Deadly Divorces (17 page)

When a Thai policeman the couple knew started paying her attention, Som didn’t discourage him. She was vulnerable and he was everything Toby wasn’t. How far their relationship went isn’t clear. But if Toby’s
prizewinning
short story is as autobiographical as it appears, his wife wasn’t about to let her marriage vows hold her back from experiencing the buzz she felt was lacking in her life.

Poor, gentle, kind-hearted Toby! He’d given up his family, his home, his heritage to follow his wife halfway round the world. They had a child together; they had a business together. He’d hoped and believed they had a future together. But as Som’s behaviour became more furtive and remote, he saw that future melting away. For several months, he struggled to make things work. By nature he was not a quitter and he would have done anything to try to get things back to the way they were. ‘Is there anything bothering you?’ he’d ask Som, desperate to know the cause of the worry that now seemed permanently etched in her deep brown eyes.

Som herself was torn. On the one hand, she wanted to hang onto the financial and emotional security Toby offered. In her lifetime she’d seen too much poverty to hold any romantic notions about giving up everything for love or excitement. She wasn’t ready to slip quietly into middle age, though. And then there was the matter of the mounting debts…

But Hua Hin is, ultimately, a small town. And as anyone who’s ever lived in a small town will know, privacy is difficult to come by and secrets hard to keep. Rumours began to reach Toby’s ears – places Som had been seen, places he wouldn’t have expected her to be, things she said that didn’t quite add up. With her emotional distance, his suspicions grew proportionately and soon their once easy, loving relationship became awkward and strained.

Psychologists who specialise in relationship counselling often talk about the ‘elephant in the living room’. What they’re referring to is the huge, unspoken issues that lurk ominously in many struggling couples’ relationships. No matter how carefully you edge around them or step over them, no matter how studiously you try to ignore them, their presence still casts a huge, unmoveable shadow, blocking the way to any kind of resolution. For the Charnauds, Som’s gambling addiction and need for extramarital excitement were the elephant in the living room.

While Toby remained in the dark, nothing he could do would make the situation any easier. He half knew there
was some tumour growing inside his marriage, but didn’t know how to find out what it was. As more snippets of information and gossip filtered through to him, the sickening realisation began to dawn. He and Som had a huge problem and confronting it would result in the destruction of the comfortable, pleasant life they’d built up for themselves. The fairytale would be over.

It’s hard to live a normal life with a time bomb strapped to your back. Toby wanted his new life to work; he wanted his business to be successful, his son Daniel to grow up happy and loved by two parents, who also loved each other. But even while he was struggling on towards this utopian vision, he could hear the tickticking of an explosion waiting to happen. Eventually, heartbreakingly, the Charnauds’ marriage crumpled under the weight of Som’s secret double life and they separated. ‘I just can’t live with so many secrets,’Toby said sadly.

While tourists in the Rainbow Bar sipped Singha beers and admired the beauty of the setting sun away from the stresses of home, the bar’s owners slowly and painfully picked their way through the wreckage of their relationship, trying to work out how to divide up what was left. According to their final divorce settlement in 2004, Toby paid Som a lump sum of
£
11,000 plus
£
6,100 towards her gambling debts. For his part, he retained ownership of the bar and, more importantly, was granted full custody of their son Daniel.

For a while following the divorce an uneasy truce existed between the two former lovers. Som moved to the countryside in the Petchaburi province about an hour away from Hua Hin and far enough removed from the temptations of the card games that cost her so dearly. Toby continued to run the bar and although Daniel lived with his father, he also saw his mother on a fairly regular basis. It wasn’t the happy ending Toby had been hoping for when he’d married his beautiful Thai wife all those years before, but at least he still had his son and his business, his golfing buddies and his Thai dreams. Life could indeed be worse. If some balmy nights he lay awake wondering whether he could have done anything more to make his marriage work – if he looked into his son’s eyes and momentarily saw his young bride once again standing before him – he learned to put those feelings aside. Instead he dedicated himself to building a new life for him and Daniel.

But Som was finding it harder to control her own feelings. Although the divorce settlement left her with a sizeable amount of money by Thai standards, it still wasn’t enough to pay off her crippling gambling debts. She missed seeing her son, she missed the financial security she’d come to take for granted. Isolated in the countryside, she heard second-hand reports of what was happening in Hua Hin and how Toby was rebuilding his life without her, and she brooded on the unfairness of it. The thought of him meeting someone else and having more children, thus
sidelining her even further, made her furious. How was it right that he got to carry on enjoying the same, easy-going lifestyle and high standard of living while she was exiled out in the sticks with her creditors breathing down her neck?

