BRITISH BACKPACKER’S DEATH: Four held over Samui murder

[dirtydog]

BRITISH BACKPACKER’S DEATH: Four held over Samui murder
Published on January 06, 2006
Resort employees questioned, DNA samples taken; father makes appeal. Police last night detained four men for questioning after taking DNA samples from them as part of their investigation into the murder of Welsh university student Katherine Horton on this popular resort island.
The four are employees of a resort close to the bungalow where Horton, 21, was staying. Witnesses saw the men dining at a food stall nearby on the night of the murder, police said. No charges had been filed against the four as of last night.
A motorcycle owned by one of the men, whose identities were not immediately released by police, was seen parked outside Katherine’s bungalow at the New Hut resort on the evening of January 1. But the owner said he had earlier rented it to a foreign tourist, investigators said. The man produced a document to support his claim, they said.
Police yesterday questioned the four for several hours after taking them into custody at the Sea View Paradise resort on Lamai Beach. The resort is located next to the one where Horton, a third-year psychology student at Reading University, Cardiff, was spending her New Year’s holiday with friends at the time she was killed.
Investigators took tissue samples from the men for DNA analysis after questioning them yesterday and escorting them to Samui Hospital for medical checks last night. They were later brought back to Samui police station for further questioning.
A source at the hospital said DNA sampling was yesterday conducted on seven foreigners and eight Thais, including the four men under detention, as part of the police investigation.
Horton’s body was found on Monday in the sea off Thong Krok Beach, a few kilometres from the resort where she stayed. Police said she had been hit several times on the head and body with a blunt object and thrown into the sea to drown.
A primary police investigation showed that Horton was likely attacked while walking on the beach near her bungalow on the evening of January 1.
Horton was talking to her mother, Elizabeth, on her mobile phone when the attack took place and her mother reportedly heard her scream before the call was cut off.
Institute of Forensic Medicine commander Pol Maj-General Liang Huiprasert said the latest autopsy results on Horton’s body showed no traces of rape.
“No traces of semen were found in the genitals and no human tissue was found under the fingernails. More thorough forensic tests, however, will be conducted,” he said.
Katherine’s father Ian Horton yesterday appealed for anyone who witnessed the crime to come forward and help police in the investigation.
“On a personal note I urge those who did this to come forward. The perpetrator is too cowardly to offer themselves to justice in Thailand. But there is a person here that knows. A person that can assist the police. Someone that can maybe save another life,” he said in a written statement. “I urge that person to come forward to speak out. Katherine was my little girl. Please help her father.”
Horton’s father and family members yesterday travelled to Koh Samui to observe the police investigation but asked for privacy from the media.
The investigation team, comprising more than 30 local police officers and detectives and a special team dispatched from Bangkok, was anxiously awaiting the results of tests conducted on traces of DNA found on Horton’s body, said Maj-Gen Sunthan Chayanon, deputy commissioner of Police Region 8.
The results of the tests, which were being conducted by the Institute of Forensic Medicine, were expected today or tomorrow, he said.
Investigators planned to use photographs from an automatic security camera installed near the spot where Horton was believed to have been attacked to help in the investigation, a police source said yesterday.
“At a resort nearby, there is a set of sensor-equipped cameras and lights that automatically snap pictures when something moves past at night. We hope to find some leads from the photo records,” the source said.
Police yesterday set up a field command centre on Koh Samui to closely follow up the investigation of the murder case. More than 100 police personnel from local and Bangkok-based units fanned out across the island to try to find leads in the case.
Central Investigation Bureau deputy commissioner Maj-Gen Asavin Kwanmuang and Tourist Police commander Maj-Gen Panya Mamen held a meeting with investigators to inquire about their progress in the probe.
“We have found some leads but cannot publicly discuss the details now. Some witnesses have been questioned and evidence gathered that leads to certain suspects,” Panya said.
“I am a father with daughters too, and so are many other officers who are racing against time to solve the case here with the heart of a father,” said Surat Thani provincial police chief Maj-Gen Voravate Vinitnatyanon.
Arthit Khwankhom,
Anan Paengnoy
The Nation KOH SAMUI

[ChiangMai noon]

Thanks for the update DD.

That all sounds relatively encouraging. i didn't know they had DNA testing in Thailand.

[machangezi]

Didn't they do DNA testing in Thailand after Tsunami?

