Sister’s DNA Inside His Rice Cooker
Episode Description The episode dives into the chilling story of Cece Chen and her brother Feng, who becomes the prime suspect in her gruesome murder. It explores their troubled relationship, the circumstances leading up to her death, and the aftermath of the horrific crime.
Summary of Key Points
Lucy's Marriage and Suspicion
- Lucy moves to Taiwan with her husband, Feng, who is a chef.
- Initially, she feels fortunate because Feng cooks for her and takes care of her.
- Over time, Lucy becomes suspicious of Feng's behavior, particularly his insistence on keeping her out of the kitchen.
- One day, while Feng is at work, she discovers a woman's frozen head in their freezer, leading to her realization of the underlying danger.
Cece's Background
- Cece's life is depicted as troubled, marked by a difficult childhood and struggles with substance abuse.
- Raised in a large family with financial difficulties, Cece's life spirals after her father’s death.
- She eventually engages in sex work while living with her brother, who begins to manipulate and control her life.
The Crime
- Feng is revealed to have a history of abusing and exploiting Cece, treating her as his possession.
- It’s suggested that Feng murdered Cece as her sex work became a liability, especially with his upcoming marriage.
- Evidence indicates that Feng dismembered her body and attempted to dispose of it discreetly while also cashing in on her life insurance policy.
Investigation and Discovery
- A janitor discovers Cece's decapitated head in a temple restroom, leading to an investigation that uncovers the complex and dark relationship between the siblings.
- The police piece together the events leading up to Cece's death, including Feng’s suspicious behavior and financial motives.
Arrest and Trial
- Feng is arrested after a thorough investigation, although he initially exhibits signs of mental distress.
- The court proceedings see him oscillating between claiming insanity and maintaining composure to manipulate perceptions.
- Despite his attempts to evade responsibility through claims of mental illness, forensic evidence and witness testimonies point strongly to his guilt.
Sentencing and Public Reaction
- Feng is ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty, leading to mixed reactions from the public.
- The episode raises questions about familial loyalty, the impact of mental illness, and the nature of evil, particularly within family dynamics.
Key Themes and Takeaways
- Family Dynamics: The episode explores the complexities of familial relationships, particularly the dark bond between Cece and Feng.
- Mental Health: It touches upon the implications of mental health and how it can affect behavior and relationships.
- Crime and Justice: The story offers insights into the criminal justice system’s handling of cases involving domestic violence and exploitation.
- Public Perception: The mixed reactions of the public regarding sentencing reflect societal views on crime, punishment, and the nature of evil.
Conclusion This episode of "Rotten Mango" presents a haunting narrative that delves into the tragic life of Cece and the psychological complexities of her brother Feng. It challenges listeners to reflect on familial loyalty and the darkness that can exist within family ties.
Additional Notes
- Full source notes and further details can be accessed at [rottenmangopodcast.com](http://rottenmangopodcast.com).
- The episode highlights a significant cultural context regarding relationships, mental health perceptions, and criminal behavior in Taiwan.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Rambles. Bada bing, bada boom. Lucy felt like she got lucky with her husband. He's 10 years older than her. And that was initially a concern for her. She's got to be pragmatic about it, right? But it also has its advantages. Usually with age comes maturity, patience, and the ability to provide. And she's 27. He's 37. So it's not like this alarming age gap where she's freshly 18. And he was caring. He's reliable. And she was just so excited to start this new phase of her life with him. She was going to move from her hometown in mainland China to Taiwan, make new friends, maybe start a family with this man.
0:38The possibilities were endless. And she admits, you know, a large part of why she married this guy. It has a lot more to do with settling down instead of instead of love. But she could learn to love him. That's what she felt like. It was a little isolating to be without her friends in Taiwan, but she could call them and she did every single night. She would call them and tell them everything that her sweet husband did for her that day Which by the way, this is crazy, but he never wanted her to be in the kitchen All of her friends are like that is insane. I'm so jealous of you. Most of our husbands super traditional They want me to cook three meals a day and your husband Constantly cooking for you breakfast lunch and dinner.
1:19You're never in the kitchen Yeah, well he's a chef So I guess it kind of makes sense that he would want to spend time in his own kitchen, right? He would, however, get a little snappy at her when she disturbed his peace in there. It's kind of enduring. You know, he's just very passionate when he's cooking. He doesn't want anyone to mess with his flow. So for the first few weeks, Lucy was in marital bliss. But as time went on, she starts having these really odd suspicions. Her husband didn't just get snappy when she tried to help him cook in the kitchen. Even if she walked into the kitchen for a glass of water, he would be lounging in the living room, jumping up off the sofa to get the water for her.
2:01It's one thing to not want someone messing up your process or your work, but it's another thing to just not want your wife in a whole room of the house, like such an important room of the house. Even if she's not moving things around or touching anything, but maybe she's been spending too much time alone without her friends. She's thinking, maybe I'm overthinking things. Maybe he's just trying to be nice. But one day while he was at work, curiosity gets the best of Lucy and she decides this is so silly. So silly. I'm just going to go in there and make myself something to eat. And if he's going to get upset about that, then he's a horrible husband.
2:38What does he want me to do? Starve to death? She walks over to the kitchen, opens up the freezer door. Maybe there were some frozen dumplings she could steam. But instead, she makes eye contact. inside the freezer was a woman's frozen head she had long hair her eyes were wide open and staring at lucy lucy slammed the freezer door shut she ran back into the room and she's like i gotta leave now right but no she can't he knows where her family lives he knows everything about her he would know that she saw the head and left i mean this man would probably track her down to keep her quiet. The only other option is divorce, but how?
3:23She doesn't have a single person in the area that she knows and she's terrified of this guy. Even going to the cops, what if he hides the head somehow? Lucy decides the only way to survive in the long run is to wait a few weeks before making up some lie that her grandma passed away and she would have to go to her family. She'd have to go back home to mainland China for the funeral, of course, and then she could tell her parents, everything that she saw, everything that happened, and then they would help her figure a way out of this. But that meant for the next few weeks, she would have to pretend like nothing was wrong.
