Bangkok (BLAZETRENDS)
Former wife of a police officer and four months pregnant, Sararat, who pleads not guilty, was arrested last Tuesday on charges of murdering a friend with cyanide and the Police are investigating her for at least 12 other deaths, including acquaintances, friends and a boyfriend.
Police reported that at the time of the 36-year-old suspect’s arrest in Bangkok, they found a bottle with cyanide, a chemical for industrial use that is very toxic to humans, according to Channel 3 of Thai television.
Cyanide in the body of a friend of the alleged murderer
Agents began investigating Sararat after the death earlier this month of a friend of Sararat’s, Siriporn Khanwong, 32, after going with the defendant on an excursion to a river in Ratchaburi province, west of Bangkok.
Siriporn collapsed and died right there by the river, where he had come with Sararat to release fish, a Buddhist practice for good karma.
Siriporn’s relatives reported his death to the Police, who found cyanide in the victim’s body and then began to receive more reports of deaths allegedly related to Sararat, who they accuse of robbing their victims.
The suspect denies the facts.
The suspect, who admitted “knowing all the deceased”, “denies the charges,” Surachate Hakparn, deputy director of the Thai police, told the media on Tuesday, specifying that the alleged motive for the murders is for economic reasons.
The officer indicated that the accused “owed” money to some of the deceased, while others were “stolen money and belongings,” according to Channel 3.
The authorities are also investigating the intoxication of a survivor, to whom the suspect also owed money, after taking a medication that the detainee gave her.
Possible crimes from the year 2020
The first of the investigated deaths occurred in December 2020, while at least another seven occurred between 2021 and 2023 and there are some for which the date has not been revealed.
The husband of one of the alleged victims of Sararat, whom the press calls “Am cyanide”, told Bangokbiznews that the suspect had a good character and that he never suspected her when his wife died.
His wife, Noi, had known Sararat for 6 or 7 months, with whom they made investments and also participated in Buddhist rituals, before she died on August 10, 2022.
Another alleged victim was Surat Torapab, a high school friend of the suspect who died on January 16, 2021.
The boyfriend of the alleged cyanide murderer also died
Sararat’s boyfriend and alleged father of her future baby, Sutthisak “Dae” Phoonkhwan died on March 12, 2023 and now his friends think Sararat murdered him too.
The fact that Thais often cremate their dead can make investigation difficult, since autopsies cannot be performed on the corpses.
The police believe that the accused stole from her victims amounts of between about 60,000 bats (about 1,450 dollars or almost 1,330 euros) and 300,000 bats (more than 8,750 dollars or almost 8,000 euros) and valuable personal belongings.
serial killers
This case is reminiscent of the murders committed in the 1970s by Frenchman Charles Sobhraj, a serial killer who poisoned some of his victims before killing them in Thailand and other countries and about which Netflix made a popular series in 2021.
Sobhraj, known as “The Serpent” for his ease of escaping justice, was released from prison last December from a Nepalese jail where he had been serving a sentence since 2003.
In the United States, Belle Bunness murdered 42 people with arsenic between 1900 and 1908, while Amy Archer-Gilligan killed at least 20 victims with the same poison between 1910 and 1916, both becoming the modern archetype of serial poisoners.
