‘Role model’ makes new start
The son of convicted serial killer, Somkid Phumphuang, who has himself served extensive jail time for drugs and theft, is asking society for another chance as he emerges from his father’s shadow.
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| Kru Nong, Nui |
Jaturong “Nui” Phumphuang, 30, who turned to a life of crime after fleeing a shelter for homeless children, was forced into the limelight last month as police hunted down his father, a paroled serial killer accused of killing a Khon Kaen woman, his sixth victim.
Somkid, dubbed Jack the Ripper of Thailand, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering five women in 2005, but paroled in May last year. He took up with Ratsami Mulichan, 51, later found murdered at her house in Kranuan district of Khon Kaen on Dec 15.
Somkid was arrested a few days later on a Surin-Bangkok train amid a nationwide police manhunt thanks to student passengers who noticed him acting suspiciously. Earlier, netizens recalled he had a son often in trouble with the law and wondered if he also posed a public danger.
They dug up Nui’s history and found he had served jail time in Udon Thani as recently as 2017. In the throws of the manhunt for Somkid, Udon Thani police declared they were searching for Nui too, lest he offer shelter to his fugitive father.
Nui, who was living in Chon Buri when police launched their manhunt for his father, feared for his own welfare. Easy to identify thanks to his heavily tattooed face, Nui said he did not dare venture outdoors, and fled his job as a construction worker.
As it happens, the former head of a home for child vagrants in Khon Kaen who helped raise him as a child was also eager to get in touch.
The two hadn’t met for 10 years but Petchsiam Janehatnamsen, or Kru Nong, 55, former owner of the Dek Saeng Tawan home for homeless children in Ban Tad district, Udon Thani, knew Nui was a good lad at heart, despite having been in and out of jail and living life as an itinerant for many years.
He was worried that if society reviled Nui as Somkid’s son, driving him into the shadows to survive, he could be forced back into the dark ways of his past.
The two were later able to get in touch on social media and Kru Nong posted details of their first exchange, in which Nui admitted he was frustrated that the public assumed he was as bad as his father. Kru Nong decided to go and see Nui to offer help.
After being reunited in Chon Buri, he took Nui back with him to Udon Thani, where he will help get the young man back on his feet. Nui, he said, has never owned a Thai ID card, having slipped through the cracks of society. They have to piece together his identity with the aid of childhood photographs and witnesses to gather the formal evidence needed, a journey through officialdom which can take several years.
Since airing his plight before the media, a well-wisher has also come forward to pay for Nui to have his face art removed, which Nui admits, like the absence of an ID card, has hampered his ability to get work.
Nui, who regards Kru Nong as his foster father, said his parents split up when Nui was three, and he did not meet Somkid again until he was about 10. He has no contact with his mother, whom he thinks might live in Sakon Nakhon.
“My younger half-brother told me that he was our Dad,” Nui told the media last week, as he recalled his father’s visit to the child welfare home where he was living.
Kru Nong, who accompanied Nui in a string of interviews, said he recalled Somkid’s scary appearance but no one spoke much and half an hour later Somkid left. Nui said he visited his father several times while he was in jail, but they were not close. “He gave me 2,000 baht just before he got out, because I had nowhere to go,” Nui said.
Recounting his own past Nui said he joined Kru Nong’s home for vagrant children when he was six. At the time Nui was part of a gang of 7-8 children aged six to eight, committing petty theft. Locals asked Kru Nong to take the lad into care.
He looked after him for the next five years, during which Kru Nong said Nui came across as a timid, sensitive youngster who studied hard but barely fought his corner. At the age of 10 or so, Nui fled to find his foster mother, who put him in an orphanage in Khon Kaen. Nui escaped and joined a gang of glue-sniffing youngsters who again turned to theft to make ends meet.
Referring to public doubts about whether he was a bad seed who had taken after his father, Nui complained to Kru Nong that “I grew up with you, not Somkid”. However, Kru Nong noted that when Nui was outside his care, he tended to retreat to society’s shadows where he fell under the influence of bad types to commit crime.
Nui was convicted of car theft at the age 14 and served three years in juvenile detention in Khon Kaen. When he came out, he went back to theft and was caught again, serving a year in jail.
Once freed from there, he went back to his old ways and was caught again for theft. He served three years more in jail, released three years ago. Later Nui was caught for drugs and served nine months. He moved to Udon Thani where he sold vegetables in the market and in his free time joined five friends selling themselves for sex at the local railway station.
He also ran a gang in Udon Thani which broke into locals’ homes and stole motorbikes, committing about 20 offences before they were finally caught in January 2016. He was jailed for a year and nine months and freed in September 2017.
Since his release Nui has found a girlfriend and was trying to build a life in the care of prominent monk, Phra Payom Kalayano. However, locals remained suspicious and any progress he had made threatened to come undone when news of the manhunt for Somkid emerged.
“The public are alarmed and scared,” Kru Nong said. “They look at Nui constantly. I have told him he must leave the shadows and live in the open. Society will protect him there, but if he is hiding away he will meet only danger,” he added.
“Many Thais endure a fate like his. They fall out of the clutches of family. These are the types who sit at the back of class at school, and end up at the rear end of society too. He must serve as a role model as someone who can turn over a new leaf. Nui should be seen as an idol and we should give him strength,” he said.
“If society is willing to give him another chance, and he has someone willing to give him advice, I am sure we can help him.”
Since news of his father’s arrest and his own upbringing have come to light, officials working with drug addicts have been in touch to ask if he will talk about his experiences.
“A team from a university have also asked him to talk about his time as a vagrant to serve as a warning or lesson for teens. Nui is happy to work for society in this way if it is willing to give him another chance,” Kru Nong said.
Nui, who has experience as a builder, is also seeking work from anyone wanting house renovations or extensions done, though he said his dream is to open a small shop in Udon Thani where he can work as a welder, in which he is also skilled. He would also like to enter the monkhood to make merit for his father’s victims and help atone for his father’s sins.
Nephew in critical state
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| Noo Lek |
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| The car being retrieved from the canal |
Nong Sky, 10, was the only survivor of the accident which claimed the lives of the three others in the Toyota Fortuner in which he was travelling. The other victims were his mother, a friend of hers, and her young son.
CCTV footage shows their Toyota Fortuner sedan being hit by a Toyota Revo pickup at the Yang Muang bridge crossing in Tha Maka district, Kanchanaburi, at such speed that the Fortuner flips over into an irrigation canal below, trapping the occupants.
Police were talking to the pickup driver, Nattapong Kraihum, 28. The footage shows him failing to stop at the crossing and racing across at speed.
He told police he was heading to a friend’s place in Ratchaburi. The other vehicle, which had right of way, was heading to Wat Rai Tang Thong in Nakhon Pathom when the collision occurred.
A trailer driver passing by stopped to help, managing to pull the upturned vehicle from the canal. However, it was too late to save all but Nong Sky, who remains in a serious condition.
Noo Lek said Nong Sky has been given a bare 50:50 chance of survival.
While a nearby hospital was able to offer initial care, finding a specialist facility willing to take such a serious case took several days.
The boy was finally transferred to Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health hospital in Ratchathewi where he remains in the ICU. Noo Lek said she thanked the doctors for their help. They had given her and her elder brother hope as they pray for his recovery.
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