Original subtitles

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

We were in the valley of the shadow of death.

We were likely to die at any moment.

He just had such an evil, evil look to him. That just scared me to death.

He would not hesitate to kill right then to get what he wanted.

I thought, well, the police are here. We're all going to be okay.

It was completely the opposite.

We're badly in here!

I was screaming, I was crying, I just kept saying to him, please let me go,

please let me go.

My own daughter, in front of me, manhandled by this evil man, and I could

nothing about it.

My family and I really wanted to see a bit more of the world. We were thrilled

to be able to go to the Far East.

Taipei is very busy.

It's chaotic.

There's always something going on, festivals and streets and markets.

It's just totally new and different.

Lights everywhere and scooters and bicycles and people speaking in their

-pitched Mandarin.

Binchiling is ice cream.

E -R -T -A -N -C -E.

That's one, two, three, four. That's what I can remember now.

Taipei was known as a city with very little violent crime.

If we were inside the house, I don't think we ever even locked the front door

the back door.

It just never was an issue.

We had the utmost confidence in our safety and our security.

They were guilty of murder, of rape.

They created a climate of terror, the likes of which had never been seen in

Taiwan before.

He was the most wanted criminal in Taiwan.

You know, it was sort of exciting and scary at the same time.

Christine would come and say, you know, they'd spoke about it at school today

and the police came by and showed everybody the pictures.

Being 12 years old, I didn't understand why he was doing it.

But I understood he was a rapist. I understood that he was capable of

It's always in the back of your mind, but you're never going to run into him,

why must I, you know, worry about it?

It was a normal night in the Alexander residence.

I was playing my scales, which was quite tedious.

You could hear when the garage door would open down at the bottom and knew

dad was coming home.

My dad came up and he said hello to everybody and grabbed Zachary.

Zachary was a little foster baby from one of the orphanages.

He had just become a part of the family.

Just a normal evening. I think my mum had made spaghetti. I think the sauce

still on the stove downstairs and I think we were going to have spaghetti

supper. So that was the plan.

Out the corner of my eye I saw someone and I got a shock at that stage.

Because somebody's in the house, and I knew everybody who was in the house was

upstairs.

I was conscious of the fact that Christine had stopped playing the piano.

Probably she had come to the end of her practice session.

I knew who it was.

I immediately recognized him.

He and I just stared at each other.

And then I clicked and I wanted to scream.

He raised his finger to his lips.

And then he yanked me, jerked me, held me and put the gun to my head.

Very cold feeling.

The barrel of the gun is ice cold.

I suddenly heard footsteps coming up the stairs and I just thought it was

Christine coming up.

I saw movement on the stairs, glanced in her direction.

I saw that there was a man holding a pistol to her head.

The immediate feeling that I had was, this must be some sort of a joke.

I didn't even look at my sister or Zachary or my mum, straight to my dad.

Daddy, this is real. This is serious.

Christine's eyes held a look of terror.

A look of absolute fear.

She said to me, Dad, he's one of them.

And then I knew who it was.

A man who had killed on numerous occasions and would not hesitate to kill

then to get what he wanted.

And he's walked into our home.

I saw Chen with the gun to her head and she just had this look

of total terror on her face.

He just had... Such an evil, evil look to him. I don't think he had two cares

the world whether he would shoot us or not.

As the father of this household, the immensity of the responsibility that was

mine struck me like a hammer blow.

I was cold with fear because the pistol against my daughter's head had the

hammer cocked.

And he had his finger resting lightly on the trigger guard.

It would have been a split second for him to press that trigger.

And that split second, I would have seen my daughter's head blown off right in

front of me.

I suddenly felt the blood pounding in my temples.

I knew I had to do something.

I'd been trained in hand -to -hand combat.

I'd been trained to kill people.

I could disarm him, if necessary, to kill him with his own weapon.

If there was no other alternative, to kill him with my bare hands.

I'd been trained to do that sort of thing. It was an option which was open

me.

But nowhere in my training had I been faced with a situation where the

pistol is pointed at somebody who is extremely dear to you.

Psychologically, those handcuffs had a bigger impact than almost anything else.

