A Bay Area man who was recently slapped with a $23.6 million civil judgment over his wife’s presumed death in Taiwan six years ago has now been arrested on perjury charges, on allegations he repeatedly lied under oath to conceal a murder that will likely never be prosecuted.
Harald Herchen, 66, was arrested Thursday in Los Altos and booked into the Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas, and was scheduled to be arraigned Friday, records show.
In July, a Santa Clara County jury ruled that Herchen had civil liability for the November 29, 2019 death of 36-year-old Alice Ku, who was last seen alive while the two were vacationing in the area of Hualien, Taiwan. The trial was spurred by a lawsuit filed by the family of Ku, whose body has never been found.
Herchen was charged with seven felony counts of perjury, which accuse him of making provably false statements in sworn testimony during the civil litigation and a related probate proceeding.
His arrest was announced Friday by Mountain View police, in conjunction with the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Unit. Ku lived in Mountain View with Herchen when she disappeared.
Deputy District Attorney Rob Baker said the cold case unit, which he oversees, “has never given up on getting justice of Alice.” He alluded to the tangle of jurisdictional issues — namely the foreign location of the presumed killing and Herchen’s citizenship status as a Canadian national — that prevent a local murder trial, and how the recent civil verdict opened a path to prosecuting him on U.S. soil.
“We realized early on that getting jurisdiction to charge someone with a death that occurred in another country was going to be a major challenge, if not impossible. So we had to think outside the box,” Baker said. “Even though we can’t charge Mr. Herchen for Alice’s death, we can charge him for trying to cover it up.”
Herchen has maintained his innocence, and has filed a motion for a new trial by challenging the plaintiffs’ legal standing to sue.
A key component of the case against Herchen was Taiwanese investigators contradicting his version of events that contended Ku willingly parted ways with him to visit her parents. According to previous testimony and a probable cause affidavit filed this week, they cited cellphone data that showed Herchen and Ku were last together at Toroko National Park — where she was presumably killed — and were never near the train station where Herchen claims he took her afterward.
Additionally, Herchen cited a so-called “proof of life” email from Ku in which she purportedly confirmed reaching her parents and asked him to push back her return flight to the United States by a week. But Taiwanese authorities, after obtaining a search warrant for Ku’s Google account, said the IP address for the email indicated that it was sent from Herchen’s hotel room.
The civil trial also included testimony from Ku’s parents asserting they were never aware that their daughter was in Taiwan. A physician who treated Herchen for a broken wrist testified that the injury occurred on the day Ku disappeared — not before the Taiwan trip as he claimed — and financial records and log-in data from Ku’s accounts showed no activity after that day.
Herchen testified that he emailed Ku his plan to fly to Taipei on Dec. 8, 2019, and fly back with her the next day. He completed the round-trip, but without Ku. He did not publicly communicate any concern about her absence until after Ku’s brother filed a missing persons report that made its way to Mountain View police.
In September 2023, Superior Court Judge Charles Adams issued a probate ruling that declared Ku’s official date of death as Nov. 29, 2019. During a prior hearing, when asked why he believed Ku was still alive, Herchen testified, “I think she ran off with another man.”
Herchen, an engineer at Bloom Energy, and Ku, who grew up in Los Gatos and graduated from Saratoga High School and Santa Clara University, married in October 2017. That was four months after Herchen’s first wife died, though the two were already engaged in an extramarital affair, according to court records.
Other records show that the shortly into their marriage the couple clashed over her claim to his property. Neighbors reportedly told Ku’s brother that prior to the fateful Taiwan trip, Herchen and Ku could be heard arguing and mentioning divorce.
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There is an active arrest warrant for Herchen in Taiwan. But because there is no extradition treaty with the United States he is unlikely to be sent to Taiwan for prosecution for the alleged murder, for a multitude of reasons including a lack of assurance of the legal rights he would have there.
State prosecutors — which in this case would be the county district attorney’s office — are typically prohibited from assuming jurisdiction of a killing outside the country without compelling evidence that a suspect made plans to kill while still in the United States.
Herchen also eludes being charged with murder under federal law, because while it is a federal crime for a U.S. citizen to kill another U.S. citizen on foreign soil, that does not apply to a non-citizen who kills a U.S. citizen abroad. The fact that he lives in the United States makes no difference.
All of this led to the newly filed perjury charges. Mountain View Detective Terry Hoang alleged in the new probable cause affidavit that “Herchen lied under oath at his September 19, 2022, deposition, (at his) August 25, 2023, probate deposition, as well as his civil jury trial.” The charges do not currently reflect his trial statements, but prosecutors say that could be amended later.
“His inconsistent testimony,” Hoang wrote, “demonstrates consciousness of guilt and reinforces the conclusion of the Taiwan authorities that he is responsible for (Ku’s) murder.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.