3:57She would have to control the fear in her voice, her facial expressions. She would have to not flinch whenever he got close to her. Whenever he walked into the kitchen, she would have to not look suspicious. If he suspected that she knew about the head, what would he even do to her? she had to play this right she would have to sit down at the table smiling happy in love and get excited over these new dishes that he's cooking and try not to gag wondering where is the rest of that woman's body as always full show notes are available at rotten mingle podcast.com we had our mandarin speaking researchers assist on this case so we could gather all the facts and details that were out there hopefully this will be a comprehensive deep dive on the case but as always with foreign cases please let us know in the comments if there was anything we missed anything lost in translation or any just extra details that you know about this one and with that being said let's get started if you have plans to go on a cruise or maybe like a like a long boat ride some people might recommend that you pray to the goddess mazu do you know goddess mazu mazu yes no okay well her name translates to eternal mother Does it not?
5:13Oh, okay. And many believe she's the goddess that watches over the seas. So for generations, seamen would go fishing off the coast of Taiwan only to come back to land and their eyes would be wide. Like this is how goddess Mazu started. Her story. Their hair would be soaking wet and they would tell the craziest stories of like, oh my God, our boat almost capsized. It almost flipped over. but then this woman came down from the sky in this red robe. She said her name was Mazu and she saved us. She saved us. This is like hundreds of years ago. So unlike other goddesses, fishermen, sailors, anyone who claims to have been saved by goddess Mazu, they said that she never asked for anything in return.
5:58She's just this powerful, benevolent, compassionate, giving goddess. And eventually people didn't just worship the goddess Mazu when they went into open waters, but even on land. She was kind of the goddess of life in Taiwan. She will protect you no matter what. And in New Taipei City, there's even a temple named after her. It was built 250 years ago, which is technically crazy because that's around the same age as America. Yeah. So there's this temple built. It's very, very old. It's the Xuanzhu Mazhu Temple. And it's really interesting because there's actually a lot of temples in this area. This one was built 250 years ago, and it's actually pretty modest in size.
6:41So it's not one of these crazy olden day ancient buildings that's so massive and so grand. It's like a tiny little temple, but it's almost always jam-packed with tourists and locals. Some people will even say, I came from America. I came from all around the world just to be at this temple. The locals said this was one of the more favorable temples that you could pray at. Basically, a lot of your prayers may come true here at this very temple. Some people said they could feel it the moment that they walked in. There was this energy shift. According to people who have been there, once you walk in, you're hit with this scent of strong incense and you're in the city, but you suddenly feel this just heavy peace.
7:23It's like a weighted blanket. You just feel that peace. It feels calm. And then you even forget what time it is. You're just in the moment praying. people are kneeling in front of sacred statues some people are lighting up new incense others are rearranging and setting up flowers and fruit platters at the altar and it just feels like a feels like a very peaceful time of reflection but that day it would be shattered by this ear piercing screech like just blood curdling it's the type of scream that makes you want to kind to tilt your ear down because it sounds like nails on a chalkboard. And everyone is whipping their heads around trying to look for the direction of this scream because, I mean, obviously it's not a natural scream, trying to figure out what's going on.
8:08Everyone's frozen in the middle of whatever they're doing, in the middle of praying, arranging the fruit. Everyone is still except this one woman is running frantically towards the temple. She's like sweating, her hair is a mess, Her eyes are kind of like bulging out of her head and everyone's freaked out. What is this woman going through? Is this, it seems like she's shaking from what though? Adrenaline, fear, psychosis? Like why is she coming to the temple? She runs into the temple, completely disregards everybody in there, drops to her knees in front of the Mazu statue. And she starts blurting out a bunch of prayers.
8:45She's stuttering and nothing is making sense. Everyone can hear her train of thought. and it's just jumbled, like scrambled eggs. It doesn't make sense. It's like she's verbally vomiting. She's sweating. She doesn't even look at anyone around her. She doesn't even realize that she's disturbing the peace. Everyone's looking at her like she's crazy. No, she just kept praying, rubbing her palms together, word vomiting, shaking, sweating, and then nothing. She just stops, gets up, and leaves the temple. and everyone is like, what is going on? It was like she was in a trance, okay? She's just walking out one foot in front of the other until she ends up in front of a police station.
9:28She's now sitting in front of these police officers vomiting up the same thoughts and memories. It's like the floodgates had opened and everything is just spilling out at once on the table in front of them. The police are telling her like, slow down, slow down. Okay, you're the janitor at the temple. And you what? I went to go clean the bathrooms. They're detached from the temple, maybe like 600 feet away. I went to clean the men's bathroom first and I saw this plastic bag in there, right? It's one of those black grocery store flimsy plastic bags that you get. And clearly something was in there and it was just sitting on the back of the toilet.
10:02So if you're using the restroom, your back would be to this bag, right? And she thought maybe it's takeout that someone forgot or someone was just too lazy to throw their own trash away and left it for whoever would clean the restroom. So that's what she was going to do. She was just going to trash it. but then she was worried what if someone didn't leave it what if they accidentally left it and then there's something valuable in there and this is a temple we get tourists we get locals you know what if they come back looking for it so she starts opening up the bag there's like a tight knot on this black plastic bag she's trying to get it open and the minute that she undoes it she said it's like the most pungent smell she's ever smelt in her life like someone sprayed something into her face.
10:46She'd never smell anything like it. It was stinking up the whole bathroom. She's waving her hand in front of her nose, squinting her eyes because it's the type of smelly that you feel like is going to absorb into your body. So you feel like you need to squint your eyes so it doesn't penetrate. And she's briefly debating, okay, maybe I should throw it away in the trash. Assuming maybe it's seafood. That's what she's telling the police. Like maybe I thought it was seafood that had gone bad or maybe baby diapers that people had been just like leaving around. It smelled like it had been marinating for a while, but something in her head just told her to keep going.
