Go die like your daughter: Pai Ping-ping grieves as death threat makes her recall daughter's brutal kidnap-murder

Haters and naysayers come with the territory of being a celebrity. As the expression goes, haters gonna hate.

However, when a nasty comment plays on a mother's bottomless grief of losing her teenage daughter tragically and evokes explicit imagery, that's when it crosses a line.

And for Taiwanese singer-actress Pai Ping-ping, it was the straw the broke the camel's back.

Taiwanese media reported that Ping-ping, 64, filed a police report on Sunday (April 12) against a netizen for leaving a "death threat" on her social media account. The comment was reportedly made in response to a video Ping-ping uploaded to commemorate her late daughter, whose death anniversary was on Tuesday.

The inflammatory comment read: "Go down! Go die in the water like your daughter."

In a press conference with Taiwanese media on April 13, Ping-ping said that she only "managed to stop crying 15 years after [her daughter's] death".

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oxPQlkSBb4[/embed]

Ping-ping doesn't know how she might have offended the netizen but felt that the comment was made intentionally. She also felt afraid of the part where she was told to "die in the water like your daughter" and it forced her to recall the painful memories of her daughter's body being pulled out of the water.

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She tearfully confessed: "I spent 15 years trying to erase the memory of the time my daughter's body was found. But with one sentence, [that netizen] managed to dredge up the memories."

The death of Ping-ping's daughter, Pai Hsiao-yen, created shockwaves and an uproar in Taiwan back in 1997. The 17-year-old was kidnapped on April 14 that year while on her way to school. After 14 days, her naked body was finally found in a drainage ditch.

The medical examiner told the media then that the body was weighted down to keep it under water and had been decomposing for up to five days, even when the kidnappers were negotiating the ransom with Ping-ping.

It was reported that two of her kidnappers killed themselves after they were confronted by the police, while the third took a South African military attache's family hostage before surrendering.

After the police arrested the netizen who wrote the threat to Ping-ping, they discovered that the latter — who was identified by media as female — is mentally ill. The woman's family also issued an apology to Ping-ping and promised to assist in the investigations.

However, Ping-ping has made her stand clear.

"I won't accept the apology. She said she's not afraid of being sued so I want to let her have a taste of it," she said, adding that she wants the woman to know what it feels like to break the law.

bryanlim@asiaone.com