[ChiangMai noon]

Sorry Macha darling, i was merely being sarcastic.

[seth106]

Nice place, samui:tounge-in

[dirtydog]

I believe that dna testing is only carried out in bkk, so it will be awhile before they get the results

[kenkannif]

Yeah I'm pretty sure there's only one place in Bangers that does it???

And remember when they found some Thai sperm or something in another murdered Brit (in Chiang Mai I think where they blamed the farang owner) they said it could easily have been planted there (you what?).

[colourful-era]

read in the paper today that a 12 year old Swedish girl was raped in Samui on wednesday (this wk I presume) - perhaps the same person?

[ChiangMai noon]

Two held over backpacker murder
Two fisherman have been arrested in Thailand over the murder of British backpacker Katherine Horton.

Koh Samui police say they arrested two local men, aged 23 and 24, in connection with the death of the 21-year-old student from Cardiff.

They were arrested close to the beach where she was last seen on 1 January and were taken into custody after their boat returned to the island.

A post-mortem examination suggested Miss Horton was raped and badly beaten.

The Reading University student was last seen just hours before on New Year's Day.

Miss Horton, who was due to return home next week after a couple of weeks in Thailand, was with friends on Lamai beach and is reported to have wandered away from them as she spoke to her mother on her mobile phone.

What happened to her between that moment and the discovery of her body is unknown. Her body was found in the bay by a jet ski operator.

At the weekend, police said they had begun to take DNA samples from fishermen working on five boats which were in the area the night she died.

On Saturday a British couple who had found her mobile telephone on the sand returned to the island to assist police.

The Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, had called on investigators to find those responsible for her death as quickly as possible but urged them also to be prudent.

Story from BBC NEWS:

[machangezi]

Thanx for the update CMN. Piggies will damn well beat the living shit out of them.

[ChiangMai noon]

Two arrested for tourist's murder

KOH SAMUI: -- Police have arrested two fishermen early Monday as prime suspects in the rape and murder of a British woman, whose body was found last week in a bay off Samui Island resort, officers said this morning.

Bualong Kosit, 23, and Somchai Khaoyai, 24, were arrested on board a fishing boat off Samui Island at 2 a.m. local time by police pretending to be fish buyers, said Police Major General Asawin Kwanmuang, deputy commissioner of the Investigation Bureau.

The two men have reportedly confessed to the rape and murder of Katherine Horton, 21, whose body was found floating on January 2 in Lamai Bay, Samui.

Bualong and Somchai confessed to coming ashore drunk on the night of January 1 with the intention of raping a woman, when they spotted Horton walking on the beach chatting on her mobile phone.

They allegedly hit her on the head with a piece of wood, dragged her to their small boat where they raped her, hit her again and dumped her body in the water, said Asawin. The two men then returned to a larger fishing boat to stay offshore for a week.

The two suspects have been brought to Bangkok for DNA tests to try to match semen found in Horton's body during an autopsy.

Thai police have been under pressure to solve the Horton murder, which has damaged Thailand's reputation as a safe tourist destination. A breakthrough in the case occurred over the weekend when a British couple who were the last to see Horton on the beach and who found her hand phone returned to Thailand to present their evidence to police.

Horton arrived December 27 in Thailand and travelled to Koh Samui, a popular island resort 450 kilometres south of Bangkok to celebrate the New Year's holiday with a friend.

She went missing on the night of January 1, after leaving her friend, Ruth Adams, to walk on the beach while making a mobile phone call to her mother in Cardiff, Wales.

The call was interrupted when Horton was attacked. Her mother heard her scream and then the line went dead.

Her parents, Ian and Elizabeth Horton, travelled last week to Samui to monitor the investigation into their daughter's murder and to bring her body home.

Horton is the fourth British tourist to be murdered in Thailand over the last five years.

British nationals Adam Lloyd, 25, and Vanessa Arscott, 24, were shot dead on September 9, 2004, in Kachanaburi province by Thai Police Sergeant Somchai Wisetsingh. Somchai was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

British tourist Kirsty Jones was allegedly raped and murdered in 2000 in Chiang Mai. Her killer was never caught.