11:21She keeps untying the bag. She finds more layers. Maybe it's curiosity. Maybe she knew that she would think about this bag every single night for the rest of the week when she laid in bed because she just needed to know what's in there. There's layers upon layers. Layers of bags? It's like she opens the bag and there's a jacket. So she's like taking out the jacket. Then there's a shirt she's taking out, and then there's plastic wrap. She's like, okay, what's going on? And then finally, a decapitated head. It was covered in salt. It was basically fermented. She cries to the police, like, I will never get this look out of my mind because the amount of salt that was covering this head, the head was shriveled up like a raisin.
12:11It was completely dry. So she's just letting this out all on the table. I mean, probably not organized like the way I just told you. It's like just coming out all at once. Like she was in the temple and the police are debating for a good minute. Maybe this janitor lost her mind. I mean, she looks kind of crazy. Her hair is a mess. Her eyes are like bulging out. She, she doesn't seem credible, but then right then the phone rings. I was like, what, what is going on? A police station about three hours away was calling. We have a very strange letter and it falls under your jurisdiction. So they're like, okay, yeah, just tell us the letter.
12:49Apparently an anonymous letter was sent earlier this morning to that police station three hours away. They initially thought it was a prank. They didn't get around to it because they're like, first of all, that's three hours away. We've got nothing to do with this. This feels like a kid wrote it to scare us. So they disregarded it, but then they were thinking, you know what? Maybe we should just have a different police station look into it instead of us driving three hours. Okay, what does it say? It reads, Hello, officer. Chen Wanting. We'll call her Cece. Cece's corpse is inside the men's restroom 600 feet away from a temple in New Taipei City.
13:24Please give her a burial. I can't deal with it. Thank you. A kind-hearted man. Wow. Now the officers are looking at the janitor like, Okay, this is really bad. Like, whatever's going on is true and it's bad. So they rush in their patrol cars, turn their lights on the whole nine yards. They start heading to the temple bathroom. They slam open the bathroom stall door and the smell hits them hard. And the janitor was telling the truth. There was this black plastic bag sitting on the toilet. They opened it up, revealed the first layer, another plastic bag. So I guess she had put everything back where it was.
14:02Then slowly peeled off another one to find another layer, a woven sack, Then a jacket, a t-shirt, a pair of black floral shorts, and then lastly, a female pair of underwear covered in male bodily fluids. And underneath all seven layers was a woman's decapitated head, covered in salt. And a little note. And the note read, identity equals Chen Wanting. Whoever left her head wanted the police to find her corpse. Not only that, but they wanted the police to know who the head belonged to. But why? Wouldn't that go against most criminals' best interest? Yeah. Maybe this wasn't even right. Maybe she wasn't Cece.
14:48Maybe this is a red herring. But as of right now, that is the strongest lead that they have. And it was time to figure out who is Cece, who wants her dead, and also where is the rest of Cece's body? The detectives find Cece. Well, they find her apartment. They don't find her, right? And they start questioning her neighbors one by one. And it all started the same. All of them were like, Cece who? Literally all of them. Nobody knew Cece. And the police would show them a picture because Cece has a missing persons poster. She's in the database. They show them a picture. She went missing three months ago.
15:26So not even that long ago. Come on, you guys are the neighbors. And they're like, oh my God, yeah, I know her. But we just called her little sweetheart around here. It was like a little nickname. So the police are assuming, well, then that must mean you guys are very close to her because why would you call your neighbor a little sweetheart? And all the neighbors are like, no, absolutely not. We were not close at all. Some neighbors stated, you know, some of us felt bad for her, but she was just not that fun of a person to be around. There were always these strange noises that would come out of her unit.
15:55Sometimes she would run out in her pajamas, stand in the hallway, and stare at anyone that passes by. and if you happened to make eye contact with her, she would start hysterically laughing. It was weird. There were always men coming in and out of that unit and I think that they were assaulting her because she would run out of her apartment, her hair would be a mess and her clothes looked like someone had been trying to rip them off and she would scream, this man is trying to assault me. And at first as neighbors, we tried to help but it just kept happening so frequently. And sometimes we didn't even know if we could believe her.
16:28She was always drunk or high. Some neighbors were a little bit more sympathetic. They said, you know, we just all kind of felt bad for her. And we felt bad for her brother. He was the one that always took care of her. Like no matter how bad she got, no matter if she went on a drug binge. And even his wife left him recently because of her. They say it's because she had a family emergency, like her grandma died or something. But we all know that she left because of all the family drama. She probably couldn't handle the stress anymore. The victim was always going around accusing people of assaulting her.
17:00were saying that she needed to be assaulted to make money. The brother lives in this apartment? The brother, yeah, they live together. Oh, so this brother, Cece, and brother's wife live in this apartment. Yeah, but the wife just left. Right, and Cece is dead. Mm-hmm. So the officers, they do more digging into Cece's past, and it was, yeah, it was just grim. Okay, so Cece and her family, they were dealt some really shitty cards. Cece was the fourth of six siblings Which is a huge family I mean factoring in two parents That's eight mouths to feed And they weren't doing well Financially And then when Cece was a teenager Her father passed away from excessive drinking And I assume liver problems So now Cece's mom was Raising all six kids by herself Thankfully some of them were grown enough To move out of the house But still I mean she was a single mom to a lot of kids and I don't think that she was necessarily a bad mom.
18:00I think Cece's mom tried. She tried her best given the circumstances, but it just wasn't, it wasn't perfect. I mean, it wasn't even good. So she was working nonstop every single day, barely had time to rest. She definitely did not have time to educate her children, help them with homework, make sure that they weren't falling into bad influences. Like the kids were basically raising themselves. She did put food on the table. She put a roof over their heads, but that was about it. She just didn't have the capacity to do anything else. That was her priority. She's not like a tiger mom demanding to know, what are your grades?
18:34Like, sit down, show me your report card. She didn't do any of that. And so a lot of the kids, you know, the teachers would say, we don't want to call it flaws, but they definitely seemed undersupervised. We could tell.