Owing money to the bookies in Thailand isn’t a position you would want to find yourself in. As the industry is illegal, its methods of collection are unregulated and it’s not uncommon for debtors to meet with nasty accidents or even mysterious deaths. Som needed money badly, but the only person she knew who had it was her ex-husband and he wasn’t about to give her any of it. It was a shame, she reflected angrily, that he didn’t meet with a nasty accident. Then all his money would go to Daniel and she, as Daniel’s mother, would be in overall control.

Isn’t it strange the way some thoughts that slip into your head so casually can take such a lethal hold? Try as she might, Pannada Charnaud couldn’t rid herself of the idea that Toby’s death would be the answer to all her problems. That way he could never go on to have more children, thus robbing her own son of his rightful fortune and, more pressingly, she’d be able to pay off all her considerable debts in one immensely satisfying swoop. It was such a seductive vision. In Som’s eyes Toby’s death would put right the injustices done to her by the divorce settlement. Once again she’d be at the helm of the bar business and she’d have her son. She’d be able to walk the streets without constantly looking over her shoulder in case one of her
creditors had decided to send her a reminder message – by way of a baseball bat. With plenty of time on her hands, Som began to plan.

In March 2005, 5-year-old Daniel Charnaud went to see his mother. Although the terms of the divorce had granted Toby full custody, he knew how important it was for his son to retain links with his mother and his Thai heritage, so he’d encouraged such visits as much as possible. Som often had family staying from the impoverished Yasothon province where she’d grown up and it was good for the boy to speak Thai and learn more about his mother’s roots.

On 27 March, Som asked Toby to come and pick up his son. When the quiet but friendly, golf-loving man left his home in Hua Hin, he thought he’d be back later that day to open up the bar as usual. Instead he disappeared. It was April before Som reported him missing, claiming he never turned up to collect his son and despite a cursory police investigation, no clues were discovered as to his whereabouts.

Back in Wiltshire, Toby’s family became seriously concerned. He was normally such a reliable, hard-working person, it just wasn’t in his character to take off without warning. They knew something must have happened to him. With an ever-growing knot of fear inside them, Toby’s parents set about making enquiries over the internet about private investigators based in Thailand. To their relief they came across a Scottish PI now living in Bangkok. When they told him what had happened and voiced some of their
concerns, he didn’t seem too surprised. Despite its gentle image, Thailand has one of the highest murder rates in the world. He agreed to take on the case.

For Toby’s anxious relatives, a nail-biting wait followed. People who’ve experienced what it’s like to have someone they love go missing always talk about the impotence they feel. How much worse when you’re 6,500 miles away, gazing at a phone that refuses to ring, hoping against hope to hear that one familiar voice saying, ‘Sorry to worry you’. Or ‘You’ll never believe what just happened to me…’ In the end when the phone finally did ring, it was the worst possible news. In direct contradiction to Som’s claims that he’d never come to collect Daniel, mobile phone records revealed Toby had been in the vicinity of her country home on the day he went missing. This time, when police raided the house, they heard a very different version of events.

Present were two men, both relatives of Som’s. They admitted to the police that they’d both been there the day Toby disappeared six weeks before, together with a third man, a neighbour of Som’s. She herself had been at the market with her son Daniel. The story they told the police was so brutal and horrific that it would send shockwaves through Thailand’s ex-pat community and haunt Toby’s family for years to come. Initially the men’s bizarre tale was that they’d grown angry at Toby for interrupting them while they were drinking whisky and killed him in a fit of anger. However, this account soon changed and it was
claimed Som had hired the men to kill her husband, offering them
£
2,700 each if they were successful.

At first they’d tried to shoot him with a muzzle-loading hunting musket – an antiquated, cumbersome weapon – but when the musket jammed they beat him to death with an iron bar and wooden clubs. Quiet, good-natured Toby Charnaud who’d never hurt anyone had ended his life in the most brutal way possible. It was to get worse. After the killing, the men had tried to get rid of the body by dismembering it and barbecuing it, using 20 kilos of charcoal bought earlier that day. The charred remains were then distributed around the nearby Kaeng Krajan national park, a jungle-covered area known as home to some of Thailand’s dwindling tiger population. In a sickening confirmation of their story, the men led the police straight to where the body parts had been dumped.