One of the reasons why I never smoked a cigarette, never tried

drugs or drank alcohol was precisely because I knew that they affected my

ability to control my life.

And here for the first time, I'd lost control.

Chen had this expression on his face, and it just scared me to death.

I don't know if it was pain or anger,

but you didn't want to mess with this man.

He moved across to Anne.

Zachary was on her lap.

And she said very clearly and with great determination, No.

It was an extremely tense situation.

He must have realized that he can't look after the baby on his own, so he tied

her ankles together, but he left her hands free.

He had two full magazines for his pistol, and then he sat and loaded an

magazine for each of them.

I'm just thinking to myself, I have never seen so many bullets in my entire

before.

My dad was watching Chen, kind of taking a detailed notice of every gun, every

bullet.

He'd seen me looking at him, and he showed me the wrongs.

I remember my dad saying, You've got out of point.

I could see the look of total shock on my dad's face.

When I saw that, I felt my blood run cold.

Hollow point bullets which hit somebody would cause them immeasurable damage.

I began to pray.

Lord, to you, please protect my family.

I knew that my family needed to hear me pray. Deliver us from this evil man,

Lord.

He proceeded to douse all the lights in the house.

He also proceeded to barricade the stairs.

Then, holding out the telephone, he said to us...

And then he repeated CNN several times.

It was very clear that he wanted us to phone the international media and tell

them that he'd taken us hostage.

Michael

and Melanie

had been seeing each other.

He was an American doing an internship at an English -language newspaper in

Taiwan.

Michael. I remember hearing his voice and I started crying.

Michael, just listen to me. I'm not joking, OK?

He's holding us hostage and he wants you to contact CNN.

Can you do that?

That was the point where my emotions just took over and I just couldn't hold

together anymore.

Contact the newspaper or the...

Chen began speaking to local television stations of which there were four in

Taiwan.

Those four television stations terminated their scheduled programs and

broadcast what was happening around our home.

His first aim was to make sure that as many people as possible, not just in

Taiwan, but internationally, got to know that he had taken foreigners hostage

and that he now wanted his demands met.

I knew it was something he wanted, but I had no idea that it was to release his

family.

If it meant shooting us in the process, he didn't know it. He could care less. I

mean, what difference would it make?

I heard them yelling outside and I thought, well good, the police are here.

They're going to say what needs to be said, tell him to come outside and he's

going to agree and we're all going to be okay.

I hoped that they would come in and arrest him. It was completely the

They were shouting at him, they were mocking him.

They made him angry.

In my own knowledge of Hostage situations, you try to avoid any crisis

by entering into negotiations.

I had a pretty shrewd idea that they were not planning to do that.

Taiwan has a bounty system which they apply within their police force. The

wanted the suspect was, the higher the bounty.

And anyone who captured or killed Chen Chenqing was immediately going to get a

substantial amount of cash.

And that's quite an incentive.

All around me I could see red dots.

Six or seven little red lights on the wall.

All around me.

These little red lights were going all over us in the house. I said, Dad, what

is that? And he said, they're from a sniper rifle.

It really terrified me.

All they needed to do was press the trigger and the bullet would land where

laser beam was pointed.

I had no way of knowing whether their technology would have enabled them to

differentiate between Chen Chin -Shing and the people he was holding as

I couldn't believe that this was being done.

I began shouting at that stage.

English is not commonly spoken in Taiwan.

I was just hoping that they would understand the desperation in my voice.

Chen himself knew that there was going to be a firefight.

He pointed to the baby with a pistol, saying to Anne, when the shooting

Block the baby's ears.

I'd warned my family the moment any shooting takes place to lie flat on the

ground.

Hearing my dad say things like, when the shooting starts, lay as flat as you

can. I've never heard things like that in my life before.

It was scary.

I didn't think I was going to live past that moment.

These people were deliberately goading him.

He was not going to just take this.

He was going to react.

And his reaction would not be a good one, not for us.

Chen had warned them not to approach the house, to stay away from them.

From where he was, he could see the shadows outside.

And he warned them to stay away or he would kill them.

They kept moving closer. And Chen saw figures silhouetted by the streetlights.

And at that point he snapped.