18:52Cece was actually called the school flower of her grade. Wow. Yeah, so that's the term given to typically the prettiest girl in the entire school. Usually multiple popular boys would be trying to take her out on secret dates after school. Also, not only that, but also have good grades. Yes, but Cece was the exception. Oh, really? No good grades, yeah. And her desk drawer was always filled to the brim with snacks, love letters from boys who had crushes on her. And she looked like an innocent girl next door. Almost like all the school flowers, you know, that stereotypical look. She had more soft, rounded features.
19:28She's very conventionally pretty growing up. Okay, to give you context, when she was 15 years old, she's walking home from school and she hears this man behind her. Excuse me, student. Excuse me. Take my business card. I'm a scout for a huge entertainment agency and I think that you are exactly what we're looking for. He runs off and Cece throws away his business card. She did not care to be in the entertainment industry. And it's not because she was too busy studying or she wanted to focus on graduating high school, she straight up felt like the industry was lame. Like she was too cool for it.
20:02So you know how high schoolers, you know how high schoolers are. And for Cece, it was even worse because she was hanging out with these really intense crowds that felt like school is lame. Learning is lame. All of these things are lame. They would smoke, drink, skip class, and do drugs, which is insanely hardcore in Taiwan. Like even for adults to do drugs, that's crazy. for high schoolers to do drugs, insanity. So to them, everything else was lame. And it seemed like Cece's mom knew what was going on, but like she didn't know how to stop it. It's not like she had the funds or the time to just sit there and make sure that Cece went to school.
20:39She would yell at her. Because eventually Cece would be, it escalated to the point where she was expelled from school. So her mom is yelling at her, but it's not working. Cece drops out of high school and she gets married at 18 years old. even her friends were like 18 like you should wait you have so many guys that like you you should explore your options don't tie yourself down so quickly like why would you do that cc had what they called lover's brain there was no talking to her about this guy she was in so deep i mean she felt like this guy was the savior of the planet the whole reason that she was born for this moment to be his bride.
21:19Like to put it mildly, I mean, she was in love with this man. And I'm sure that there's some trauma there. Like maybe this is the first person that made her feel like she could be herself. Maybe it's the first person that loved her. I don't know. Maybe he was filling some sort of father figure role. So they get married very quickly and then have a child together. Cece is 18 and so is he. And that's where the problem, the downfall of their marriage comes in. Every able-bodied male citizen in Taiwan is required to serve in the military for, I think, a little over a year. I think it's like 16 months.
21:52I think four months of basic training and then 12 months of active duty. I don't know if they categorize that as a year or 16 months, right? And her husband is like, okay, bye. Gotta go enlist in the army. It's the law. Good luck with the kid. Cece gets her life together while he's gone. I don't know if it's a conscious choice. I don't know if she sat down one day and was like, we got this. I gotta change. Or if it just happened gradually. I'm not sure. But while her husband is in the army, she's like the epitome of a try hard single mom in the best way possible. She's working, cleaning the house, taking care of the child.
22:25Any free time she had, she would talk to her friends about how perfect her husband was. She had this calendar where she counted down all the days until he was back. And her friend said, it's like someone went into her brain and installed like a love potion where she can only think about this one person. And it's her husband. every single day. She would get so excited to do the little red X on another day, one day closer for her husband coming back. So a few weeks are remaining before he's finally out. And Cece gets a letter in the mail and she's like skip hopping back to the apartment to open it up.
23:02It's from the love of her life, right? She's carefully ripping it open because she's like saving all of his letters. And as she's reading it, her smile is fading. Tears are just streaming down her cheeks. She's gripping the letter tighter and her knuckles are white. By the end of it, all she feels is pure rage and anger. Her husband wrote to her to say, basically, hey, thanks for waiting for me and taking care of our child all alone. But once I get out, I'm going to live my life. You know, my parents don't think that you're good enough for me and I don't want anything to do with you or the baby.
23:34So good luck. Cece's like, okay, this has got to be a joke. It's a joke. It's a prank. It's maybe one of those things that people do in the arms. Like, you know how you have to get initiated into the army. Maybe the other army bros made him write this, right? And then he's going to come home in a few. It'll be fine. It'll be fine, right? It wasn't fine. She had no idea how to contact him, even when he was returning, when he was out of the army. She couldn't track him down. He never came back. So eventually she comes to terms with the fact that, okay, this is my new life. She drops off her child at a relative's house.
24:09She said, I can't look at my kid anymore because looking at my kid reminds me of my husband. So she also abandoned the child. Yeah. She packs her bags, moves to a nearby city. She's 22 when this happens and she fully snaps. It was sudden. It's weird. One day her friends were comforting her. She's devastated, which is to be expected after such a shitty breakup, right? But the next day, it's like the old CC, gone. her friends noticed that one day her makeup was just regular cc makeup very light clean right then it's just so heavy like smoky eye intense pigmented colors all over her face i mean she's still beautiful that makeup style is beautiful it was just so sudden like you know how people chop off all their hair when they're not feeling great mentally like every girl dyes their hair after a breakup that was kind of the vibe so they're like okay maybe we should just keep an eye on her but then it starts getting weirder cc starts wearing her pajamas out and just mindlessly strolling around the neighborhood if someone would make eye contact with her she would stop walking just like stop walking stare at them and tilt her head up to the sky and start hysterically laughing so she's going through something mentally right yeah and it was kind of creeping people out A lot of people would cross the street to avoid walking past her.
25:34And Cece's friends believe that this is kind of when she went mad. Her only life goal from this point on was just to drink and get high. And it's clear she's trying to self-medicate with whatever's going on in her head. She's not okay. She's not showering. She's not taking care of herself. I mean, Cece's mom is trying to help by giving her around$250 a month, which doesn't cover the necessities. but that's all Cece's mom had left. And Cece would use it on drinking and smoking. No job would hire her. So Cece starts engaging in sex work. Her pricing was$15 to touch her breast, $80 for full intercourse.
