British farmer's body scattered over Thai park

[Guest mauRICE]

Another sterling example of Thai jai yen and family spirit. It's true what they say, when you marry a Thai, you marry her family as well, right unto death.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2294115_1,00.html

 

British farmer's body scattered over Thai park

 

By Andrew Drummond in Petchaburi, Thailand and Adam Fresco

 

An English country farmer was battered to death then barbecued on charcoal in a Thai national park after divorcing his Thai wife because of her gambling debts.

 

The body parts of Marlborough College-educated Toby Charnaud, 41, were then scattered in the park, one of the last refuges of Thailand

[Gaybutton]

Another sterling example of Thai jai yen and family spirit. It's true what they say, when you marry a Thai, you marry her family as well, right unto death.

 

This is indeed a terrible story and it is not the first time we have heard about murdered and/or abused "farang" in Thailand. I think most of us have heard several stories about murdered gay "farang," the deed done by a boyfriend who is out for money or revenge.

 

We've also heard stories about "farang" who have bought homes under a Thai person's name only to be kicked out of the home as soon as the mortgage has been paid off. Often enough, that happens after the same "farang" has also taken care of the family's financiial problems, put family members through school, bought them cars, etc.

 

Only recently I heard a story about a gay "farang" who had a Thai boyfriend. The way I heard it, he bought a restaurant for the boyfriend and set him up in business. Not long after that the boy's former "farang" boyfriend showed up at the restaurant. The boy left the restaurant with that "farang" and the "farang" who had bought and paid for it, in the boy's name, was out . . . just like that.

 

I don't mean to imply that this sort of thing is what to expect, or even that it happens very often, but it certainly brings home the idea that such a thing is possible. Before one gets too involved, especially with famly members, it would be a good idea to take precautions and make sure it is clearly understood that they have a lot more to lose than to gain if anything happens to the "farang."

 

[Bob]

While this story probably has more to do with the married relationship, I note that the immediate problem was the non-payment of gambling debts. There are money lenders (okay, the better word would be "loansharks") in every village and they are not people you want to mess with at all.

 

A very good thai friend who has lived in Chiangmai for the last 10 years owns a small (1 rai) parcel of land with his brother (a farmer) near the Laos border. The brother, without consulting my friend,

borrowed 50,000 baht against the parcel from the local loansharks, the brother having told them that my friend consented to the loan. My friend finds out about the loan (and the fact that the brother is not making repayments) when he was visiting the home village one day. Even though my friend had nothing to do with the loan - and told them he never consented to it or received any of the money - threats were made and my friend is very fearful and almost sure that the sharks will find him in Chiangmai and re-arrange his face/body. He has moved his residence once just because of this fear.

 

Whether the creditor is named Corleone or Somchai, you really don't want to mess with these people. As for the posted story, it sounds like the family probably did it (but don't for a minute think it couldn't have been the lenders).

[Guest mauRICE]

This Charnaud fellow was lucky to have had a well-to-do blood family who obviously loved and cared for him. Otherwise, his story would have never come to light like the stories of so many other farangs who were estranged from their own families and then disappeared or died under suspicious circumstances in Thailand. Has anyone seen this story reported in The Bangkok Post or The Nation?

 

One wonders what may have driven a country squire like Charnaud to make the kind of associations he did; would he have fallen for a prostitute back in England, married her and had a child with her? Or did the ostentatiously gentle and exotic nature of Thai prostitution, steeped in tradition and family $values$, lead him to abandon his upper class ethics and common sense? I suppose his wife's true nature only became apparent to him later in the relationship by which time he had to pay for his mistake with his own life.

 

The difference in age between the victim and his ex-wife is only six years and they had known each other for almost ten until the time of his brutal murder - making it difficult to raise the oh-so-popular and comforting age/cultural gap excuses in defence of the Thai. It appears that Charnaud was a good provider and a productive guest of Thailand as a successful restauranteur in Hua Hin. He even gave his wife a very generous settlement after he divorced her.

 

The alleged plan for the ex-wife to inherit through her son is clever but hardly unusual - not a day passes without some family or inheritance dispute being reported in the already sugar-coated English press in Thailand. I'd be curious to know the terms of Charnaud's will. The boy is still a minor and given that Charnaud divorced his wife because of her gambling debts, it was unlikely that he would have made her the guardian or trustee of his son's inheritance (he probably named his sister, who's currently taking care of the boy, legal guardian). For all you know, the ex-wife might have killed Charnaud in vain. Certainly, she won't be able to benefit from her crime now.