Som denied she’d hired the men. She claimed she’d come back from the market and found the body, and had helped them dispose of it but hadn’t had any part in the actual killing. No one was buying her story: the only person who had anything to gain from the death of Toby Charnaud was his ex-wife.

On Wednesday 6 September 2006, Pannada Charnaud was found guilty of the brutal murder of her ex-husband and, along with the three men she’d hired to carry out the killing, sentenced to life imprisonment. For Toby’s family back in Chippenham, it was the outcome they’d been
hoping for. ‘At last this chapter is closed,’ said his father, Jeremy. Neither parent attended the trial, feeling unable to face sitting in the same courtroom as the woman they’d been convinced all along had taken the life of their beloved son.

Now Toby’s son Daniel is cared for by his sister in Stanton St Quintin, Wiltshire, where he goes to the local school and enjoys the same things as any other 7-year-old English schoolboy – football in the playground on chilly winter days, ice cream in the park in the summer.

It’s a very different upbringing to the one his father envisaged during the first years of Daniel’s life, when Toby and Som were still together, running their bar in the pleasant heat of the South East Asian sun and planning their future life in Thailand, Land of Smiles.

A
s the statuesque blonde approached, Darren Mack felt that familiar thrill of excitement. Toned to perfection with golden brown skin, she was obviously no stranger to the gym. Her breasts, straining against the plunging, clinging halter-neck top she was wearing, exhibited a
giveaway
gravity-defying jut that owed more to a skilled surgeon than Mother Nature, but that didn’t bother Darren at all. He was already enjoying the surge of adrenaline that came from knowing he would soon be exploring that body extremely intimately. ‘And this is my husband,’ the woman was saying, indicating the slightly awkward-looking man at her side.

While Darren reciprocated by introducing his own date
for the night, the woman’s eyes never left him, passing slowly down his body and then up again. He felt himself instinctively tightening up his muscles, glad now of the hard work he’d put in on the weights machines. He knew he was looking good; he was in his element. This swingers’ convention was turning out to be everything he’d hoped for – one of the best. If only the rest of his life could be like this, he reflected as the woman’s hand lightly brushed his bulging upper arm, sending shivers of pleasure through him. It was so uncomplicated, so easy. Only his wife Charla and that crooked divorce judge were hell bent on screwing everything up for him. If it weren’t for them, things would be just about perfect.

As the woman’s hand rested once again on his arm before slowly moving lower… and lower… Darren tried to free his mind of negative thoughts. The divorce case was occupying far too much of his energy, he thought, nuzzling the woman’s ear, his breath warm on her bronzed neck. It was energy that could be put to far better use. All he had to do was work out a way to get those two off his mind – and for good.

Darren Roy Mack was not the kind of guy to get on the bad side of. Not that he wasn’t charming when he wanted to be, just that as the boss of a very successful family-run
pawnshop business, he knew how to handle himself and he really, really didn’t enjoy being told what to do. He liked to do what he wanted, when he wanted. No questions asked. Live and let live, that’s what he believed.

By the age of 45, Darren had turned hedonism pretty much into an art form. Sure, he was a concerned and involved parent to his three children – two by first wife Debra and one by current wife Charla – but when he was off-duty, he liked to let rip – and why not? Co-owned with his mother, his pawnshop empire had made him very wealthy. He was his own boss, handsome in a very Rocky Balboa type of way and he believed absolutely in those two fundamental American rights: the pursuit of happiness and the freedom of the individual to make their own choices and live life their own way.

If self-gratification is your No. 1 aim in life, then Reno, Nevada is a pretty good place to be. Though the city has long since ceded the title of gambling capital of the world to its neighbour Las Vegas, it still boasts several top-class casinos plus a white-water park and hundreds of nightclubs and bars covering the entire range from upmarket right down to sleazeville. Outside of the city, the lakes and mountains offer a landscape often of breathtaking beauty but downtown it’s a different story. Architecturally uninspiring, with its bland, modern buildings fronting onto wide, soulless, neon-studded streets, Reno’s brash commercialism would hold little interest for those hooked
on high-culture but for anyone with a healthy bank balance looking for unadulterated and unashamed ‘fun’, it’s as good a place as any.