--Bangkok Post 2006-01-09

[SiamCutie]

Just an update:





Two Thai fishermen confess to killing British tourist, say police

By Sutin Wannabovorn, AP

Published: 09 January 2006



Two Thai fisherman have confessed to the rape and murder of a British tourist who was attacked during an evening beach stroll on New Year's Day at a resort island in Thailand, police said today.
Katherine Horton, 21, a university student from Cardiff, Wales, was vacationing on the popular Thai island of Koh Samui. Her battered body, still clad in an evening dress, was discovered the morning of 2 January by a jet skier in the Gulf of Thailand.
Police said they arrested two fisherman early today at a pier in Koh Samui, after questioning more than a dozen suspects, both Thai and foreigners.
"The suspects have admitted to raping and killing the British tourist, but we have brought them to Bangkok for DNA testing to be sure," Police Maj. Asawin Khawanmuang told reporters at police headquarters in Bangkok.
One of the suspects, Bauloy Kotisit, 23, told police he had raped Horton, while the other suspect, Vichai Soontayai, 24, confessed to being an accomplice to her murder, police said.
Under questioning, the fishermen told police they spotted Horton while she was walking alone on a beach talking on her cell phone and approached her from behind, Asawin said. He said the two men admitted to beating Horton with a wooden club, raping her and dragging her into the sea.
Horton had apparently called her mother at home in Wales. Her mother, Elizabeth Horton, told police she was speaking with her daughter when she heard her scream, and then the line went dead, said police Maj. Panya Mamen.
Police said last week that tests on Horton's body found traces of semen that could have come from her killer, but said at the time that there was no evidence of rape. They also had said previously that Horton was believed killed by a single person.
The doctor who performed the autopsy in Bangkok, Lt. Col. Dr. Pattana Kitkailart, said doctors had initially said there was no evidence of rape because tests on Horton's body showed no sign of injury to her internal organs. But, they had not ruled out rape, he said.
"She could have been raped while unconscious," Pattana told The Associated Press.
Investigators have not yet determined whether she was raped before or after being beaten.
The arrests followed an unusual public appeal last week by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to find the killers, saying that the slaying hurt the country's image and could damage its tourism industry, already suffering a downturn from last year's tsunami and the bird flu scare.

[dirtydog]

Investigators have not yet determined whether she was raped before or after being beaten.

She was beaten to death, so the police are not sure whether it was rape or necrophilia.

[aging one]

Damn sick people out there. Fok me.

[dirtydog]

