Phantom abduction, manners come first, man’s best friend

Yet another ransom demand

Husband who says his wife was abducted

A Bangkok man is threatening to leave his wife after she fabricated a story that she was abducted, the third time she has done it.

Ekk (no surname given) alerted the owner of the FB site, Sai Mai Tong Rot, after his wife, Pemika, claimed a group of underground lenders abducted her in front of her workplace.

Ekk said the heavies demanded repayment of an loan she had taken out after she missed an instalment.

At first he didn’t believe her, but later she sent a Line message saying they had assaulted her and vowed that if she didn’t repay her debt, they would sell her body for sex services.

As he scrambled to raise cash to secure her release, Ekk contacted the head of the FB page, Ekaphob Luangprasert, who helps victims of crime.

Mr Ekaphob took Ekk to Huai Khwang police to lay a complaint, after which Pemika’s claims quickly started to unravel.

Line exchange between the pair

Ekk, who also spoke to the media about the saga, said he had been married to Pemika, who works “backstage” at various events, for 10 years.

“We had no problem with money initially, but lately they have surfaced more regularly. She turned to lenders, from whom she borrowed 150,000 baht,” he said.

“She paid back 90,000 baht until she finally could no longer make the payments demanded.

“She negotiated with the lender, who let her pay the rest back in four instalments. The first due date was Nov 30, when she had to pay 37,000 baht, but she couldn’t pay in full, so asked to roll the balance into the next payment,” he added.

However, the lender must have grown tired of waiting, as he sent a group of seven or eight heavies to abduct his wife from the Thailand Cultural Centre where she works.

At least that was the story Pemika conveyed to her anxious husband via Line, saying the group had abducted her in broad daylight in front of her office.

Both Ekk and Mr Ekaphob, from the FB site, were initially sceptical about her claims. However, Ekk changed his mind when, two days after she disappeared, Pemilka contacted him via a video call. Her face was covered in blood and she was injured under one eye.

The heavies had beaten her up to persuade her to come up with the money, she said. Ekk managed to scrape together 10,000 baht and sent it to her account.

“Her abductors asked me to pay their ransom that way. I was sure she was telling the truth because she really looked terrible,” he said, referring to her bloody appearance.

Mr Ekaphob, likewise, confessed to having doubts about Pemika’s story, but thought it was more sensible to take Ekk to police just in case the saga turned out to be true.

In retrospect, Pemika’s own conduct on the morning she was allegedly abducted should have given her husband cause for doubt.

“I normally take her to work, but that day my wife asked me to drop her off at a petrol station close to home. After that a friend of hers was to pick her up and take her to work,” he said.

Police decided to cut a long saga story short by turning up directly at her workplace, where they asked to see Pemika.

It turns out she had been turning up for work as normal all along, and was never abducted as claimed.

Pemika wouldn’t see them initially as she was busy, she said. Police were planning to question her once she had finished work.

Pemika appears to have known the game was up, news reports said, as she hurriedly sent her husband 500 baht, even from “captivity”. She told him via the Line app that she borrowed it from a friend.

Speaking to police before her questioning began, Pemika admitted making up the tale, though it was still unclear why.

Her husband, meanwhile, said his wife had claimed twice before that she had been taken by a group of men, and he had lost 1 million baht as a result, presumably in so-called ransom payments.

“If it turns out that this time she has lied to me again, I will quit with her for sure,” he told reporters.

Well-mannered killers

Suspect Kanchana

A group of three friends in Trang who had just killed a man in a suspected drug dispute made sure to wai his mother respectfully as they left.

Winit Ingsui, 58, was at home with her son Jumroon, 31, in their two-storey concrete house in Huay Yod district on Jan 4 when three friends paid him a visit in a Ford Ranger.

“I had just finished a meal when I heard an argument break out upstairs, followed by gunfire,” she told the media from her son’s funeral.

She raced to the bottom of the stairs in time to see his visitors making a hasty departure. “I asked who shot whom,” she said, as they came down the stairs.

“They replied, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know’. Two greeted me with a sawasdee, and one gave me a wai,” she said.

Media reports said they greeted the mother as if nothing had happened before fleeing the scene. They also took his three phones.

Moments later, Ms Winit went upstairs to find the body of her son, who had been shot once in the back and stabbed in the clavicle.

Her son had known the visitors for years, she said. One, a woman identified as Kanchana Songserm, 25, was living with him as his partner. However, according to media reports, the pair fell out after Jumroon hit her.

Kanchana asked her brother for help, and he came back with a friend to sort out the matter at the house. The group started to argue, and Kanchana shot him. It is not clear who stabbed him. Police found drug paraphernalia scattered about the room.

Ms Winit said young people would gather at her home regularly to see her son. She doubts reports he had assaulted his girlfriend, as she had laid no police complaint.

“I suspect my son’s killing stems more from a disagreement over payment for drugs,” she said.

Police nabbed Kanchana in Wang Wiset district, and were looking for the other two offenders.

Kanchana admitted shooting Jumroon, police told the media. When the other two were rounded up, all three were likely to be charged jointly with premeditated murder.

Sticking up for the canine

 Anusorn Promsamut

A homeless man in Prachin Buri killed an elderly security guard after he fired objects with a slingshot at his beloved dog.

Kabin Buri police nabbed a bare-chested, tattoo-clad Anusorn Promsamut, 36, at an Uea Athorn housing complex where he had stabbed in the neck security guard Sombat Duangchampa, 75, killing him.

After stabbing him, Anusorn walked up and down holding the knife, and refused to let anyone come near, witnesses said.

After police subdued him, they seated him in a chair at the crime scene, with his brown dog sitting by his side.

A postman in the area witnessed the stabbing. “Uncle (the victim) turned up on his EV bicycle.

“The two argued and wrestled with each other. The killer pulled out a knife and stabbed the old man,” he said.

Sombat’s distraught wife, Bunruam Srisom, 51, said the victim had worked at the housing estate for 10 years.

Speaking from the chair where police had put him, Anusorn said his dog would run in and out of the estate, which annoyed the old man.

Upsettingly, he would fire objects with a rubber slingshot at his dog every day, but spare other dogs in the area. “I felt put out that he kept singling out my dog, which I love very much,” he said.

Anusorn, who is homeless, relies on a local temple to keep him fed. He also does jobs for the monks to earn his keep.

Police were to test him for drugs before finalising charges.