apalink_thailand

Koh Larn is a great call, learn Chinese and get run over by a Jetski too.

Exactly. What a dump. I prefer Koh Chang for relatively quiet beaches and lifestyle (jet skis are banned there). Easy to get to by car and there is a ferry to the island. Prices are reasonable too. You may have to learn Russian though. LOL.

Agree with other posters that you should obtain a GOOD lawyer. I know one that specialises in family type law and he is a shark. Believe it or not, the Thai legal system can work in your favour as long as you play it right.

She is employing village tactics on you and probably hasn't done a good job of covering her tracks, therefore with some good investigative work, a good lawyer and his investigators may be able to dig up some dirt that can possibly catch her out. You may not get your money back but there is still a chance that you could get your son (this is the most important aspect) and possibly an agreement on the property (either you win it outright or it gets sold and proceeds split). I realise that at this point she has probably bled you dry but if you do decided to go the way of a lawyer, don't go cheap. Get a shark. She and her family are counting on you being a weak foreigner without local knowledge. Beat her at her own game.

Problem is you will not believe any Burmese did it now after all the Thai bashing on here. Maybe time to take a break and look at the facts again ? Is it really possible that someone else than the headman and his family did it ?

Not likely. Am I to believe that some Burmese blokes were quietly playing guitar on the beach and suddenly, with an inordinate amount of rage, decided to rape and murder a woman and her friend? I have been going to beaches in TH for 25 years and the one thing I notice is that people that work there and live there are completely mellow. So much so that a waiter usually forgets your order before he get to the bar. I just don't believe that a group of illegals would, for no apparent reason, chuck the guitar, grad a hoe and bash these people brains in just to get some totty. No, this was a crime of rage likely brought about by the bruised ego of someone that knew he could get away with it.

Just a bit of the wrong medicine, YABAH ? can make the difference between normal and "unreasonable" behavior.

A damaged iPhone belonging to one of the victims is found in bushes behind the house where Win, one of the suspects, lives.

This phone ?

victims-phone-given-to-police-day-after-murder-photo.jpg

Most people have more than one phone nowadays i use three one for work one for thailand one for my home country

Ok, its possible. A Burmese migrant spends a whopping 5,000 Baht to be smuggled into Thailand a few weeks ago, gets a job as a bartender (probably paid a handsome salary too) and buys himself 2 mobile phones. You know, one for the wife's calls and the other for calls to all his girlfriends. He can afford it.

Kudos to this lady.

We can only hope that more people with some kind of authority raise concern as to the legitimacy of these arrests.

I wish the British Embassy and media would get some backbone and start asking more difficult questions of what's gone on here.

I'm not saying these guys aren't the killers. They might be. But an independent verification would prove this once and for all.

There's no legitimate excuse not to allow or offer this if they are confident they are right. Thailand has everything to gain my definitively proving they have got the right men. The world is watching.

It appears on the Thai language forums that 90% of people are dismissing the arrests as a cover up. From a Thai message board today. Translated into English:

"Come and ask me here. Come and ask me there. I am a Koh Tao resident, although my mom gave birth to me at Surat Tani. My family is very close to all the influential figures on this island, including the owner of this resort.

I want to tell the truth. I can't hold it any longer. I would like to tell "Trasher Page" that the murderers are not Burmese."That's all I want to say" and What "CSI LA Page" published, it is very close to the truth 97.8769%.

I would like to say that Koh Tao is just like a Kingdom of its own. The local mafia family can do whatever they want and get away with it. For example, in 2011, a bar owner got shot to death. Everybody in the island know who did it, but never had the nerve to speak out. People here are strange. They are wiling to cover up wrong doing for the local mafia. Thailand might be a democratic country, but in Koh Tao it is Feudalism."

A link is always welcomed...

That's right Local Drunk.

Without a link it's really meaningless.

No matter what dog'n'pony show they put on I think we all know it is BS. Push for independent confirmation collected and evaluated OUTSIDE THAILAND.

Oz

Its done and dusted. Now its time for the show trial. The real murderer is still on the island and can kill again.

