BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Attorneys made their opening arguments yesterday (July 10) to 12 jurors who will decide if Mountain View tutor Alice Ku was killed by her husband when she disappeared in Taiwan six years ago.
Attorney Todd Davis, representing Ku’s family, focused on her husband Harald Herchen’s mysterious hand injury around the time that Ku disappeared on Nov. 29, 2019.
Davis showed a 10-minute video from Herchen’s deposition. Herchen, 66, of Los Altos, gave different stories for how and when he broke his hand and sprained his wrist.
First, Herchen said he didn’t injure his hand, but he told his family that he did to avoid going to his sister’s wedding in Cabo San Lucas.
“It’s just easier to come up with an excuse like that,” Herchen said in the deposition.
Then Herchen said he broke his hand punching a bookshelf out of frustration while he was alone in his apartment, before flying to Taiwan with Ku.
“I do get mad sometimes, but I don’t remember why,” he said.
Herchen said he was embarrassed, so he told others that he broke his hand roughhousing with his brother at a bar in Cabo.
Herchen said he didn’t wear a brace in Taiwan because his hand wasn’t bothering him, but he started wearing the brace when he got back.
Dr. Katherine Putz, who looked at Herchen’s hand and ordered an X-ray at El Camino Hospital, will testify in the trial.
Hand stories don’t line up
Herchen allegedly told Putz that he broke his hand two days before seeing her on Dec. 1, 2019, and his injury was consistent with a recent fracture.
“No healing had started. So Mr. Herchen’s story of injuring his hand prior to the trip to Taiwan simply doesn’t make sense,” Davis told the jury yesterday.
Herchen’s hand injury is part of a pattern of evasion and dishonesty surrounding Ku’s disappearance, Davis said.
Herchen didn’t give Ku’s family her laptop, immediately hired a lawyer and lied about Ku continuing to use her credit cards, Davis said.
“This man has made absolutely no effort to find his wife, and that’s because he knows she can’t be located,” Davis said.
What his attorney argued
Herchen’s attorney, Chuck Smith, painted a different picture in his opening argument at the Old County Courthouse in San Jose.
Smith said Herchen is a good man who had no motive to murder Ku — his travel partner and intellectual companion.
Herchen grew up in Canada, spent time in the military and worked on a nuclear bomb detection system, and he came to California to get a PhD from Stanford, Smith said.
Herchen, who worked as an inventor for Bloom Energy, traveled often for work. Ku made his trips less lonely, and together they spoke six languages and visited caves, castles and cultural sites, Smith said.
Herchen helped create an online tutoring app for Ku and invested in her business, Smith said.
“For him, the most enriching part of his life … He had no reason to devote all that time, energy and effort, and then decide, ‘I’m sick of her, I’m going to kill her,’” Smith said.
Didn’t ‘tire’ of her
Herchen couldn’t perform sexually, so he didn’t tire of Ku and try to get rid of her, Smith said. He had been through one divorce before, so he knows that would be much easier than killing her in a country with the death penalty, Smith said.
“She had the freedom and means to disappear on her own,” Smith said, suggesting that Ku ran off with a tour guide.
The first witness in the trial was Ku’s older brother by one year, George Ku, who gave some insight into their family life.
About Ku
Born in 1982, Alice Ku was the youngest of six kids — five girls and George Ku. She was closest with her sister Josephine Ku, who was 10 years older and like a second mom, George Ku said.
The family moved from Taiwan to Fiji in 1989 because they were afraid of a Communist invasion, and they moved to San Jose in 1991.
George Ku said he and Alice Ku were “very close” from playing together as toddlers to navigating new environments.
The family moved to Los Gatos, and Ku graduated from Saratoga High School in 2001.
Ku did well in school, despite the competitive academics and living with eight people in a 2,300 square foot house, George Ku said.
She started tutoring as a side gig after her own tutor helped her pass a hard math test, George Ku said.
George Ku went off to college in San Diego and would see his sisters when he visited home.
Alice Ku graduated from Santa Clara University in 2006.
The parents moved back to Taiwan, and Ku moved to an apartment in Sunnyvale in 2007.
Lost touch
George Ku said he lost touch with his family after his wife had a baby and he started working 18-hour days as an investment banker.
The last time the family got together was at George Ku’s wedding in 2014. Davis showed the jury a photo from the wedding with all six kids, both parents and Alice Ku’s niece.
Herchen married Alice Ku on Oct. 6, 2017, and they lived together in a Mountain View apartment without telling her family.
Smith said Ku was the one who kept Herchen away from her family.
George Ku said he got a text on Dec. 8, 2019, from another sister, Monica Ku. A parent said Alice Ku had missed two tutoring sessions for the first time in five years.
Monica Ku went to Alice Ku’s old apartment in Sunnyvale and learned she was no longer living there, George Ku said. When the family tracked down the apartment in Mountain View, they found her dusty car sitting in the parking lot and a sign taped to the front door: “Welcome home Alice, I love you.”