Over the years Darren had been a regular face at Nevada’s legal brothels, particularly the infamous Moonlite Bunny Ranch. He loved the company of beautiful women and the excitement variety offers. For that same reason he also enjoyed attending swinging conventions, mass events usually taking place in some large, impersonal hotel, where broad-minded couples attend ‘seminars’ on all subjects erotica-related, plus a variety of anything-goes social bonding (and occasionally bondage) get-togethers. At first Darren’s second wife, Charla, had gone along with his unconventional sexual mores and had even joined in. For Darren, who’d always been concerned about the image he projected to the world, Charla was the ultimate lifestyle accessory. With her long, wavy brown hair, falling carelessly to one side, dark, seductive eyes framed by long, black lashes and perfect, even smile, the former film actress added to his social cache. And the fact that she went along with his sexually progressive lifestyle just added to his sense of being a man who really did have it all. Darren Roy Mack was king of his world.

Perhaps in an attempt to counterbalance the hedonistic side of their relationship with something more spiritual, the couple became heavily involved with a movement known as the Landmark Education. Variously described by
detractors as a ‘cult’, a brainwashing technique and a way of raising bucket loads of cash from emotionally vulnerable people, Landmark is also credited by its supporters with transforming lives and promoting individual and indeed world peace. Starting off with three-day courses aimed at encouraging participants to realise their true potential, Landmark is a mass self-awareness programme with different levels of involvement. Its claims of personal empowerment and promises of immediate results appealed to the Macks’ go-getting philosophy and they lapped it up.

For a few years, the combination of sexual passion and a shared ambition to better themselves in every way made Darren and Charla Mack’s marriage appear rock solid. To the outside world they were a pin-up couple – rich,
good-looking
, crazy about each other. Charla was a fantastic stepmother to Darren’s two children and a doting mother to their own daughter Erika. Both she and her husband served on the school board. To those around them, unaware of Darren’s sexual adventurism, they appeared the model family. In fact, in 1998 a billboard went up in Reno announcing ‘The Mack Family Presents Darren Mack. 1998 Father/Husband of the Year. A unanimous decision by his wife, Charla, and his three wonderful children’.

Darren Mack had everything he wanted – the respect of his community, the love of his family and the excitement of sexual variety. He and Charla lived in a $1.2m
Tudor-style
mansion on Franktown Road in picturesque Washoe
Valley, 8 miles out of Reno itself. He drove a Hummer and treated himself to whatever state-of-the-art gadgets took his fancy. Darren was on top of the world. What his robust ego failed to consider was that when you’re at the top, there’s really only one way to go. Down.

After Erika’s birth Charla grew less and less indulgent of her husband’s broad sexual interests. Instead of looking outwards for adventure, she concentrated her energy on her family and their luxurious home. Erika and her
half-brother
and sister, Darren’s children from his first marriage, became the centre of Charla’s world. She loved being a stay-at-home mum and helping out at the kids’ school; she just didn’t need that thrill of pushing the sexual boundaries any more. Instead she was content with her home and her family and the fact that Darren wasn’t became a bone of contention for the couple. ‘Why aren’t I enough for you?’ Charla would rail at her husband.

They began to drift further and further apart. While they still had the passion that had brought them together in the first place, now they were just as likely to apply it to hurting, rather than loving each other. The chemistry between them was explosive but Darren frequently confided to friends that Charla could be physically and verbally abusive, although no one could believe he didn’t give as good as he got. As he entered into his mid-forties, Darren still thought of himself as a player. Six years his junior, Charla was happy to be Mrs Mack, wife, mother and
stepmother. It was increasingly obvious that something, or someone, was going to have to give.

In the end, it was the marriage that gave out. By 2004 the Macks, once the poster-family for the wealthy Nevada elite, were on the rocks. They agreed to separate, with Charla remaining in the Washoe Valley home and Darren taking up residence in a spacious condominium in a pale, terracotta coloured town house on Wilbur May Parkway, an exclusive housing development in South Reno. It’s always a tragedy when a parent moves out of the family home. Can anything be more poignant than the dividing up of wedding presents or the grey marks on empty walls where once cherished photos hung? Is there any smell more exquisitely painful than the last sniff of a child’s bedroom that will shortly be closed off to you, any sound more desolate than the click of what was once your own front door closing behind you?

Darren Mack did not want to give up his home and he certainly wasn’t going to give up his daughter. When he walked away from Franktown Road he was determined that it was just a temporary measure. If Charla thought she was going to get everything her way, she had seriously underestimated him. At first, however, things did seem to be going in Charla’s favour. After she filed for divorce in February 2005, Washoe Family Court Judge, Chuck Weller, ordered Darren to pay her temporary spousal support while the settlement was being worked out. She was also
given temporary rights to live in the house and temporary custody of Erika.