 

The motive of the murder could just as well be revenge as evidenced by the gruesome way in which the body was disposed of. Charnaud had the fortitude to divorce his wife in the face of her continued behavioural failings instead of enduring it in silence like the typical, domesticated farang cuckold. Such audacity would have resulted in a terrible loss of face (rightly deserved) for the wife and her family.

 

No, I'm afraid Mr Toby Charnaud sowed the seeds of his own doom through his choice of partner and subsequently became a victim of gool ol' Thai family values.

[Guest mauRICE]

Follow-up story on the barbecuing Thai bride. I'm usually ambivalent about the death penalty but I fully support it in this case.

 

Thai bride admits feeding ex-husband to the tigers

 

By Simon de Bruxelles and Andrew Drummond in Petchaburi, Thailand

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25...2295579,00.html

 

SOME think it was premonition that led Toby Charnaud to write a short story about an English expatriate

[Guest mauRICE]

"We welcomed Toby

[Guest mauRICE]

The face of a murderer

 

Click here to see a picture of the accused.

 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006350407,00.html

[Guest mauRICE]

Life sentence for Thai ex-wife of murdered Brit

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingne...newsid=30012930

 

A former Thai bar girl and three of her relatives were sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for the beating death and dismemberment of the woman's British ex-husband, court officials said.

 

Toby Charnaud was killed last year with clubs and an iron bar after being lured to northern Thailand by Pannada Charnaud Laorueang, the 41-year-old's ex-wife, who had asked him to collect the couple's child.

 

Charnaud's murderers then cut his body into pieces, which they cooked on a fire and buried throughout Kaeng Kracharn National Park, police said.

 

Pannada, 35, who was not present at the killing, was given a life sentence along with three family members who carried out the brutal attack, court officials said.

 

The four had been sentenced to death but had their punishments reduced after testifying in court during their trial.

 

"The judge found that the four suspects had committed the crime of premeditated murder and concealing the body, but during the hearing they had given some useful information and the court decided to reduce the death sentences to life imprisonment," the verdict said.

 

Two other suspects were acquitted because of a lack of evidence.

 

Agence France-Presse

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

IMO, she should have got the needle. There was clear premeditation, to the point of luring the victim with their own child, and the crime was carried out in the most brutal and heinous fashion that would be repulsive and reprehensible in any civilised society, let alone one that frequently trumpets its own sangfroid and equanimity.

 

One can only surmise in these situations, but I wonder if the fact that the victim was farang, and therefore inconsequential in Thai eyes, had a bearing on the sentence. The judge probably thought Mr Charnaud brought it upon himself for having made the choice of partner as he did (and who could argue with that).

 

In the worst case scenario, this woman will be out in 20 years, still young enough to snare another do-gooder farang eager to form a relationship with a 'rehabilitated', older woman armed with a fresh bag of tricks she picked up in prison. Or, more likely, she would try to re-establish contact with her son who would have come into his inheritance by then. Looks like the barbecueing Thai wife may well reap the benefits of her crime after all. TIT.

[Guest mauRICE]

With so many Britons murdered in Thailand, why does our Government not warn of the dangers faced there?

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3326545.ece

 

At least 17 Britons have been murdered in Thailand since 2003 – including Toby Charnaud, brutally slain by his Thai wife. Now, his family want to know why our Government is so reluctant to warn that the 'Land of Smiles' is one of the most dangerous places on earth for its British residents

 

By Andrew Spooner

Published: 13 January 2008

 

His fingers trembled as he lit another cigarette, the previous one still smouldering in the ashtray. His hands felt clammy and he was sweating despite the chill blast from the air-conditioning. There was a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was the most terrible thing he had done in his life, and the waiting was the hardest part."

 

This is the opening paragraph of a short story called "Rainfall", written in 2003 by Toby Charnaud, an English expat living in the upmarket beach resort of Hua Hin, Thailand. Charnaud recounts, with a sense of impending dread, the tale of a British man named Guy who plans to murder his Thai wife. Yet, this sobering parable is turned on its head, as the Thai wife has her husband killed instead.

