Viewers of Dateline: The Gorge are certainly aware of the disappearance of a woman in Taiwan. No trace has been found after that. The Gorge episode was released yesterday exclusively on NBC at 9 p.m ET. Andrea Canning reported the episode. The woman is Alice Ku, 36, living in Mountain View. In 2019, she traveled to Taiwan with Harald Herchen, her husband. He is a Canadian engineer.
During that trip, she went missing. The details of what happened are not clear to everyone. In 2023, a judge in Santa Clara County declared that she had died in Taroko National Park. It is a place known for its dangerous and steep terrain. According to the judge, her body was never found.
To dissolve the case, Alice’s parents were given $23.6 billion in damages. The decision came after a civil trial that attracted wide public attention. The trial examined cellphone records, medical reports, email activity, and different accounts Harald gave regarding the injuries he claimed took place during the trip.
Continue reading more on the complete timeline of the Alice Ku Herchen case in Dateline: The Gorge.
The 2019 timeline in Dateline: The Gorge
In 2019, Dateline showed that Alice Ku and her husband traveled to Taiwan. The digital records are the evidences where it showed Alice logging into her Gmail and calling tutoring clients from different locations in Taiwan during this period.
On the evening of November 28, Alice made her final two phone calls from a Wi-Fi network to her clients in California. Investigators found that the next day, she took the last selfie at around 11:17 a.m. in her hotel room before her disappearance.
On the first day of December, Harald went to the ticket counter at the Taipei airport, changed Alice’s return flight and flew back to America alone. On the seventh day of December, Herchen returned to Taiwan for a night, and the local police confirmed that he entered the U.S. with a freshly broken hand.
After Alice missed several tutoring sessions on December 10, her brother George Ku went to the California police and filed a missing person report.
The 2023 and 2025 timeline in Dateline: The Gorge
On February 10, 2023, Dateline highlighted that the public got interested in the case quickly after the Palo Alto Weekly released a detailed investigative story. In July 2025, a civil jury and investigators said that Alice was murdered by Herchen, though her body was never found. Alice’s parents were awared $23.6 billion in damages.
During the trial, the jury heard powerful testimony and saw striking evidence. A detective from Taiwan’s National Police Agency came to California and explained that the traffic cameras and cell phone records showed the couple went straight back to the hotel together. This evidence challenged the husband’s claim that her wife had gone to a train station.
Between September 12 and 15, law enforcement found a way to bring charges against her husband. The Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney’s Office used his inconsistent and changing statements, along with depositions from the civil trial. He was charged with seven felony counts of perjury.
On September 15, 2025, the police arrested him at his home in Los Altos and he was taken to the Elmwood Correctional Facility and held without bail.
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Edited by Amey Mirashi