For Darren, who prided himself on being an exemplary father, this last point was a particular blow. With Charla’s help, he had fought a bitter divorce case with his first wife, during which he’d successfully won custody of their children. Now he was preparing to do the same again. He in turn asked the judge for temporary joint physical and legal custody of their daughter, plus possession of the home which, he argued, he had paid for.

As with so many divorcing couples, both partners were convinced they had the moral upper hand. Both believed themselves to be the best guardian for their child and to have the greatest entitlement to their family home. There is no more powerful adversary than someone convinced they are right.

In May 2005 Judge Weller ordered that Charla and Darren should share custody of Erika on a week-on,
week-off
basis. Usually the changeover would take place on a Monday so that one parent could drop Erika off at school in the morning and the other could collect her in the afternoon. A mutual restraining order was also put in place so that during the holidays, when the changeover had to take place at the Macks’ private homes, contact was kept to a minimum. Whichever parent was dropping off the child should stay in the car, the order decreed, while the other remained inside their respective house.

Charla was given the right to remain in the Franktown Road home on the condition that it was put up for sale. Darren, whose earnings were put at around $44,000 a month, was ordered to pay the maximum allowable child support of $849 per month plus an extra $10,000 a month to cover household expenses while the house was being sold. He was furious. It seemed to him that Charla was just going to be allowed to sit pretty in the house that he was paying through the nose for, enjoying the Jacuzzi, the pool, the $10,000 television while he slaved away to pay for the upkeep of all those. She was still young, so why shouldn’t she have to go out and get a job?

The divorce procedure got even nastier. Darren’s mother, Joan Mack, sued Charla for the return of some jewellery that she claimed the younger woman had borrowed but Charla insisted had been gifts. In addition, Darren, who’d threatened Charla that he’d file for bankruptcy if she didn’t accept his terms, went ahead and did just that. He’d made her a generous offer, he felt, and if she turned it down she’d get nothing. No one could make him pay his wife if he could show there were no funds to pay her with.

By August 2005 Darren had paid Charla just $9,000 of the nearly $40,000 alimony she was owed. He had got way behind on paying the bills and she and Erika had endured days without electricity or heating when the utilities were cut off. Only further legal action persuaded Darren to pay
the $2,000 to get them turned back on again. Meanwhile, he immersed himself in the swinging lifestyle with newly single zeal. He spent hours working on his physique, pumping weights in the gym to build up his muscles. Most weekends he was off at conventions or holidaying with one female friend or another. The date his bankruptcy petition was filed he was at a swingers’ party in Mexico, lounging by the hotel pool, topping up his already considerable tan.

He set up a MySpace account on the popular networking website under the username TooMuchFun. His profile showed a leather-jacketed Darren Mack declaring himself on the lookout for a ‘beautiful, sensual, sexual, smart, fun woman with a respectful attitude’. And it wouldn’t hurt either if the lucky lady didn’t object to not being the only doll in the toy box, so to speak. So far he seemed to have no shortage of offers. He was on a roll; life was good. The only thorn in his side was Charla. It wasn’t just the money for Darren made a lot and had a very healthy pension fund to fall back on. What really annoyed him was the idea that Charla believed she was getting one over on him – and that the American legal system seemed to be allowing her to get away with it.

In Nevada there was a growing movement of disaffected divorced dads, all angry at the way the divorce laws seemed designed to rob them of their rights as fathers, while still expecting them to stump up the money for their kids and their exes. Darren found himself increasingly in agreement
with them. It was as if women thought that the biological accident of being mothers gave them the God-given right to grab hold of the kids and the family assets, while their poor chump ex-husbands worked themselves into the ground, bankrolling them for the rest of their lives. As a red-blooded American male it made him spit to think how some judge who didn’t know a thing about him or his life could arbitrarily decide when he could see his daughter and what he should do with his money. But he knew there was little he could do to challenge the Court’s temporary order. All he could hope for was that he and Charla could work out a more reasonable permanent settlement.

In January 2006 the Macks were back in the divorce court in front of Judge Chuck Weller. Over a tense period of time, they thrashed out a provisional settlement whereby Darren would pay Charla almost $1m over the following 5 years and his business would drop the charges against her as long as she returned the disputed jewellery. Also decided was the fate of various ‘sex photographs’ the couple had taken during their relationship and which were now in the possession of Charla Mack. According to the settlement they would now be destroyed.