 

Two years later, on 27 March 2005, Charnaud himself was murdered in horrific circumstances. The 41-year-old was lured into the house near Hua Hin that he had bought for his Thai ex-wife, Panadda Laoruang, to live in. There, after a home-made gun failed to kill him, three men hired by Laoruang beat him to death with a heavy object. His body was partially cremated in a fire pit, cut into small pieces and scattered around a nearby forest. Charnaud's parents, Jeremy and Sarah, were then forced to endure the insensitivity of a graceless British Embassy, the hiring of private detectives and countless DNA tests to fully ascertain, months later, that the meagre charred remains belonged to their son.

 

In the gruelling task of discovering the awful fate of their son, the Charnauds discovered a Thailand not seen in its tourist authorities' glossy brochures. Yet what also emerges from the death of Charnaud and many others is the fact that Thailand, despite its popularity with the British, is among the most dangerous places in the world for UK visitors – a fact that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has been reluctant to publicise.

 

Born and raised a farmer's son, Charnaud only ever seemed to have one destiny growing up. "We always thought he was going to be a farmer," says his father. We're sitting in the kitchen of a cosy country farmhouse in the tiny Wiltshire village of West Kington, where Charnaud and Som (Laoruang's Thai nickname) spent two happy years together.

 

Charnaud had an uneventful rural childhood, which he shared with two sisters, Martha and Hannah, and his Down's Syndrome brother, Matthew, and which included a stint at one of Britain's top private schools, Marlborough College. He then decided to attend The Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester. "He met a great bunch of people there," says his mother. "It was one of the happiest periods of his life."

 

After graduation, Charnaud began a successful career as a land agent, moving around the UK and building a reputation. It was during this period that he was bitten by the travel bug. "Toby travelled to Australia, New Zealand and then took an overland trip to South Africa," says his father. The part of the world that really caught his attention was South-east Asia and, in particular, Thailand. "While he was working as a land agent he began to travel much more regularly," says his mother. "We knew at that point that he was beginning a particular fascination with Thailand."

 

It was on one of these trips that Charnaud met Laoruang. "Apparently she was working as a security guard in a department store," says his sister, Hannah. "They had some kind of brief contact but then Toby didn't see her for a number of years." While on a return trip Charnaud unexpectedly bumped into Laoruang and their romance blossomed. "Toby had moved back in with us to work on the farm," says his father. "We noticed he was corresponding with someone out there and that some intense feelings were developing."

 

In October 1997, Charnaud and Laoruang were married in a Buddhist ceremony in her home village in Isaan, Thailand's poor north-eastern region. Martha was the only UK family member there. "All of Som's relatives were incredibly welcoming," she says. "The village itself was idyllic – it seemed completely removed from Western consumer culture and I guess Toby believed that Som might not be so easily seduced by the trappings of that." One incident stood out for Martha when she visited Laoruang's family: "Som shimmied up a tree and chopped down a coconut for us. Toby was very impressed by this – he just seemed completely smitten."

 

Shortly after the wedding, Laoruang and Charnaud moved back to Britain and into the cottage in West Kington. "I got on very well with Som," says Martha. "She was warm, friendly and funny. We used to have little girly chats about things – of course I never suspected anything. I mean, why would I be looking?" Charnaud's wife seemed to take to English village life, finding a job at a local horticultural nursery and becoming part of the family. "Som was a loving wife, made friends with local people and was well suited to life in West Kington," says his father. "I thought she was great company."

 

In 1999, with UK farming on a downturn, Charnaud and his wife made the decision to return to Thailand. "She never pressured him to go back," says his father. "He was genuinely very keen on the idea." In early 2000, the pair, by now settled in Hua Hin, had a son, Daniel. With the arrival of a beautiful baby boy, a wife he loved and a burgeoning business in one of Thailand's premier resort towns, life looked almost too good to be true.

 

It was at this point that things started to go wrong. "When Toby moved [to Britain] with Som we'd welcomed her into our family," says his father. "She always seemed like such a sweet, almost naive, Thai girl," adds Hannah. "But Som managed to pull the wool over everyone's eyes."

