It is said that our brain is the most complex part of our body, and after you watch “Copycat Killer,” you cannot help but ponder over whether there is a genetic susceptibility to crime in individuals, or if they are influenced solely by their external environment. Though the majority of killers, who were following a guy named Noh, were driven by the traumas they had to bear in their own lives, the mastermind was a league above the rest. After Jia-wun got caught, the general public, as well as the law enforcement officers, believed that the case was solved. But Hsiao-Chi Kuo felt like something wasn’t adding up. There were still a lot of lacunae in the investigation, and there was no reasonable explanation for them that anybody could provide. Mr. Kuo asked the chief prosecutor to give him just 15 days, and if he still was not able to find anything, he would happily close the case. Firstly, Hsiao-Chi Kuo wanted to know if Hu Jian-Ho was actually a conspirator in these crimes or if he was just an unfortunate guy who was being used by the mastermind for his own vested interests.
After a lot of research, Mr. Kuo came to the conclusion that Hu Jian-Ho had a clear alibi in most cases, so he couldn’t be an accomplice to the crime. It is said that the one who never gives up the search ultimately ends up finding the way. This time, help arrived for Prosecutor Kuo in the form of Yi-nan Ma, the grandfather of a victim whose body had been left on the cross by Noh. Yi-nan Ma, apart from Hu Jian-Ho, was probably the only person who had heard the voice of the killer over the call. He told Hsiao-Chi that the voice he heard on the phone was a bit different from the one that was being played in the media. Yi-nan Ma had been keeping close track of the activities of the killer since his granddaughter had disappeared. He wanted the perpetrator behind bars, and because of his keen observation, he had made a revelation that Hsiao-Chi Kuo knew would be very beneficial for him.
Hsiao-Chi Kuo went back home after work to find out that his uncle, Kun-ju, was very excited that day as he had a celebrity passenger in his cab. Kun-ji told Kuo that Chen He-ping, the Newz host whom he watched every night, not only came in his cab but had a long conversation with him. Kuo got suspicious when his uncle told him that Chen He-ping was asking a lot of questions about him. Though at that time, he had nothing to prove that Noh was, in fact, Chen He-ping, he had this gut feeling that the star TV anchor was somehow related to the murders. He-ping had also written a book covering all the details of the grisly murders, and he claimed that his theory of multiple accomplices was far better and more realistic as compared to what the prosecutors were thinking. The kind of details He-ping mentioned in his book made it seem like he was himself present on the scene of the crime when it was all unfolding. Yi-nan Ma said that the things he had written about his granddaughter were unknown to him as well, and that made him a bit suspicious about He-ping.
Hsiao-Chi Kuo had realized that Chen He-ping was the killer who was using the pseudonym Noh, but he didn’t have any incriminating evidence that was strong enough to lead to a conviction. He knew that to catch such a shrewd conspirator, he would have to take a rather unconventional method, which the perpetrators didn’t see coming. But before that, he had to deal with his own rage and stop himself from killing the man in cold blood.
Why Was Chen He-Ping Killing The Girls? Is He Dead Or Alive?
As Yun-Huei Hu had speculated before, Chen He-ping loved attention, and he hated being on the sidelines. He wanted to be the center of attraction, and he needed constant admiration and applause to keep functioning. He was like a performer on stage who got energized the moment he saw an auditorium full of people. He suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder, where he felt that he was an extremely important person in whose absence the world would stop functioning. We got evidence of the same when he was holding Yao Ya-cih captive in the eighth episode of “Copycat Killer.” He wouldn’t have killed her so early had she not told him that he was a freeloader who amounted to nothing. Chen He-ping magnified his own self-worth, and the moment anybody undermined his authority or called him inconsequential, he lost his temper and unleashed the beast inside him. Yao Ya-cih told him that he was just a buffoon who didn’t have it in him to be the face of the show, and that really triggered him to the extent that he bashed her head with an ashtray and killed her. Chen He-ping liked holding the reins in his hands and having complete control over the lives of people. He had this extreme level of self-confidence where he believed that TNB’s increase in popularity was because he had become the anchor of the show, and the people came just to listen to him.
Chen He-ping wanted to captivate the audience, and his need to incorporate theatrics into every aspect of his life led to his downfall. Probably the only thing that he was scared of was that one day, nobody would remember him, and he would be condemned to a life of anonymity. Hsiao-Chi Kuo knew that if he was able to trigger Chen He-ping on live television, Chen He-ping would confess to crimes in order to take credit for committing the perfect crime. When Hsiao-Chi Kuo went on his show, he just said that Noh didn’t deserve the attention that he was getting, all the while pretending that he didn’t know who the actual killer was. The word “irrelevant” triggered something inside Chen He-ping, and he no longer cared whether he was on live television or not. From being solely responsible for TNB’s high TRP to committing the perfect crime, Chen He-ping blurted out everything and told the world that he was Noh, the mastermind behind all the killings.
Toward the end of “Copycat Killer,” when Chen He-ping was being taken to prison from the court, somebody from the audience stabbed him with a knife. Such was the obsession of He-ping that even while taking his last breaths, he asked the cameramen to film him. Noh was proud that he had shown society its true colors. He was elated beyond imagination after seeing that so many people had come for him, and it didn’t matter to him whether they were in support of or against him. He was proud that he had caused widespread chaos and panic, but that very lawlessness became the reason for his death. Chen He-ping never apologized for his mistakes because, till the very end, he didn’t consider that he had done anything wrong. He lay on the stairs of the court, probably feeling quite satisfied that even during his last moments, he was able to draw the attention of the entire nation towards himself.
