Saraburi: Elderly Norwegian man found dead in apparent suicide

[webfact]

Elderly Norwegian man found dead in apparent suicide

SARABURI: -- A 73-year-old Norwegian man died of asphyxia at his home in Thailand’s central province of Saraburi in an apparent suicide, according to police.

Saraburi police identified the Norwegian national as Nils Gunvald Bakke, a resident of Kaeng Koy district’s Tha Toom subdistrict.

According to police, the lifeless body of Gunvald Bakke was found in seating position with a plastic bag over his head held in place with an elastic rubber band in the living room of his home. Police investigators said they found no evidence of a struggle.

The Norwegian man’s Thai wife, Narissara Phanna, 49, called the police on the phone at 10 am on January 5 after coming home to find her husband dead.

Police said they found a suicide note, supposedly written by Gunvald Bakke, complaining about failed businesses that left him and his wife of 13 years penniless.

His body was sent to a morque at a local hospital pending an autopsy, police said.

Source: Khao Sod

Source: http://scandasia.com/elderly-norwegian-man-found-dead-in-apparent-suicide/

-- ScandAsia 2015-01-06

[giddyup]

Very sad. RIP.

[canarysun]

I am also at the point of being " penniless " but i could never to anything like that! There is always help and a solution in life for everything. ( sad story )

F.J

[ggt]

So...let me get this straight...you took yourself out...and left your 49 year old Thai wife penniless...?

[SOTIRIOS]

....in a marriage...a partnership.....burdens are supposed to be shared....

...if the money runs out....it is the guy's fault........???

[oneday]

Another falang death quickly determined to be a suicide...OK. Who's keeping count. Let's add this one to the suicide on Koh Tao of the man who hanged himself with his hands tied behind his back.

How many people think they could put a bag around their head and actually resist putting a hole in that bag at the last minute. Deserves just a tiny bit more investigation I think.

[Just1Voice]

So sad to see someone reach the state of depression where "death" seems to be their only alternative.

[SiSePuede419]

His wife of 49 years coming home at 10am?

Obviously, a perimenopausal woman is not staying home taking care of young children.

Another foreigner with no business experience in Thailand with a wife who does not work.

Hmmmm, I wonder why he is "penniless"?

[Gsxrnz]

Judgemental little pack of so and so's aren't we.

[Tallviking]

This arrested american pedophile had in his possession a norweigan passport in the same name as the guy who committed suicide

Strange !!

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/Eric-Rosser-arrested-in-Bangkok-47106.html

[starky]

Yet another "apparent" suicide in the LOS. Now it is open house for the Thai apologists and the so-called bar stool TV CSI. At least the TV CSI have inquiring minds unlike the staunch Thai apologists that seem to believe that no Thai could ever do wrong or ever be accountable for the hundreds of suspicious deaths that happen in Thailand every year and seem to be happening exponentially recently... oh I forgot no Thai could ever do such a thing.

[GAZZPA]

I am also at the point of being " penniless " but i could never to anything like that! There is always help and a solution in life for everything. ( sad story )

F.J

Totally agree matey. Money comes and money goes, its all too easy nowadays to get brainwashed into thinking that having money is the only thing that matters.

Very sad to read something like this.

RIP

[cookee68]

If you are killing yourself I find it hard to believe that someone could just sit there with a bag over their head, and not try to pull it off when you are struggling for air, as the human body is programmed to react against that, but that is just my assumption, just like trying to keep your head under water in the bath until you die, and it was only held on with a rubber band, just saying

[fredob43]

If you are killing yourself I find it hard to believe that someone could just sit there with a bag over their head, and not try to pull it off when you are struggling for air, as the human body is programmed to react against that, but that is just my assumption, just like trying to keep your head under water in the bath until you die, and it was only held on with a rubber band, just saying

All he had to do was take two or three Valium tablets available at any mar&par chemists for 20bt each, give it 10 minutes to kick in stick the bag over your head and you wouldn't know anything about it.

Pretty simple really.

RIP Sir.

