Dogmatix

With some notable exceptions, Thai police are generally poorly educated and not very bright but their careers start with paying bribes to pass the police entrance exams. Those who get promoted to regional commands continue this trend but must also be aggressive and hungry with proven track records of passing enough money up the pyramids. They have to pay for plum jobs, followed by monthly fixed retainers. Jobs in tourist resorts are especially lucrative and command a premium. It is said that the Pattaya police chief job is worth B20 million a month in gross income before payment of the fixed retainer, so you can imagine how much the upfront premium might be for that job. Koh Tao and Koh Phangnan, which supervises Koh Tao, are not in the league of Pattaya, Phuket and Samui but they must also be lucrative posts. In addition to the daily crime busting work seen by the public police have responsibility to supervise a number of important businesses in partnership with local mafias, including protection rackets, illegal aliens, taxi scams smuggling of licquor, tobacco and oil, drug distribution, illegal lotteries and other forms of gambling, forest reserve encroachment, distribution of illegal cut wood etc etc.

Can you wonder that they are cosy with local mafias and resent being forced to do regular police work along with the intrusion of social media in their perfect little world?

Koh Tao Suspects' Alleged Recantation 'Normal,' Police Officer Says

But the confessions were one of the 5 key points that the police chief said made him confident of the suspects' guilt. One of the others was the police eye witness who was also tortured and has now also recanted.

That leaves you with: the phone which police seem to have forgotten was reported found intact before it was found smashed up; the CCTV footage which has had 40 minutes deleted from it; and the DNA testing which the two suspects passed the first time they were tested before their second tests came back positive in only 24 hours which is impossible. Good luck with that one.

What will RTP do now?

Murder them in prison. Avoids the embarrassment of a trial they might lose. They can leave it like that implying the suspects were guilty, leaving the real killer/ rapists at large to strike again.

I will never visit that island(nor any other island) .

Just out of protest,hope many thousands feel the same .

5000 illegal immigrants and a dodgy police force on Koh Tao ,

i think the other islands are same same .Stay away,not safe.

Visited Koh Tao and Koh Phangnan recently. You get a nasty feeling arriving on both as soon as you see the horrible characters lurking around the pier to fleece tourists and find the taxis (rusty pick-up trucks) are all controlled by the mafia and charge at least B1,000 for a 5 minute taxi ride. If you have ordered the hotel car to pick you up, it will wait for another couple of ferries until it is full, forcing you to take the mafia taxis. Service in many hotels and restaurants is often very poor because it is provided by untrained illegal immigrants who are obviously poorly paid, treated like shit and can't speak a work of Thai. Better call them slave islands than paradise islands. Such a pity given the natural beauty of the islands. Stay away and spend your money elsewhere.

Keyboard justice warriors are getting old and still hampering the investigation. Your speculation and guesses are having a negative impact on the case. You only need to have seen the Police follow the rumours round the island, to understand the harm you are doing. THE MAJORITY OF YOU DON'T EVEN *@!%ING LIVE HERE or are not related to the victim. You are in no position to pass comment or assess the situation. Stop trying to get 5 minutes of fame and seem cool off something so tragic, please let them rest in peace, god knows they deserve it.

I have lived here for a few years and seen all the good this place has to offer. The people here are amazing, kind, helpful and understanding. I regularly leave expensive items unattended for a few minutes at a time, to no ill effect. Crime here is at an all time low, not just for Thailand but also for the UK where I come from. We the people who make it what it is pride ourselves on just how safe it is here. Like for like my local town makes Koh Tao look like heaven, gangs of youths, muggings of old ladies and drug addicts everywhere.

We are angered at the introduction of extra police and camera's. This we believe is going to create more crime and antisocial behaviour. When you give crime a front seat, the effects are potentially an endorsement.

Sure the island has it's own way of doing things, everywhere does. That does not mean it is the wrong way, otherwise we may as well start preaching ourself as American or Victorian British label them savages and destroy them. GROW UP. The media is purposely and wrongly converting 'village chiefs' to mafia heads, to buy extra readers. It is despicable to take someone of good standing and trash their name just because you heard rumours. You wonder why they closed ranks? You forced them into it. Like a lot of you say the as Thai did with the burmese, you have done the same with them.

Now lets clear up some myths you all have.

DNA - Hannah's body has already been in the UK for some time now. Upon arrival to the UK she will have undergone an immediate post-mortem examination to verify the Thai evidence. In the UK or forensic science is at such a level that tampering would become noticed straight away. They will then also take their own samples for comparison. They will know if they find more than 2 different types of DNA, which would be expected in a cover up.

Physical mismatch - David was a big lad and as the official version goes was locked in a fight to the death to defend himself and a vulnerable person. Anyone who has grown up in the UK is used to trouble at night. The 2 people who got the better of him were of no physical comparison. He could have merely held one in each hand to stop the attack.

Investigation - Our conclusion was that the police used the wrong methods to investigate this crime. The island has a huge sense of community, this was never levied by the Police. They came in like bull in a china shop charging about, 'owning' the island. This is what caused the ranks to close.

Interception of WeChat. The chinese wechat provider is set up to allow law enforcement direct access to the logs. Why haven't these been requested.. Any Thai person who has shown me anything to do with the case has mainly been using Wechat to discuss it. It can filter by keyword so direct viewing of messages isn't needed.

I wish people would think before they pass comment, and affect a serious investigation.

I call for ThaiVisa to moderate this better, whether they understand it or not they are clearly having a negative effect on the investigation by wasting police time with useless leads and rumours. RTP when you read this please understand the culture of the foreigner to pass comments on things they have no personal involvement with or do not understand.

Why is it OK for you to speculate, just because you are a temporary foreign resident there, and not OK for others to do the same? People are still speculating because the crime is still unsolved and the rapists and murderers are still at large.

You can continue to leave your very expensive items unattended for a few seconds at a time and that's wonderful but, if you leave your teenage daughter unattended, you might come back and find her raped and hacked to death.