26:16At least that's how it started. And then eventually when her addiction got really bad and she was really desperate, some clients said that her pricing would drop down to$8 for full intercourse. And the thing that with sex work, okay, personally, I never judge anyone that is engaged in sex work. And I know right now we're in the process of everyone trying to de-stigmatize sex work, which I think is great. But one reality that just cannot be avoided is when you're engaging in this type of work person to person, it's very dangerous. Like any person to person job is dangerous. Cece would often bring home clients because she couldn't afford a second location and they didn't want to pay for hotels.
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26:54Or if they did, they're like, okay, then I'm going to deduct it from what I'm paying you. So she would bring these clients home. And oftentimes they would just brutally assault her and leave without paying. And now that she's acquiring more trauma, she needs more alcohol, more to kind of calm that pain down. And all the neighbors knew they knew what was going on. These clients didn't even try to hide it. I mean, they would just hear terrified screams coming out of that apartment, banging, yelling, threatening. And then a door would slam shut and then someone stomping away. And then the door opens again and Cece's running, demanding to be paid.
27:33Originally, in the beginning, some neighbors felt so bad for her that they even gave her money here and there. But they felt frustrated because things would never change. You know, Cece would keep bringing people home and they would keep assaulting her. And it just the neighbors felt like we're not doing so great either. You know, which brings the investigators to think, OK, what if this is some deranged client? I mean, this wouldn't be the first time, right? Look at everything that happens in the U.S. Serial killers targeting sex workers because they're easy targets. They go unnoticed and they have confirmation that CeCe's clients weren't the best law abiding group of civilians out there.
28:10What if some sick, twisted, deranged client had this fantasy that would involve taking CeCe's life? So they're like, let's run the DNA. The investigators run the male fluid DNA that was found on Cece's undergarments that were wrapped around her head. They also had CCTV footage of a man walking towards the temple bathroom with a plastic bag in their hand, which I know what you're thinking. Okay, that's the easiest way to ID them, right? But the guy is completely covered up. I mean, in the video, it just wasn't that useful, at least right now. Like to look at that video and then look at all the men nearby, it's not gonna work.
28:45So the DNA is really everything that they had. They run it. Now, there's a strong possibility that it's not going to match to anyone in the system. That person's not in the system yet. But it comes back with a hit. A local taxi driver. The police have so many questions for this guy. There had been evidence that Cece's head had been frozen before being covered in salt. Did he try to pickle her? What was the point in preserving her head? To not draw suspicion on odor? but then why leave anonymous notes at a police station three hours away and then what about the note in the bag that pointed to the victim's identity was the taxi driver just purely unhinged like or is there some sort of long game that they're playing the taxi driver did not answer any of these questions because he's like i don't even i don't even know cece was dead he's explaining like you gotta believe me i only slept with her a few times i was a client like you can arrest me for that if that's what you want to do, but I didn't murder her.
29:46And that's not me on the CCTV footage because that night I have proof. I have witnesses. I was nowhere near that temple when the bag was placed in the bathroom. I was working. The police checked his alibi and it cleared. The taxi driver is not the killer. So then who the hell is the killer? It all comes back down to a fortune teller. The investigators are sitting at their desk trying to figure out what the hell is wrong here. It doesn't make sense. Someone killed Cece and we've got a ton of neighbors that know every little thing that's going on in there. Every little mental breakdown that she's had, they saw it yet.
30:23Nobody saw anyone suspicious, like a new man lingering around. And then it hit them. They're like, okay, all the neighbors, they know so much about her, or at least we thought they did. Right. But remember in the beginning, when I said, as they're investigating, all the neighbors are like, Cece who? Oh, no. Oh, that neighbor. Once they see the picture? Records show that Cece legally changed her name to Cece. That's not her real name. Well, it is now, but maybe like a few months ago, it wasn't her name. That's not what everyone in the apartment building knew her by. Apparently, Cece had gone to a fortune teller to ask her about her life.
30:58And in a lot of Asian cultures, the mom's name or a woman's name can determine not only her own fate, but the fate of her child as well. And the fortune teller told her, all your hardships, your divorce they're all going to be passed on to your child even if you're not with your child right now unless you change your name so cc went and she changed her name legally she went from chen ahi to chen one ting and she told nobody except a handful of those closest to her but the letter had chen one ting on there Wow So that means her killer is someone that knew her intimately It's not a random client because she never gives her real name to clients It's someone very very close to her Even neighbors didn't even know the new name Wow that is a detail that wow So maybe a boyfriend maybe a pimp right They go back to investigating and they're asking around to see if Cece had someone close to her that seemed dangerous and all the neighbors are like, I mean, I guess this is kind of random, but she did casually mention quite a few times that she had to go sleep with her brother to make money.
32:15What? And the police are like, her brother? Like, why would you not say that? And they're like, her brother Feng? That's what we're calling him. And then so they're like, why would you not tell us that when we first asked you about it? And the neighbors are like, no, no, no. I just thought she was saying like brother, like client, friend, man, like hello brother you know what i mean hello bro i didn't think she was actually talking about her actual brother but then now that you're asking oh is there someone very close to her i guess like that comes to mind i mean these are very big details so the police are going back to all the neighbors asking i guess also it's like the brothers maybe like koreans too like oppa yeah so you can call someone oppa but you actually your actual brother you also call them oppa it's like that google like oh yes yes but it's not like my biological brother it's like just a male that's older than me.
33:02Yes. Yes. So they're like, oh, well, I thought she was talking about clients. And the police are like, okay, what else can you think about? Like, just think anything, any little detail. Come on, think. There were rumors that the brother was a little weird, that Fang had an obsession. Okay, this is what the neighbors are saying. Some said that he had a journal that he kept about an actress named Jeannie. She's a Taiwanese actress. and even Jeannie came forward after this case broke to say like yeah that actually happened so apparently he had a journal that documented his love for her and he declared himself her husband he would send her tissues filled with male bodily fluids threatening her if that she filmed any romantic scenes with any other men very bad things would happen to her he would even go to her fan meets to try and shake her hand and god knows what else he was trying to do But the neighbors are saying, listen, we don't know for sure.