[cookee68]

If you are killing yourself I find it hard to believe that someone could just sit there with a bag over their head, and not try to pull it off when you are struggling for air, as the human body is programmed to react against that, but that is just my assumption, just like trying to keep your head under water in the bath until you die, and it was only held on with a rubber band, just saying

All he had to do was take two or three Valium tablets available at any mar&par chemists for 20bt each, give it 10 minutes to kick in stick the bag over your head and you wouldn't know anything about it.

Pretty simple really.

RIP Sir.

Maybe, that's why I said it was my personal opinion,

[Farma]

This arrested american pedophile had in his possession a norweigan passport in the same name as the guy who committed suicide

Strange !!

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/Eric-Rosser-arrested-in-Bangkok-47106.html

Yes very strange, why would Eric Rosser have a passport in the deceased name.

.Police yesterday raided his apartment on Ramindra Rd in Bang Kaen district and found an 80-gram parcel of marijuana and a Norwegian passport in the name of Bakke Nils Gunvald.

[Thai at Heart]

This arrested american pedophile had in his possession a norweigan passport in the same name as the guy who committed suicide

Strange !!

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/Eric-Rosser-arrested-in-Bangkok-47106.html

Yes very strange, why would Eric Rosser have a passport in the deceased name.

.Police yesterday raided his apartment on Ramindra Rd in Bang Kaen district and found an 80-gram parcel of marijuana and a Norwegian passport in the name of Bakke Nils Gunvald.

Oh dear. Seems there might a slightly more ghastly reason why this person might want to take his life.

[YesWeCan]

Maybe the man from Norway sold his passport with the intention of getting a new one issued by the embassy?

[RKASA]

Maybe this guys passport is fake too. Was that not a long time ago like 4 years ago that the keyboard player for John Mellencamp was arrested with the same name. What is this guys real name?

[katana]

This arrested american pedophile had in his possession a norweigan passport in the same name as the guy who committed suicide

Strange !!

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/Eric-Rosser-arrested-in-Bangkok-47106.html

Eric Rosser, the former keyboardist for the musician John Mellencamp, was arrested in BKK 14 years ago in 2001 and extradited back to the USA. Maybe Bakke's passport was stolen 14 years earlier and sold on to Rosser?

Bakke and wife

In the Thai Daily News, they said the deceased, along with a business partner in Singapore, made a living trading in crude oil. However, with the recent collapse in oil prices, he'd lost all his money and couldn't afford to even renew his visa.

His wife, 49 year-old Naritsara Phanna, said they'd been married for 30 years and his job meant he regularly travelled back and forth between Norway and Thailand. He'd recently been complaining that the dip in the crude oil price meant he'd lost all his money and he was very stressed. At the time of his death, she'd been downstairs cleaning and when she finished she went upstairs to find him dead.

Thairath has a slightly different version. His wife said they'd been married for 13 years and he was very stressed due to losing all his money recently in his business trading crude oil.

He'd phoned up his brother in Norway the night before to borrow some money and on the morning of his death, he'd sent his wife out to the bank to withdraw the transferred funds.

However, when she got to the bank, she had a premonition that something was wrong, so she phoned back to the house but no one answered. She then phoned her brother who lived nearby and he went round to the house to discover the body.

Edited January 6, 2015 by katana

[bander]

"Police said they found a suicide note, supposedly written by Gunvald Bakke, complaining about failed businesses that left him and his wife of 13 years penniless."

How can he be penniless when Norwegian citizens have the highest pension in the world?

I don't buy this suicide story, the RTP should get their heads out of the azz and try to investigate for once.

Regulation of the basic amount and pensions in Norway from 1 May 2014:

Supporting spouse over 60 years and fulfills the conditions for entitlement to a spouse's allowance: 270,240 NOK a year. (1,145,283,- THB).

Now when he is dead she will get widow pension if the where legally married and registered by the Norwegian government.

Edited January 7, 2015 by bander

[balo]

I found this news article from August 2001 in Norwegian VG . It confirms the story that the American was arrested in Bangkok using a Norwegian passport. But the strange thing is that the Norwegian name Nils Gunvald Bakke did not exist in the National registry of persons, maybe because he lived in Asia already in 2001?

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/most-wanted-tatt-med-norsk-pass/a/4965958/