Because you say so?

So...who runs the local drug cartels supplying the various island parties? Seems to me that someone of that stature would have the power and cash to protect themselves. I cannot believe that some local Kamnan has that kind of money and power unless he has involvement in the trade too. Follow the money. Just speculation of course.

Police of course. It costs a lot of Baht to become the police officer in charge of tourist destination.

Though thats over on KP... Heck you can smell the weed growing as you go over the hill and around the corner from the lookout/temple thats being rebuilt on the hill down to haad rin if the air is still.

Interesting indeed.

Apparently the word on the street from the Thai & Expat locals down on the islands, who agree that the real culprits are the local mafiaso families, and are at frustration point because they seem to wielding enough power to push the boys in brown & in green around. (and the media) That's scary!, I really hope we are all wrong, but there is a big stinky rat in there somewhere.

Yep, this is what I am hearing too. Reports of locals being too scared to come forward with information basically confirms this. It makes no logical sense why the locals would be too scared to come forward with information on a lowly Burmese bartender.

No matter what dog'n'pony show they put on I think we all know it is BS. Push for independent confirmation collected and evaluated OUTSIDE THAILAND.

Oz

Its done and dusted. Now its time for the show trial. The real murderer is still on the island and can kill again.

All they want is a photo of you both sitting on the bed in the bedroom. I had to do the same in June when I got mine. We had some laughs taking the pictures, mind you.

Yes....the taxi guy seems to be a man of principal.......how many other Thai men would stand up and annouce this news about rogue cops.....good for him!

And, as mentioned in this article, Prayuth has knocked the stupid wrist bans on the head......which I suspected of being a means of registering all hotels for tax collection.......and nothing to do with safety of visitors.

He must be the exception this taxi driver on KT.

If you have had the experience of actually having to use them, then the fact that this one seems to have principles would come as even more of a shock.

The taxi's on KT are mostly run and operated by children/relatives of wealthy land owners, and themselves operate in mafia fashion, and charge exorbitant prices. Obviously with their being no other option of transport other than renting bikes, which is probably not suitable for families, then they have no option to pay.

Its one of the reasons so many good restaurants etc go out of business on the island. Because they are not in the grade A location like directly on Sairee Beach, it becomes so uneconomical for families to go out to other eateries on the island, effectively strangling the island to concentrating all the people in certain areas like Sairee and Chalok Ban Koa, which are of course owned by the big island families.

Agree with all this, you go to their island and ride their ferry, stay at their hotel, drink at their bar, eat at their restaurant,ect.

only way to hurt them is to not go there in the first place, remember the koh larn falang lady getting bullied into sitting on the mafia's deck chair, all same same.

The more I read about this place, the less I like it. Another paradise in Thailand completely ruined by greed and corruption. The Golden Goose is slowly being killed. KT is now completely off my list of places to visit and places to recommend.

The cost of witnesses has just gone up.

Iam guessing he doesn't get the full 700K though. ;-)

PM me and I will send you the contacts of a legal service that has experience and success with family law cases.

So...who runs the local drug cartels supplying the various island parties? Seems to me that someone of that stature would have the power and cash to protect themselves. I cannot believe that some local Kamnan has that kind of money and power unless he has involvement in the trade too. Follow the money. Just speculation of course.

Laughable!! The dna dperm in the lady was asian. I suppose foreigner can mean anything these days.

The DNA was Mongoloid, meaning east Asian. This includes China and Southeast Asia but not North India. So yes, its possible that it wasn't a Thai. But certainly not a westerner.

Glad to see that nothing changes in Thailand and wealthy, influential murderers get away with their crimes after a sizeable donation into the right pockets. Now the politicians get a nice tax payer paid trip to an exotic island to wander about and nod their heads at the progress of a farcicle investigation. Good night and thank you for playing.

RIP to the victims.

Might as well speculate further. It's the TV forum, so what the hell.

These fellows are relatives of the local Kamnan.

They work In the bar.