And the immediate response, indiscriminately, no target in sight,

they simply returned fire.

And I thought, that's it, we're going to die.

Christine was crying, the baby was crying, it was just chaos.

I yelled at the police outside.

Stop firing!

Of course, it had no effect on him.

But the worst of it was that at that point he grabbed Melanie and

he held her in front of him as a shield.

And I thought, this is it.

I'm dying right now.

He's got his guns pulled to my head. He's got the other one waving out front

him. If he doesn't shoot me, the police are going to shoot me by mistake because

I'm right in front of him.

That was one of the worst moments in my life.

I knew that the police were firing indiscriminately.

So I was expecting the absolute worst.

I could literally smell the gunpowder.

And I remember the shells, the bullets hitting my face.

And I remember thinking, these are so warm that they were hitting me. And I

like, I'm going to burn my face.

And then my dad started yelling to the police.

Stop shooting!

He's holding my daughter.

Hold your fire!

So I took that as a sign that I could start yelling.

It's my daughter!

which got Chen more agitated, and he would pull me to the other side of the

or tighten his grip on my arm.

It was just like I was a doll that was being yanked wherever he was going and

constantly being pushed in front of him.

I felt like I was being squashed.

Every time I would get too hysterical or mad, he would hit me with a gun in the

back of the head.

Anyone who ill -treats a woman is repulsive to me.

and here this man was doing it to my daughter in front of me.

This

must

have gone on for about two or three minutes, just the firing back and forth,

then for some reason the police stopped shooting.

My daughter said to me, She

knew

that there was a good chance that she wasn't going to see another day.

And I knew that there was a good chance that not one of us would see another

day.

He's not going to shoot you.

You're not going to die.

He noticed me crying, and he sort of, he tried to wipe the tears, and I said to

him, no, and I pulled away. Don't cry.

He was trying to show some form of tenderness towards Melanie, but it was a

repulsive tenderness because it was a rapist who was doing it.

I remember being able to smell him. It smelled of sweat and dirt, and then he

would just be so close, like an intrusion, that it was just so

My feelings at this stage were almost too much for me to contain.

The police yelled something and he didn't like whatever it was because I

remember his arm getting really tight and he just started shooting right out

the front window.

Suddenly there was just all this gunfire.

I was screaming, I was crying, I just kept saying to him, please let me go,

please let me go.

The more it was going on, the more aggressive he was getting, the more

he was getting, the rougher he was getting.

I kept thinking it's my fault because I'm getting hysterical, I need to stop.

She would look at me with pleading in her eyes.

Take me!

I think my dad must have felt totally, totally helpless.

I don't doubt for a minute that my dad would give up his life for anybody in

family. Because I know I would give up my life for my kids.

And I could see that in my dad's eyes.

And I can still picture his face when he was sitting there begging him to please

exchange places with me.

And he had this helpless look in his eyes.

And he kept saying to me, Melanie, you're going to be okay. You're going to

okay. And I just wanted my dad to come and help me.

I prayed so desperately that I reached the point where

I didn't know how to pray anymore.

There was something saying to me, you've had it, boy.

Give up now.

Just forget it.

Was God hearing me?

Did he even know this was happening to us?

And at that point, the 23rd Psalm came to my mind.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

The Lord is my shepherd.

He was saying that over and over and over again.

Thou wilt prepare a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.

At one stage, all four of us were saying it together.

Holy goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will

dwell in the house of the Lord. As if everything was blocked out and the

shooting had stopped.

And that was the only thing I could hear.

Yea,

though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

As I said those words, I felt my voice breaking.

And I felt tears running down my eyes.

In all the years that I'd read that song, and said those words,

they'd been, in a sense, meaningless to me.

Now, they suddenly meant something to me.

I realized that we were in the valley of the shadow of death.

I realized that we were staring death in the eye.

And then I said the words, I will fear no evil.

For thou art with me.

And I remember the surge of emotion that I felt.

And

suddenly

it felt like almost a sense of victory.

God hasn't forgotten us. He hasn't forsaken us.

He is there.

There seemed to be a

calm. In fact, the calm was even a physical calm because the shooting

And suddenly there was a lull in the crisis.

