A Secret History of the Bangkok Hilton (9 page)

About Rungchalerm, Krasae recalled, ‘He definitely was the one who took it the hardest among the four of us. He missed his family tremendously—especially his children who were still young at the time he was put away. Not a day went by without him crying... he literally cried himself to death.’

In a poem Rungchalerm wrote in 1991, which unwittingly became the last note to his family, he desperately lamented being jailed for the crime he didn’t commit while assuring his children that, even though he had been separated from them, they never left his thoughts.

Tun, his wife, had to take care of their three children, who were between the ages of seven and 11, when her husband was taken away. She found it unbearable trying to console her children, who were being harassed because of their father, and her husband, who couldn’t come to grips with his fate. Upon hearing the verdict by the first court, she fainted, as did her husband. Tun visited him twice a week but they are not happy memories, she says.

‘It was hell on earth for him. Every visit, we cried and he complained about physical and sexual assaults. The conditions in the prison became unbearable for him and his health deteriorated.’

Supawadee, the eldest child, got a job at a golf course with his undergraduate certificate while the youngest child Rungruengrit had to quit school because Tun couldn’t pay for his education. He used his lower secondary certificate to get a job as a messenger. ‘If
Por
were with us, our lives would have been better and I could have finished a bachelor degree. He was a hard-working man and we were about to buy a new house and a car,’ he said.

Sulaporn, the middle child who was more fortunate than her siblings, got a bachelor degree. She recalled the day the court decided to sentence her father to death.

‘The day before, we went out together as a family in high spirits. The next morning
Mae
told us three to go school as usual. She put on a brave face and assured me that
Por
would be home by the evening for sure because he had done nothing wrong. We came home that evening to find out that he would never come home for good. We cried. Five years later, neighbours told us he had died in the prison. It was heartbreaking.’

Rungchalerm’s family received some small help from the police. A spokesman for Royal Thai Police asked Sulaporn’s university to waive her intuition fee. To their best memory, this is the only act of kindness the family received from the police. They lived in a slum.

The murder of Sherry Ann Duncan made headlines again almost two years after the three scapegoats were released. The Crime Suppression Division had been reinvestigating the case and on February 6, 1995, they arrested two brothers—Somjai and Somphong Bunyarit —who were believed to be the real killers. Thirteen days later, two more men—Samak Toopbuchakan and Peera Wongwaiwut—were arrested. They were said to be close friends of the Bunyarit brothers.

On November 1, 1995, Suvibol Patpongpanit, a wealthy businesswoman and a former lover of Winai, turned herself in to the police. She was later released on five-million baht bail. She was believed to be the mastermind of the murder and was portrayed as a jealous woman who had been bent on revenge.

The police concluded that Suvibol had hired the men to kill Sherry out of jealousy after she found out that Winai was cheating on her with the young girl. The Bunyarit brothers used to work for Winai and were acquainted with Sherry as they would drive her to school and their wives acted as minders when Winai was busy.

They later fell out with Winai and went to work for Suvibol. Given that they held a grudge against their former boss, the police believed it was easy for Suvibol to persuade them to commit the murder for her.

The police believed that Peera, who was a taxi driver, picked Sherry up from school with Somjai and Somphong. The men somehow persuaded her to get into the taxi, possibly with a ruse regarding Winai. Sherry eventually realised she was not on the usual route and tried to escape but was strangled to death. Then the men dropped her body at the deserted mangrove where the crab-seller couple found her two days later.

The most shocking twist of all was the arrest on January 18, 1996 of Pramern Potplad, the key witness whose testimony had led to four wrongful convictions. He pleaded guilty to perjury and was sentenced to eight years in jail. He told the court that he had been acting under orders from a policeman named Mongkol Sripo, who was in charge of the 1986 investigation into Sherry’s murder.
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Krasae said Mongkol and another investigator had brought Pramern into a room, shown him their pictures, and told him to identify them as the men he had seen carrying Sherry out of Winai’s condominium before she was found dead.