 

In fact, the marriage was not just the coming together of two people, but of two very different cultures. For Westerners living in Thailand, it is often hard to decipher the country's subtle and highly complex social and cultural codes. Thais tend to separate the persona they present to the world from their interior character. The result, for Laoruang, was that when she got into difficulties, she tried her best to prevent her husband from finding out about them. "I received a letter from Som in 2001 that said she had got into trouble and needed £5,000 to pay a bribe," says Martha. "She also begged me not to mention the matter to Toby." By all accounts, Laoruang now began to run up some serious gambling debts. She appeared to begin an affair with a local policeman and became involved in shady gold deals. With a wealthy foreign husband, it is also possible that Laoruang could have become a target for local hustlers.

 

By 2004, her debts were sucking the business dry and her extramarital affairs were destroying her relationship with Charnaud, who soon divorced her. He gained custody of Daniel, set up a generous divorce settlement that included a one-off sum, monthly allowance and payment of Laoruang's rent, and then cut her off from access to the business. "From what happened to Toby you might think he was quite naive," says Martha. "But he was quite an astute person. He'd really sussed out the Thai way of doing things."

 

Yet, the following year, Charnaud was dead. His fate at the hands of his ex-wife provides a tragic glimpse of an altogether darker aspect of the so-called "Land of Smiles". Thailand has one of the world's highest per-capita murder rates – when the UN last counted it in 2000, it stood at 5,140 per year, though the annual total is now speculated to be more than 6,000. In the years 2003 to 2006, 17 of these victims were UK nationals, according to the FCO. These murders include a sexually motivated killing of a young British woman; a Thai police officer executing two backpackers in a crowded street; shootings, throat cuttings and two cases of other Westerners murdering UK nationals; and, more pertinently, several cases of Thai wives or their family members slaying British husbands.

 

On average, about 50 civilian UK nationals are murdered around the world each year (excluding terrorist attacks). This means that almost 10 per cent of all murders of Britons abroad are committed in Thailand – a chilling figure, given that Thailand comprises only 0.6 per cent of all foreign travel from UK shores.

 

The murder rate is perhaps surprising; of the 420,000 annual British travellers to Thailand, a tiny percentage are the victims of crime. The Thais are friendly and engaging hosts and, with their famous beaches, handsome resorts and low prices bringing in millions of tourists, it is easy to understand why we have fallen in love with the country, and currently comprise its highest proportion of Western visitors.

 

Yet its dark side is quite visible. Hua Hin, where Charnaud lived and worked, is one of Thailand's most relaxed resorts, located 150 miles south of Bangkok. Long a getaway for Thai royalty, who have attracted a whole section of the Thai elite in their wake, it has a smattering of seedy bars, but the town is a picture of innocence compared with Pattaya, 150 miles north across the Gulf of Thailand. It is here that the country's less-welcome foreign visitors encounter the darker, more dangerous reaches of Thai culture; it is here that Thailand's huge sex industry has its epicentre.

 

While there is no suggestion that Charnaud was in any way involved in this world – "Toby could never be called a sex tourist," says Hannah, "I can't imagine he went to one strip club the whole time he was in Thailand, it just wasn't his style" – Pattaya is worth including in his story for a fuller picture of the society in which he lived and died; it is believed by some that more British citizens meet a violent end here than anywhere else in Thailand.

 

On any given day, tens of thousands of prostitutes can be seen working the brothels, bars, streets, hotel lobbies, beach fronts and even shopping malls of this gaudy city. Pattaya is also the focus for high levels of criminal activity involving international gangs from Russia, Germany, the UK and China. The number of deaths of British nationals' in Pattaya is hard to ascertain – though some sources claim that it is up to four every week, neither the FCO nor the Thai authorities have any data they are prepared to release. However, what can be speculated with some confidence is that of the 226 average annual deaths of British citizens in Thailand recorded by the FCO, a large percentage are in Pattaya. (The FCO refuse to list causes of deaths, so we must also speculate as to the reasons for this morbid hotspot. Anecdotal evidence suggests straightforward causes of death for some, such as road accidents and health problems; then there are the suspicious-sounding "suicides" – jumping from balconies seems to be a favoured method.)

 

At present FCO information regarding deaths in Thailand is limited. Andy Pearce, the deputy head of mission at the British Embassy in Bangkok, admits that the murder rate of Britons resident in Thailand is about the same as the domestic Thai rate – roughly five times higher than in the UK – but adds that this is only an estimate. (There are thought to be about 50,000 British resident in the country at present.) "To create the kind of advice needed on murder rates would require a greater statistical base and more research," he says.