SLAIN TOURIST: Fishermen confess to rape, murder
Published on January 10, 2006
Suspects had been drinking and watching porn before attack, police report says. Only seven days after the body of Katherine Horton washed ashore and was found on Koh Samui’s Lamai beach on January 2, two fishermen confessed to raping and murdering the young Welsh tourist, following an intense interrogation.
Bualoy Phothisith, 23, from the northeastern province of Ubon Ratchathani, and Wichai Somkhaoyai, a 24-year-old workmate from the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat, were taken into custody late Sunday morning and confessed early yesterday.
Their confession was found to be consistent with the results of DNA testing.
According to the police report, Wichai and Bualoy confessed they had just finished swimming and were about to return to their trawlers when they saw Horton approaching.
They told the police that earlier in the evening they had been drinking and watching porn videos with four other crewmembers aboard one of two trawlers anchored side-by-side a few hundred metres off the beach where Horton had been staying.
They told police they had found the 21-year-old sexually arousing and decided to seize her when they realised she was alone.
As she walked past them, Wichai allegedly smashed her on the neck with the rod of a beach parasol.
As he continued to bludgeon her, Bualoy grabbed her, police said.
During the attack Wichai accidentally whacked Bualoy in the face with the rod, the report said.
The mark on Bualoy’s face caught the eye of investigators on Sunday when they were interrogating about three dozen fishermen who had been working on seven boats that had been anchored off Lamai beach the night Horton was murdered.
On December 31, Horton and a friend from England, Ruth Adams, checked in at the New Hut beachside resort on Lamai beach.
Four Western men they had befriended on the ferry ride from Surat Thani also checked into the same beachfront resort.
The two women and their new friends took a boat from the island to nearby Koh Pha Ngan for a New Year’s Eve party then returned to their resort the following morning.
That day was Horton’s last.
Sometime between 9pm and 10pm that evening Horton received a call on her mobile from her mother in the United Kingdom.
As she was chatting on the phone, she went for a stroll along the beach while her friends returned to their huts.
Horton had barely taken more than a few dozen steps on the beach when she was brutally attacked. Her mother heard her daughter scream and then the phone line went dead.
The two fishermen confessed that as Wichai started pummelling Horton, she dropped her mobile phone, the police report said.
Bualoy and Wichai then dragged Horton to the edge of the sea about 30 metres from where they first attacked her.
The two men told police she was still alive and fighting to break free.
They allegedly took turns raping her.
They then dumped Horton on the beach and swam back to their trawlers, they told police.
She was still alive when they left her, they said.
Police, however, had reason to doubt this part of their confession because Thong Krong beach, where Horton’s body had been found floating in the water, was quite a distance from where Bualoy and Wichai said they had left her.
When Bualoy and Wichai returned to the trawlers they started bragging and chanting “Roi jung who”, which in the southern dialect means “Oh so yummy!”
According to police, the four other crewmembers, including a deputy head of one of the two trawlers, asked Bualoy and Wichai what it was they were feeling so gleeful about.
Still drunk, the two men simply told the others that they had just raped a foreign woman on the beach.
Next morning Bualoy and Wichai went out to sea to fish with several other members of their crews who had just returned from their daylong shore leave.
The fact that both Bualoy and Wichai had been on watch aboard their trawlers during the night of Horton’s murder would soon mark them as likely suspects.
Police said after some six hours of interrogation Bualoy finally cracked at around 2am yesterday and confessed to attacking and raping Horton.
Wichai at first insisted he had not raped Horton but only helped subdue her.
At least three members of the crew who were also aboard the trawlers that night said the two men had not brought Horton back to the boat.
Bualoy and Wichai were taken to Bangkok for physical examinations and DNA testing.
The results showed sperm samples taken from Horton’s vagina matched the two suspects’ DNA.
Faced with the evidence, Wichai confessed to raping the young woman.
A medical examination showed Bualoy had several scratch marks on him, indicating that his victim had been fighting hard to keep him away.
Horton’s body was found on January 2 about three kilometres from the New Hut resort, where she had been staying.
Initially, the investigation focused on people staying or working at New Hut.
Among the first of the more than 30 people, including six foreigners, to be taken for questioning and DNA testing by police were the four Western men who had been staying at the same resort and socialising with Horton and Adams.
A few days after Horton’s body was found, however, a crucial piece of evidence emerged.
Police were notified about a waitress at the Buddy Pub and Restaurant who had been given a mobile phone by a middle-aged Western couple who said they had found it on the beach.
The pub was only a few hundred metres from the New Hut resort. The phone turned out to be Horton’s.
On Sunday, Chris and Gill Burrows, the British couple who had stumbled across Horton’s mobile phone, testified in advance to the Surat Thani Provincial Court on Koh Samui.
The day before the couple had identified themselves to police in Bangkok, after learning that investigators were looking for them in relation to Horton’s death.
The British couple proved to be valuable witnesses.
They told police they had seen the young woman chatting on the phone and looking happy on the beach some 200 metres from Buddy Pub and not far from New Hut.
The couple was walking along the beach that night after dinner and it was on their way back that they found the mobile phone lying on the sand.
They picked it up and gave it to a waitress at Buddy Pub.
On Sunday in court Gill said she thought she might have heard a woman’s scream coming from the edge of the sea.
Her testimony turned police’s attention to the trawlers that had been near the crime scene.
A number of witnesses, including the Burrows, recalled seeing trawlers near the beach during the night Horton was killed.
A day later, on Sunday, investigators zeroed in on Wichai and Bualoy.
Arthit Khwankhom,
Anan Paengnoy
The Nation Koh Samui

[Dougal]

All credit to the Thai police for bringing this to a satisfactory conclusion - always assuming that they have indeed got the guilty pair and not just a couple of hapless nobodies brought in to provide a swift termination to this nasty episode.

The story has been running more or less everyday on the front pages of the daily newspapers in the UK, and even from London it was clear that the police were under instructions to resolve it sooner rather than later.

This has clearly done nothing to enhance Thailand's repuation as a safe holiday destination, and at a time when the government are attempting to turn Thailand from a cheap backpackers destination into one that attracts 'quality' tourists I suspect that it is the 'quality' tourists who will now think twice about booking their next holiday there and not the backpackers.