34:00OK, it's just a rumor around the block that he's kind of weird. And the police are like, OK, what else? Like, what else could you have missed? Because it seems like you missed a lot of things, right? And one of the neighbor states, and there's the meat grinder. These days, someone in that apartment unit has been chopping up meat. Like you can hear the knife hitting the butcher block. So it's it's like someone chopping up a chicken, like a whole chicken. Like, you know, when you're chopping up chicken breasts, you're not going to hear it from the apartment next door. But if I'm there butchering a chicken trying to get through bone, then you might hear it.
34:33Well, we keep hearing it. And then the meat grinder is just going nonstop at night. But we never assumed it was strange because the brother Feng is a chef. He works with a lot of meat. We just thought his sleep schedule had just shifted to be nighttime instead of daytime. And like, how are we supposed to know? So the police are like, okay, when was this? around the time that Cece stopped showing up. So I guess around the time that she disappeared. The investigators are like, all right then, we're going to need a whole team here stat. If neighbors are suggesting and the police are theorizing that the brother could have killed his own sister, that means he would have likely dismembered her, ground up her flesh, and what would you do if you're the killer?
35:16Probably dispose of her body parts in a toilet or kitchen sink drain. We have to check all the septic tanks, sewage systems. We need to check the pipes to see if Cece's DNA is in there. The police also went in to search the unit now with where Fang and Cece lived and they found very curious evidence. They found several knives with big dents on the blades like someone was dismembering something much bigger than a chicken. They found Cece's DNA found in the inside, the slow cooker. The slow cooker? They found her DNA inside the pots. Not on the outside, inside. And I'm sure the DNA was not like a piece of hair.
35:57Oh my gosh. They also found her DNA on knives. The evidence suggests that Fang killed his own sister, dismembered her, and then cooked her remains, probably so it would be easier to dispose down the trains or down the toilet. So bear with me. Theory is dismembered, meat grinder, cooked, then flushed in the toilet, right? The cops found nothing in the septic tank or the sewage system or the pipes. But they found it in the pot. Yes, and nowhere else in the house. Oh, so you're saying that he didn't flush it down? No. That's crazy. So we don't know. We still don't know to this day what he did. we just know not down the drains.
36:47So we just know she was cooked. And then what happened next? I mean, the obvious question is, did he consume her? Did he let others consume her? We don't know. So Cece's mom, she hadn't been able to get in contact with Cece for the past three months. That's why she filed that missing persons report. And ever since she found out Cece had been murdered, she had not been able to get any sleep. She had just so many regrets as a mother. One of the biggest being that after all of her kids had grown up, the whole family moved to a neighboring city to find more opportunities and work. Everyone, right?
37:21Except for brother Fang and daughter Cece. They stayed behind in their hometown. And Cece's mom would make the trip down to the hometown every single week just to check up on Cece. But at least she's like, you know what? One of my eldest kids, my second son, is taking care of Cece, looking after her. she said that Cece was struggling with her mental health so the whole family knew that Feng was you know particularly attentive towards his younger sister but towards the end of 2012 Cece just like dropped off the face of the earth she would never respond to text messages, calls, nothing she also just stopped coming home and Feng is like I don't know where she is they all try searching for her by themselves the family does they're calling her, lingering around the apartment trying to find friends, asking neighbors nobody's seen her they finally file a missing persons report and the mom she admitted you know I was worried that something bad happened to my daughter but we were more leaning towards the fact that maybe she met someone new maybe she was out drinking you know none of them thought that her head would be found in a plastic bag left at a temple bathroom which speaking of in a last-ditch effort to try and solve this case.
38:34The police bring in Cece's mom one more time. They had already traumatized this poor woman. She was asked to identify her daughter's remains and since they didn't want to mess with the evidence too much, she basically had to see her daughter's head decapitated and covered in salt. She also saw the clothes that were wrapped around her daughter and she had bought those clothes for her daughter. And so it was really rough. The officer said that she was grabbing onto their jackets shaking them like bawling on the ground screaming tell me what happened you need to figure out what happened i don't know how she's gonna cope with son and daughter like yeah they it's like a moment where the mom i think realized that true evil existed in this world and her daughter must have come face to face with the devil that's the feeling so the officers is your son yeah how do you even you it's kind of surprising her reaction later um so the officers they hesitantly bring in the mom again and they start asking the questions about her son's relationship with the daughter and i mean obviously the mom is taken off guard she feels like the police are kind of framing it all strange which i mean clearly it's not like that she's saying no my son fang is a good kid who's helping take care of my younger daughter.
39:54He probably wasn't the best caretaker. She's still engaged in sex work and did drugs. And like, yes, I know that's bad, but we're all doing the best that we can.
40:07The officers finally show her the CCTV footage. This is like March of 2013. So Taiwan in March is not that cold, not puffer jacket cold. He's wearing a puffer jacket, wearing a mask, sunglasses, and a curly wig, like an ajuma wig, an old lady wig, which just felt so off-putting, right? Very strange. The figure is seen covered up completely, like they don't want to be recognized. They're holding a black plastic bag and they disappear near the temple because there's no more CCTV cameras. They walk back out without the plastic bag. So Cece's mom takes one look at the footage and she feels destroyed.
40:49In the span of like a week or two, she identified her daughter as the brutal murder victim and her son as the predator and killer of her daughter. And everyone's just wondering, why would the brother do this? The theory is her brother was her pimp and things had escalated until he killed her. It's speculated that they themselves had a very twisted relationship. So Feng would allegedly pimp her out, take most of the money that she earned minus the money that she would need to spend on drugs. He really only allowed it because drugs would be the way to keep her compliant. It would be to keep her in check, make her easy to control.