And when I said to him, please, take me, let my daughter go.

He looked at me and he let Melanie go.

Now I was the shield.

But at the same time, my daughter was now no longer the vulnerable one.

I heard a sound which he might not have recognized, but I certainly did.

It was the sound downstairs of the door of the garage going open.

And that told me one thing.

The assault was about to take place.

They had entered the house through the garage.

He hadn't heard them downstairs.

And he clearly had a concern that they would penetrate the house from the roof.

With that in mind, he told Christine to warn him if anybody came down the

stairs.

This was very difficult for Christine to understand.

Go to the bottom of the stairs and tell him if anybody comes down.

I couldn't understand, why doesn't Daddy want me near him? You know, I want to

be near him.

Christine, do as I say!

Don't now, girl!

I was very keen that she do just that.

If she didn't, she was likely to be in the field of fire.

Anne was fortunately right in the far corner.

Melanie was something of a concern to me, but she was lying on the floor, so

really I was the only one who was in the field of fire, which I won't pretend

didn't concern me.

Anybody who was held in front of him, was going to die.

I heard the pounding on the stairs.

And I realized that this is...

All of a sudden, I

just heard them storming up the stairs.

And I just saw this mass of black.

It was like the black shields and the helmets with the visors on.

That's when he turned around and started firing.

I suddenly noticed the sea of black retreating.

But he realized that he needed to bring more fire to bear on them.

And he pulled the pistol away from my forehead, brought

the pistol down to start firing, but he just discharged the first shot before he

had the pistol pointed at them.

I felt this tremendous explosion where my knee was.

All three of us were screaming.

I just heard them both start screaming as I screamed.

I knew I'd been shot.

I didn't realise at that stage that Melanie had been shot.

It was just...

An intense burning sensation, like an explosion.

And I remember screaming in pain, but I think they had gotten so used to me

screaming at that point they didn't realise that I'd actually been shot.

I kept thinking to myself, how am I going to know if I'm dying? Is this me

dying? Is it just going to come suddenly?

What is the process?

tried to move my leg.

I felt it sliding around.

For a moment, I couldn't understand why it was doing that.

And then I realized that it was my blood on the floor, that it was sliding

around it.

Then it was quiet. It was eerie silence.

I could hear my dad's blood dripping.

I was very aware of what...

A loss of blood can do to a person.

I felt this wave of dizziness and of darkness closing in on me.

I said specifically to Anne...

I think that was the most frightening part of it all.

There was blood everywhere.

And you could see as well, he was like dazed. He was like in and out of it.

I was hoping to shake him, shake him alive.

Anne left Zachary then.

And she came across to where we were.

And then she saw that I hadn't even taken off my necktie since I'd come

And she quickly undid the knot and tied it around my leg, which effectively

stopped the bleeding.

I don't think I ever stopped screaming. I think I lay there screaming and

hollering the whole time.

My whole body felt like it was on fire.

And I think I thought, it's just in my back.

But then I tried to move my fingers, and on my right hand I couldn't move my

fingers. So I think that's when I put two and two together, that it had gone

through my wrist as well.

I was barely conscious.

But I was aware of the fact that there's a man who had come up.

And when he came up, I immediately felt a sense of relief that something is

happening.

Because there was a great deal of blood around my leg and very little blood from

Melanie, he made the incorrect assumption that I was the one who needed

attention more than Melanie.

He dragged me down the stairs.

I knew that he was obviously going to fetch Melanie, that Anne and the others

were going to come out.

We were going to be okay.

When the policeman came upstairs, he noticed that my hands were tied behind

back. Without realizing that I had a bullet wound in my arm, I just took my

wrists and pulled them apart.

And that was the most painful thing.

I just felt like he'd actually ripped my hand off.

And I remember lifting my arm up, and I could see right through my arm.

There was no blood, but it was just a hole that I could see right through my

arm. He grabbed me and carried me like a baby down the stairs and out the

window. I don't even think I said anything to my mom or Christine, and I

just assumed that they were all going to come out. I thought, well, this is it.

This is the end.

We're all going to be taken out.

Everybody's going to be okay.

I was...

Completely convinced that the crisis was now over.

