Lee Shih-ke

Lee Shih-ke (; March 5, 1927 – May 26, 1982) was a Chinese-born murderer and armed robber who perpetrated Taiwan's first gunpoint bank heist. An army veteran and taxi driver, he murdered a police officer in January 1980 with the intention of using the officer's gun to rob a bank. He carried out the robbery on April 14, 1982, and was captured and executed within six weeks. However, before his capture, the police had wrongly arrested another man and produced a false confession using torture; the suspect committed suicide whilst in police custody. Lee gained a reputation as "Taiwan’s Robin Hood" due to his anger at the "nouveau riche" class and a golden statue was erected in his honor in New Taipei City, whilst legal reforms were introduced to prevent false confessions and police torture.

Early life and education Lee was born in 1927 in Changle County, Shandong and moved to Qingdao, before joining the Chinese army at the age of 13. He was a guerilla soldier in the Second Sino-Japanese War. He ended up in Taiwan following the Nationalist retreat at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. He retired due to illness in 1959 and became a mechanic and taxi driver. He then spent the next two years planning which bank to rob. He told them that: "This money belongs to the country, but your life belongs to you". He shot and injured the assistant branch manager and left with around NT$5.3 million.

Legacy

Lee achieved a reputation as "Taiwan's Robin Hood" due to his claim that the robbery was partly a political statement against the country's financial elite, and the murder of the police officer was justified by his supporters who claimed the officer was an informant for the Japanese government. Lee's statue was originally paired with one of Liao Tianding, another historical robber and murderer who is now revered as a folk hero in Taiwan, and The Last Autumn of Lao Ke (1988; ).

After the robbery, customers entering Taiwanese banks were required to remove any surgical masks or motorcycle helmets that they were wearing. Reforms were also made to help prevent false confessions and police torture, giving suspects a right to a lawyer during questioning; this became known as the "Wang Ying-hsien Article" (王迎先條款).