41:29Which is this part is already so sick and twisted, especially between siblings. But even worse than that, it's suspected that he was sexually abusing his own sister. Their mom would send Cece$250 a month but she would ask her son feng to take the money first and then split it into small payments and give it to cc throughout the month because she was worried if she gave it to her all at once it would just go to right and to cc's mom it appeared like her son feng was just this nice older brother but in reality he was dangling the money over cc's head to get her to perform acts for him his own sister it's speculated that this is just how it started for 14 years what and eventually after 14 years cc's not bringing in enough money for fang she's becoming a liability she's 39 years old at this point she's been doing she's been in this line of work for the past at least 14 years i mean this would have taken a large toll on her mental health physical health and if we're being very thorough also on her appearance because are known to be very, very damaging to, I guess, appearance.
42:42Not that that's the biggest thing, but in this line of work, it might matter, you know? And Feng decides it's time to move on. He also thinks about his own life. He's like, you know what? I want to start a family. I want to have a wife and kids. And I can't do that when there's strange men in and out of the house. And my sister is making explicit noises in the room next door. Like, I can't do that. what would my wife think so that's one problem but another problem is that in china there's something called a dowry it's not required by law or anything but it's pretty standard since there are a lot more men than there are women in china to get married men have gotten kind of creative and it's also a tradition right some men will get creative trying to secure a family they will bring lump sums of cash to the bride's family shower the bride with gold literally gold, gift them luxury items, all these things to be able to marry the woman that they love, right?
43:38Now, typically the dowry is different amongst each marriage and class. It's a lot of money and it typically, it shouldn't bankrupt a man and his family, right? So it just depends on how well you're doing financially. But Feng had just met a woman from Fujian on a blind date and he wants to marry her. They don't even know each other, but he's like, you know what? She's nice. She's willing to move to Taiwan. The only thing is he would need to pay$35 ,000 for a dowry. What's wild though, is that her family didn't even request a dowry. They said, actually, our daughter being able to move to Taiwan is enough for us.
44:15We think that she'll have more opportunities in Taiwan. But he's like, no, I'm going to get you guys a dowry. I'm going to take out a loan and give you a dowry. So they get married. He does the dowry and she's tying up loose strings, his wife, packing our things in mainland China to move to Taiwan. So after his marriage, he's like, you know what? This is the time to get rid of my sister because there's no other time. Once my wife moves here, I can't get rid of my sister. It's time for my sister to be useful again. Feng had worked in the insurance industry before all of this, so he knew a lot about life insurance, how it worked, how to get paid.
44:53So starting in 2011, this is two years before the murder. It's a meticulously thought out plan. fang starts buying up life insurance policies for his sister totaling up to a quarter million dollars 250 000 two years before her death then he killed her and then he sent the letter now this is not for his own guilt that he wants his sister to at least be buried and rest in peace no it was for insurance purposes fang knew that if his sister's death couldn't be confirmed and she had only disappeared he would have to wait on average seven years to claim the money That is too long. He needed the authorities to know who this was so that they could confirm her death and he could get paid$250 ,000.
45:36That's why he also chose a very public bathroom at a temple to do it so her head would be found faster. But he did try to confuse the police with the taxi driver DNA. So he found underwear, wrapped her in it, right? And he made sure to kill his sister before his new wife moved in, slowly disposing of her remains. So it's assumed that the rest of her body was dismembered and ground up. but the only problem was he needed to keep the head because that's what would give him the life insurance payout. That's the ID. And he didn't have time to get rid of the head before his new wife moved in. That's crazy.
46:14So the wife doesn't even know that's the sister. No, because she never met the sister, but she did hear that the sister had gone missing. But the, and the wife didn't go to the police no yeah so feng's wife she goes by mrs lu in the media but we'll call her lucy right um she's the one from the beginning of this story authorities tracked her down in mainland china and started asking her questions about the relationship and they said at first she seemed really traumatized and scared she like refused to talk she kept asking if they were a thousand percent sure if fang was going to be locked up for good for this and when they finally assured her yes he cannot touch you he cannot do anything to you or your family then she started telling them the story of how she found a head in their freezer she said that she moved to taiwan looking for a better life compared to her hometown that's honestly a pretty big reason why she married him right but when she got there she realized pretty quickly okay it's kind of the same as my hometown.
47:15Like it's not really, it's not bad, but it's the same as my hometown, same amount of opportunities. But instead I'm away from my family and friends. Instead I'm isolated. So it's just kind of for her personally, she didn't like it. And now that she had married this guy, she's like, okay, maybe we can find love. She tries so hard. And at first it was kind of cute. He's cooking. He's always in the kitchen. And she thought he, he always seemed mature. He had a provider mindset, right but then slowly after she saw the head in the fridge and even just a little bit before there were these little red flags that she would see he kept telling her after the head that he bought her like he didn't say he married her he said he bought her that she was his and he could return her or do whatever else he wanted with her because she belonged to him he also talked a lot about his little sister and the words that he used made Lucy very uncomfortable.
48:11He would call Cece quote not a good thing. Like he always talked about how promiscuous she was and how it disgusted him how she had fallen to drinking and now she's gone. And Lucy's like oh what happened to your sister? I used to live with her but now she's missing. Did you report her missing? No. Lucy remember trying to bring up Cece again and again. And she's like, okay, if your sister is missing, like no matter how much you disagree with her lifestyle, you still have to report her missing because that's basic human decency, right? But Feng refused. He yelled at her to stay out of it. Don't stick her nose in where it doesn't belong and know her place basically.
48:52So that with the head, I mean, she's in Taiwan. She's got no friends, no one to trust. It felt like Feng would just kill her too if he knew that she knew about what he did. even if he suspected that she knew her life was in danger. So she waited a few weeks to come up with a believable lie that her family member died and she had to go back for the funeral. She managed to escape to her family, but she had zero proof of what she saw. And at that point, she's like, he's probably gotten rid of the head. Even when she was telling her family about it, some people were looking at her like she lost her mind.
49:24I mean, there was no way that the police were going to believe her. And if they investigated without convicting Feng, she would have a big target on her back. She knows he would have killed her too. She knows it. Even if she never saw the head. Because now after learning about all this, Lucy said after moving to Taiwan, he kept bringing her to all these life insurance companies trying to get life insurance on her. And they all said, we can't because she's not a permanent resident of Taiwan yet. So she can't have life insurance here. She can have it in mainland China, but not here, at least not right now.