The island is well known (it seems) for access to easy drugs

Full moon party types need disco biscuits on the late night dance party.

To sell drugs without worries,sellers need to be connected and protected .

To sell drugs to tourists , what better placement than working in a bar

Perhaps, if the can of worms was opened further, a whole new case could break open. I doubt it though since that will cause even more loss of face.

TV trolls, open hunting time. Enjoy.

Why only negative responses? Personally, I think there is a hell of a lot more police work being done than is publicised and instead of being so critical, why not let the police/investigators do their job and if anything, be positive. So, unless any of you 'nay' sayers know exactly what is going on behind the scenes, would it not be best to keep quiet about it?

They only need to bring in one expert: Dr. Pornthip.

I've already told you why, to make it look like the couple were intimate, and the first thing the cops did was say it was a crime of passion as they also "assumed" that the couple had been killed whilst commiting an act of intimacy. So the naked par worked, it bought the guilty ones time.

It throws off investigators it made them look at the obvious thing to them, and almost immediately the friend and his brother were Prime suspects.

It's called covering your tracks, or arranging the crime scene to make them think of a different scenario.

Respectfully, I must disagree. The crime took place late at night, was extremely violent and was relatively close to bungalows and other people. The likelihood is that the perps were under the influence and when so, do not think rationally. The brutality of the crime indicates much anger and angry people, possibly under the influence of alcohol or drugs, in a populated area do not stop to think how they can cover up the crime so elaborately. If they had the time to do so, they would possibly have used the hoe to bury or hide the victims and then hidden the murder weapon. In my experience in TH, there haven't been too many cases of well thought out and planned murders, especially not in the middle of the night on some little remote island by a bunch of beach goons. Just the uninformed opinion of someone who watches far too much Crime & Investigation Channel. Hope you don't mind. :-)

The 'chatting-up' of a pretty western girl by low-life local, subsequent blowing off by the girl and/or intervention by western male friend (thus loss of face for the Thai) is always going to be a possibility. Been in that position a number of times, can become very tricky. This scenario happened with the murdered Canadian chap in Pai and also the slain Brit couple in Kan -- both murders were perpetrated by cops -- while the Kirsty Jones murder in CM was possibly by an influential Thai. Not saying it's a cop in this case, but if someone who thinks they are someone has lost face and are even off their head on yabaa... well if you've spent time here you know the rest. Sick!

This, in my opinion too, is the likely scenario. Thais are not violent by nature but when loss of face occurs, especially when under the influence (and together with buddies) the reactions can be unpredictable. This was a crime of passion, as indicated by the brutality of the murder. I personally think that the perp is a local influential person (or son of) which usually means linked to the BiB in some way, this too could be why the local BiB is botching the investigation. There are precedences of this occurring, as you correctly mentioned.

All tourists should just get up and leave Koh Tao. Let all their businesses take a serious hit then you'll see some progress. Hit them where it hurts most.

Good idea. Leave it to the scuba divers and not "The Beach" crowd ;-)

The Thai rumour network is suggesting that the son of the most influential mafia Don on the island was at the party and showing interest in the girl, but she was not interested in him. The local islanders apparently all know (or suspect) it was him but nobody is talking (or if they are, the police aren't listening). Again, its all just conjecture but if such a person exists, it might be a good idea to grab some DNA from him. By now, he has probably left the island though.

The friends should be able to corroborate that such a man was there, I would assume.

well if the BIB are serious they should look at the rumours even if they turn out wrong. Send the techs in to place a few listening devices in their homes and vehicles and those of associates.

Unfortunately, if the rumour are true, sending the Fox in to investigate crimes in the Chicken Coop is never a good idea.

The Thai rumour network is suggesting that the son of the most influential mafia Don on the island was at the party and showing interest in the girl, but she was not interested in him. The local islanders apparently all know (or suspect) it was him but nobody is talking (or if they are, the police aren't listening). Again, its all just conjecture but if such a person exists, it might be a good idea to grab some DNA from him. By now, he has probably left the island though.

The friends should be able to corroborate that such a man was there, I would assume.