A Santa Clara County jury has awarded the family of a Mountain View woman who disappeared several years ago in Taiwan more than $23 million in the wrongful death suit they filed against her husband, who has an active warrant for his arrest in that country.
Weichiao Ku and Pi-Lien Kuo filed suit against Harald Herchen, 66, following the disappearance of their daughter Alice Ku in 2019 while she and her husband were visiting the Taroko National Park.
The lawsuit alleged Herchen had engaged in a cover-up to conceal his involvement in Ku’s death by sending a message from her email account the day after her death to indicate she was alive a hundred miles away. While authorities have not recovered Ku’s body, they have treated the case as a homicide.
Todd Davis, an attorney representing the family, said the verdict provided justice in the saga to find the truth about what happened to Ku, who was days short of her 37th birthday at the time of her death and described as “just about everybody’s favorite.”
“It’s a high verdict and signifies the value of her life,” Davis said in an interview with The Mercury News.
Ku, who grew up in Los Gatos and graduated from Saratoga High School and Santa Clara University, married Herchen, an engineer at Bloom Energy, in Santa Clara County in 2017.
They left for Taipei on Nov. 23, 2019, before she disappeared on Nov. 29. Herchen had alleged that Ku emailed him on Nov. 30 to ask to change her flight tickets so she could spend more time at her parents’ home and that he had previously dropped her off at the Hualien train station.
However, an investigation refuted his account and revealed several inconsistencies with his story.
A forensic expert testified that the email originated from Herchen’s hotel. An official from Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau also noted that cell phone data and license plate tracking showed that Herchen never took Ku to the train station, contradicting his statements.
A physician who treated Herchen also testified that he broke his hand on the date Ku disappeared.
Financial records and log-in data from Ku’s accounts also showed no activity following the date she disappeared.
Her family was first alerted that something might be amiss on Dec. 2, 2019, when they were unable to contact her on her birthday.
Davis said a few days later, they were notified that Ku, who was a tutor, missed several sessions with students, which her clients said was out of character.”
Ku’s family made significant efforts to find her, hiring multiple attorneys and investigators, and offered a $1,000,000 reward in Taiwanese dollars for information. They also questioned the efforts Herchen had taken, or the lack thereof.
Taiwanese law enforcement officials consider Herchen a suspect, but there is no extradition treaty between the two countries.
Adding to the intrigue of the case were the questionable circumstances surrounding the death of Herchen’s previous wife, who died four months before he and Ku married.
While his previous wife’s death was attributed to sleep apnea, an autopsy report indicated that she had several unexplained injuries on her body.
In the immediate aftermath of the verdict, Herchen’s attorney, Chuck Smith, said his client continues to maintain innocence.
“He did not kill his wife and there are reasons for her to disappear unrelated to anything he did,” Smith told The Mercury News. “There is a great deal of mystery about her and her background and her relationship with her family.”
Smith said that he and his client have yet to determine their next steps, including whether they will challenge the jury award.
“We haven’t recovered from the shock of the verdict,” Smith said. “I don’t know if it will be post-trial motions or an appeal.”