However, Mongkol resigned before he was dismissed by the Royal Thai Police and had already settled in America for several years, thus escaping legal action against him.

The other five investigators who worked on the case with Mongkol were duly promoted at work before reaching retirement. None ever faced criminal action as it was ruled that they had no knowledge of Mongkol’s plan to frame the innocent men. While the four scapegoats suffered, these policemen not only were awarded with unmerited career advancements but also got off scot-free.

One account said Pramern had been paid a pitiful fee of 500 baht to conspire with Mongkol while another claimed he was paid in zinc tiles, which he used to patch the roof of his house. The idea of a ‘witness-for-hire’ might sound absurd to some but several inmates in Bang Kwang will tell you that some police resort to this ‘shortcut’ along with embellishments in their reports to make their case relevant to the prosecutors so they can close the case.

The Office of Attorney General held a seminar, which was inspired by the aftermath of the wrongful convictions in the Sherry Ann case, looking at how to provide better protection for innocent people. Suggestions and opinions from this seminar led to changes in judicial procedure and later were included in the constitution.

After Mongkol and Premern had been exposed, the two remaining scapegoats and the families of the deceased men did not receive any apology or help from the police. An uphill struggle to instigate a 54.5 million baht lawsuit for compensation against the six police officers who had framed the four men and the Royal Thai Police began in 1997.

Recalling the day he tried to file the complaint at the Crime Suppression Division, Krasae said, ‘No one dared to touch our complaint as the police officers who falsely arrested us had become high-ranking ones by that time. Luckily, the moment I was about to give up and go home I came across the police officer who had reopened the case and he accepted our complaint.’

Krasae and Thawat and five relatives of the two dead men, became seven plaintiffs in this lawsuit and requested a pro bono trial which would exempt them from having to pay hefty court fees. Krasae said the police tried to buy time from the beginning saying the plaintiffs were not eligible for financial help as they were not really poor people. It took almost three years before the court allowed them a pro bono trial. Afterwards, the proceedings were delayed by many deferments from the police.

Krasae outlined his part of the compensation request as follows: 10 million baht for making him a murderer of a young girl in the public eye; five million baht for the assault by the Samut Prakan police; 96,300 baht for salaries he could have made from his job; another 10 million baht for the hardship he had to endure in the prison including being shackled at all time, poor diet and trauma from being jailed with unstable and dangerous inmates on death row.

He didn’t expect to be awarded the 25 million baht but he hoped he would get enough to pay off the debts incurred by his aging mother who had to borrow money to pay for trips she made from Ayutthaya province to visit him at the prison in Nonthaburi.

Meanwhile, almost two years after the round-up of the second set of suspects in Sherry Ann’s murder, on August 6, 1997, the court of first instance handed down death penalties to three defendants; Samak, Somphong and Suvibol. Samak pleaded guilty and implicated Suvibol as the mastermind.

In early 1999, the Appeal Court upheld three death sentences but the Supreme Court acquitted Suvibol due to insufficient evidence and commuted the other two death sentences to life in prison on May 29, 1999. Somphong was named as the real killer and Samak his accomplice. Some said they were just more scapegoats.

Thawat succumbed to throat cancer before he could receive closure on the compensation suit. Kittisak, who represented the seven plaintiffs, said he had contacted Pramern to testify against the police while he was in jail and Pramern had agreed to do so. However, due to delays in the legal proceedings, Pramern was released and it took time for the lawyer to locate him again. Kittisak said that a few days before a court hearing at which Pramern was due to appear, his wife and child were arrested for narcotics possession and Pramern disappeared again, this time for good.

About this suspicious disappearance of his key witness against the police, Kittisak said: ‘If you ask me, he has obviously been abducted. But I can’t say for certain who is his abductor. My theory is that the real culprit or culprits colluded with the police to frame these four innocent men. The police who are responsible for this treachery know who the real culprits are and must have been paid a hefty sum for setting these scapegoats up. No one would agree to take such a risky action, which could completely jeopardise their career, unless the fee was right. Fabricating things in order to make an innocent person look guilty can only be the work of the police. The prosecutors have no part in it.’