49:57and she said fang seemed really disappointed and she's like well i don't have plans on dying anytime soon i'm in my 20s oh she's only 20s yeah and fang said the aliens made him do it okay let me explain yeah so the police go in to arrest fang cc's own biological brother and authorities thought this guy is sick and twisted we don't know what he's been doing he might try to use force. He might try to fight back and get violent. So they blindside him, sneak up in the apartment building, kick down the door, slam him up against the walls, handcuff him and Feng did not fight. He actually went limp like a rag doll.
50:37It was odd. And then they heard this like trickle trickle noise and he had peed himself. So the four officers, they had to carry him out. He apparently couldn't even walk anymore. It was a lot. There was just pee trailing behind him, but still being officers they're thinking oh easy peasy this guy's gonna this guy's gonna confess so quickly right he's got no backbone he's already so terrified he knows he's screwed but when they sit him down in the interrogation room it's like he's a different person they're like where was that guy in the car just two seconds ago he's calm collected he either stayed silent and gave the officers nothing or he deflected all the questions he even calmly threatened to file complaints against the police for coercion.
51:19So imagine arresting someone. They're peeing themselves because they're so scared. They've seemingly lost all bodily functions. But then a minute later, they're in the interrogation room smelling of urine and they're saying, Officer, you shouldn't ask questions like that. According to Criminal Code 97. Yeah, what's up with that? Yeah. They think that he was probably putting on a show when he was arrested. For what reasons? To make it seem like he's mentally unwell. i see so ultimately that's even more second twisted that he peed himself just to fake uh whatever wow because before he was arrested he went to a psychiatrist and asked them to diagnose him with a mental disorder and they were like do you have a mental disorder ultimately the prosecutors had a lot going for them the wife's testimony neighbor's testimony the forensic evidence, the CCTV footage.
52:11Side note about the CCTV footage, the police were also able to find more footage closer to Feng's apartment that showed the same figure. So basically, they were able to track him. Like, not completely, but pretty good. Also, the CCTV shows Feng bringing Cici's head to the temple two days before the head was found. Meaning for two full days, locals, tourists, temple goers had used that restroom not knowing that there was a head there. and side note about this fang said that he was anxious after placing the head in the bathroom not for the reasons that you would think though like he just killed his sister disposed of her body in the most horrific way maybe he's scared of guilt potentially even getting caught but no he said he was anxiously checking the news for two days because he was worried that he was terrified that they wouldn't know it's her no that someone would just throw it away without checking yeah yeah exactly he wants this to be known so he can get his money exactly and he's like then it would be a headache i'd have to wait seven years to get the insurance payout so even with all of this out in the open fang's like i'm not gonna go down without a fight he starts pretending to be insane in the courtroom collapsing waking up and saying the aliens are here they've implanted a chip in my brain and the aliens have controlled me.
53:29He would pretend to cry and say, the aliens made me kill my sister. They controlled me to commit these acts. And I remember it. I remember it. I don't want to remember it. They manipulated me. They want me to end my life. So I can't speak the truth. And then the court would be out of session because they're like, this man is unhinged. Go put him in a cell, right? The minute he gets in a cell, he turns around, he's cool, calm, collected. And he starts bragging to his cellmates about his murder. Yeah. And then the next day he'd be dragged back into court, drooling, collapsing, showing reports from the psychiatrist that deemed him mentally ill before, before he was even arrested.
54:04Because remember what I said? It's like he had this insurance plan that if he does get arrested, he could just plea insanity. He's like, look, I've got all the reports. Professional examinations after his arrest revealed Fang to be mentally sound and fit to stand trial but cc's mom and feng's mom stood by feng what she said that it was probably a mental breakdown she testified that their family does have a history of hereditary mental disorders and she begged the judge to not to not give the death penalty to feng she said i already lost a daughter please spare my son i miss my daughter very much but at this point what else can i do i hope the judges can forgive fang and give him another chance and she argued her son is a good son he's never done anything bad before that's crazy i wonder if there's a level of like um son versus daughter you know how the traditional view in the end fang was sentenced april 30th 2015 he was facing the death penalty but the judges did take his mom's pleas into consideration.
55:14They gave him life imprisonment instead. And netizens were really confused on how to feel about this, right? Some netizens just felt sad. They said, we feel sad for Cece. We feel sad for the mom, for the situation. And they asked the question, what parts of Cece did her brother kill before he finally killed her physically? If he had been assaulting her, forcing her to do drugs, forcing her to do sex work. Like this was not a fast kill. He was probably killing her slowly for over a decade. But that, but other people felt like the mom doesn't know what she's talking about and the court should not have listened to her.
55:53They said, do you think a respectful son, like the mom claims would kill his own sister for insurance money? others wondered any mother whose child is so viciously taken from them they would hate and despise the killer with all their heart but when they realize that the killer is their own son do they still hate and despise as much i don't know what do you think of the question leave it in the comments i mean let me know all your thoughts in the comments i read most of the comments i'm always looking down there and i'm just very interested in this case because i imagine like the feeling of she's got this intense hatred for whoever did this to her daughter and then to find out it was her son does something shift right there does something change does that hatred suddenly dim down like what happens or is it a different kind of pain does that hatred turn into sorrow i'm not a parent so it's really hard for me to like even imagine so parents out there please leave it in the comments but please stay safe and i will see you guys on sunday for the mini-sode bye
From the publisher
Lucy had just moved in with her new husband. Though she didn’t marry for love she felt like it would be easy to fall in love with this man. He cooked her 3 meals a day and got upset whenever she stepped foot in the kitchen.
He said he just wanted her to rest and be happy. It was sweet.
But soon Lucy noticed that even stepping foot near the kitchen would send her newlywed husband on edge… it felt like there was something in that kitchen she wasn’t allowed to see.
One day, while he was at work, she ventured into the kitchen to make a small snack. She opened the freezer —— and made eye contact.
A woman’s head. Frozen. Eyes wide. Staring back at her.
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