Episode 1: How the mystery of a massacre at sea was solved and ended in a conviction

This case shows the challenge of prosecuting crimes on the high seas. There were at least four ships on the scene, but no law required any of the dozens of witnesses to report the killings — and no one did. Law enforcement in the open ocean is limited and jurisdiction is complicated. Authorities learned of the killings only when the video turned up on a cellphone left in a taxi in Fiji in 2014.

It’s still unclear who the victims were or why they were shot. An unknown number of similar killings take place each year — deckhands on the ship from which the video was shot said later they’d witnessed a similar slaughter a week before.

After receiving the video from a source at Interpol in an email with the subject line, “Brace yourself”, The Outlaw Ocean Project — a non-profit journalism organisation based in Washington DC — started an investigation that resulted in the 2021 conviction of Wang Feng Yu, the captain of the Taiwanese-flagged Ping Shin 101, who was taken into custody by the Taiwanese coast guard in 2020.

The details of this investigation are chronicled in this first dramatic episode of the new podcast series, The Outlaw Ocean, from CBC Podcasts and the LA Times. Listen to it here:



Trygg Mat Tracking, a Norwegian research firm that focuses on maritime crime, identified the Ping Shin 101 by comparing video footage with images in a maritime database. Former deckhands were identified through Facebook postings and on other social media platforms where they had discussed their time onboard.

Interviews with these former deckhands, some of whom said they witnessed the killings captured in the video, revealed the name of the captain and details of the incident.

Taiwanese officials, presented with the names of the men and ships in 2015 and 2016, said the victims appeared to be part of a failed pirate attack. But maritime security analysts cautioned that the claim of piracy has been used to justify attacks undertaken to counter a range of offences, real or otherwise. The victims, they said, might have been crew members who had mutinied, thieves caught stealing or simply rival fishermen.