Drawing upon the case, Kittisak proposed a practice of at least two separate police teams working on one case to ensure transparency.

It was six years before the Civil Court ruled, on September 25, 2003, that the Royal Thai Police had to pay Krasae and the relatives of the three dead men about 26 million baht in compensation because they had introduced a false witness to frame the four men. Presiding Judge Kanchana said, ‘The police, Major Mongkol Sripo in particular, have a legal obligation to uphold the law, but they failed to do so by rigging the investigation. Therefore, they are liable to pay for the damage incurred.’ The verdict stipulated the compensation plus accrued 7.5 percent interest dating back to 1997, when the compensation suit had been filed.

Krasae, the sole living scapegoat, was awarded the most with 10 million baht, which was less than half what he had asked for. Thawat, who died before the ruling, was awarded eight million baht and the sum was expected to go to his daughters. Rungchalerm’s family was awarded 6.6 million baht while the remaining 1.3 million baht went to Pitak’s mother, who said no amount of compensation could make up for the loss of her closest child.

This should have marked an ending to this 17-year-long tragedy but another outcry occurred after the then national police chief Sant Sarutanond said a hasty payment would set a bad precedent. He also said he would ask legal advisers to review the verdict before determining whether to appeal. His statement was deemed to be very insensitive. It was also in contrast to a response to the verdict by then premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who said the police should not delay payment of the compensation further with a lengthy appeal process.

For a time it was uncertain whether the police would appeal. Tun, Rungchalerm’s wife, said, ‘If you ask me whether I hate the police, the answer is yes. But I also realise that there are good police out there. I want to implore the police not to submit an appeal [against the compensation ruling]. I’m so exhausted. Please allow me closure before I die.’

Tun hoped to move out of the slum they were living in with the 6.6 million baht compensation, fulfilling a long overdue dream of her dead husband of a better life for his family. Krasae also pleaded with the police not to appeal.

On October 1, 2003, the seven plaintiffs handed a petition to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, pleading with the Royal Thai Police not to appeal the ruling. During his weekly radio programme on October 4, 2003, Thaksin expressed his sympathy for the men. The plaintiffs had been through a terrible ordeal, he said, and the court had already ruled that the police were guilty so the police should immediately compensate them out of their own pocket. Their superiors should pay close attention to how their subordinates conducted themselves, to prevent them from taking bribes or engaging in other sorts of corruption, he added. He instructed the secretary to the Cabinet to tell the Royal Police and Attorney General’s office not to appeal. The police later confirmed they would not appeal.

In the same year, the Justice Ministry paid 13 million baht in compensation to the first group of 21 crime victims and 31 wrongfully prosecuted people under the Constitution and Criminal Victims Compensation Act which guarantees the right to compensation from the state for victims of wrongful prosecution and crime victims. At that time, 540 people had filed complaints demanding compensation.

Among those were a couple who had been detained for four years from 1998 on charges of robbing and attempting to murder a customer at their own restaurant. They received about 560,000 baht, which went to pay off debts they had incurred from hiring lawyers to defend their innocence. They said the sum was not worth their loss of freedom.

Another wrongfully prosecuted man named Krit was compensated with a sum of 856,600 baht. His mistress became furious with him when he would not divorce his legal wife to be with her. She conspired with police relatives to frame him for rape and robbery. The Criminal and Appeal Court found him guilty.

During his five years and nine months in Ayutthaya prison, he studied law and defended himself in the Supreme Court and won the case. Krit suggested that the state should imprison the investigators who wronged him instead of compensating him.

The figures speak for themselves. From a database at the Office of Rights and Freedom at the Justice Ministry, out of 610 cases that came before the courts in 2005, complaints of wrongful indictment were received in 355 cases. For 214 of these cases, 60 million baht was paid in compensation. During the first nine months of 2006, out of 354 complaints of wrongful indictment, 216 of them were compensated with a combined 58 million baht.