 

In early 2006, just after the brutal rape and murder of the young British backpacker Katherine Horton on a deserted Koh Samui beach, and following an 18-month period in which nine Britons were murdered, the FCO had a revealing internal debate about what safety advice they should give to British nationals travelling to Thailand, as an email obtained by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act testifies: "The trouble with [giving advice about the murder rate]... is that it would effectively highlight the number of murders over the past year or more here, which in the current circumstances could have a disproportionate impact on Thailand's reputation and legitimate commercial interests."

 

No amount of number-crunching by the officials at the British Embassy could have saved Charnaud. While his end was brutal, the reasons for it were never genuinely clear. "The only thing we know is that she killed him for financial reasons," says Hannah. "Som [who was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, along with three accomplices in a Thai courtroom in September 2006] thought she could get Toby's money through their son, Daniel. But she was never going to get a penny." "It has been an horrific time for us all," adds Martha, "but the family hasn't fallen apart." (Daniel is now living happily in the UK with family members.)

 

Yet Charnaud's family believe British officials in Thailand could have done a lot more to assist them, something that led to their local MP, James Gray, asking questions in Parliament in 2006. "In direct contrast to the Thais, who handled the whole thing very well, at every step our embassy was insensitive, ineffective and incompetent," says Hannah. "When Toby's remains were found they sent us a short email, complete with graphic details. This was done after they had spoken to the press. They offered help with DNA testing and then made that extremely difficult."

 

At one point, when Charnaud's remains had been released by the Thai police, and with all his family back in the UK, the embassy contacted his family and offered to have the body cremated. "I said, 'What? Do the cremation with no one there?' and they said 'Yes,'" says Hannah. "I was staggered. It seemed like they were just eager to shut the case down."

 

In 2006, a ceremony of remembrance was held for Charnaud in Hua Hin, his ashes scattered in the shimmering waters of the Gulf of Thailand. "It was one of the hardest days of my life," says Hannah. For future sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers of Britons murdered in Thailand, it seems that more hard days are going to follow.

 

"Guy forced himself to look up. His eyes widened with shock as he saw the gun pointing at him. He didn't understand, couldn't take in what he saw. His last thought, bizarrely, was that the silencer was as big as the gun. The girl slipped into the room. She was tiny with large brown eyes. She looked at Guy's body on the floor, then at the Thai man slipping the gun back into the waistband of his jeans. The expression on her face was of regret, sorrow and bewilderment. It passed quickly..." "Rainfall" by Toby Charnaud, 1964-2005.

 

Andrew Spooner is the author of Footprint Handbooks' guide to Thailand (£14.99)

[Guest wowpow]

A sad reflection of the state of The Times when they report news from March 2007 in January 2008. It is indeed a terrible thing to have happened. However and murder is awful. Was it a barbecue and strewing of body parts or a cremations and scattering of the ashes? Not a lot of difference anyway.

 

Andrew Drummond ( spit ) specialises in hugely inflated and created reports of goings on in Thailand which he sells to UK Press to make a living and to pay off Pattaya bar owners who have successfully sued him in Thailand.

[Guest mauRICE]

A sad reflection of the state of The Times when they report news from March 2007 in January 2008. It is indeed a terrible thing to have happened. However and murder is awful. Was it a barbecue and strewing of body parts or a cremations and scattering of the ashes? Not a lot of difference anyway.

 

Andrew Drummond ( spit ) specialises in hugely inflated and created reports of goings on in Thailand which he sells to UK Press to make a living and to pay off Pattaya bar owners who have successfully sued him in Thailand.

 

The article was filed in The Independent, not The Times and was written by Andrew Spooner, not Drummond.

 

It was a feature on the large number of Britons murdered in Thailand over the last few years, using the Charnaud case as a locus classicus, and what he perceived as a reluctance on the part of the British Government to warn British travellers of the dangers of travelling to Thailand. It was not a report of the Charnaud murder case per se. The article was therefore timely.

 

You yourself have had no qualms in citing "hugely inflated and created reports of goings on in Thailand" (your words), with one pertinent one on this very forum last year:

 

http://www.gaythailand.com/forums/index.ph...+muder+thailand