The family were going to be released and the nightmare was at an end.

How very wrong I was proved to be.

As I lay there, I became vaguely aware of people around me.

Initially, I thought, well, it's just a lot of policemen.

There was a hubbub of sound and flashes of light.

The next thing I became aware of was people shoving microphones into my face.

I sort of swam to full consciousness, and I opened my eyes and lifted myself

The street.

was jam -packed with a hundred, possibly thousands of people.

Journalists, photographers, media people, who all wanted to see Chen

being killed.

It became apparent to me that there's no control here.

There is total chaos.

The police, who had launched the insane assault on our house, had no control

whatsoever.

And then I saw my daughter.

Hemmed in by people, crowding all around her.

And she was screaming in pain.

I was hollering and screaming.

And I remember seeing big cameras and lights in my face all the time. And

were just flashes going off. And I kept thinking, where's my dad? Where's my

dad? I need my dad.

She was shouting, Daddy, Daddy, I want my daddy.

And I suddenly realized that Anne wasn't there.

Christine wasn't there.

Zachary wasn't there.

And they weren't going to be there.

And I became so angry that I cast aside the feeling of helplessness.

And I began to bellow.

And I made sure that I shouted louder than the sirens

and the whistles and all the rest of it.

I don't know who I was yelling at, but I wanted somebody to hear me.

And when I started shouting, the crowd behind us started to open up a bit and

they managed to start pushing the gurney forward.

And we then were taken to the hospital.

They bandaged the leg.

and I was then placed in a ward.

Melanie's injuries were far more serious.

The bullet went in my lower back. It missed my spine by 0 .2 millimetres and

then lodged in my pelvis.

There's two main arteries in your abdomen, and the bullet lodged right

the two of them, actually touching the sides of the arteries.

If it had perforated either one of the arteries, I would have bled to death

within a couple of minutes in the house.

I found myself in a ward watching the television, having the conversations

interpreted for me.

It was very difficult for me to be in the hospital and to know that my family

were still in the house.

There was no way we could phone the house from outside because Chen

was monopolising the telephone line.

I felt a tremendous elation as I saw the little guy.

That was the first real hope that I had.

I burst into tears.

That's when it crumbled for me and I just started crying and realising it was

over. It was done. I was out of the house.

I was wildly elated when I saw her come out of the house.

But it was a very tempered rejoicing.

The most important person in my life was still held by this man.

The messages that kept coming through on the television were constantly saying

that she's going to be released.

And there'd be no sign of her.

The constant feeling, the build -up that now she's going to get out. And then

they would say, another half an hour and she'll be out. And I was quite frantic.

They'd agreed to his condition.

Now surely he must let her go.

The front door opened.

And out walked a number of people.

Right in front was Chen Shensheng.

His hands were handcuffed in front of him. And next to him was Hou Youyi.

There were a number of other policemen standing by.

And I really didn't want to see any of those people.

I only wanted to see Anne.

But there was no sign of her.

What had happened inside there?

Where is my wife?

Why hasn't she come out?

And then the cameras followed Chin, because he was the villain of the piece.

He was what everybody wanted to see.

The cameras followed him, and they moved away from the door, and I hadn't seen

Anne.

And I was quite frantic.

I really didn't know what was I going to do if Anne didn't come out of that

house.

And then the camera switched and it went back to the door and the last few

people came out and there behind them was Anne.

She had the broadest smile on her face and

it was that smile that I fell in love with when I

first saw her all those years ago and started courting her.

And what I saw as we walked out the door was that same smile.

Then I knew it was over.

When I saw Anne and when I saw that smile, I knew she was okay and I knew it

over.

And I just had gratitude in my heart that I could be with my wife again.

We could never condone what he did to our family.

But he remains someone who was created in God's image.

We cannot claim to be Christians if we don't forgive him.

I think my parents are very forgiving people in general.

My personal feelings was I did not forgive the man for what he did to

to my family.

He hurt us.

And why would I give him the satisfaction of knowing that I forgive

The one little piece of power that I still have over him.

I think it's fine for everybody in their own personal way if they want to

forgive him. And it makes it easier for them to move on. That's fine.

But I'm not giving him that power.