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Stolen identity card no help to suspect in tourist drug death
Pattaya police are keeping a close eye on prostitutes in the seaside city after one of them turned a night of sex services into a night of murder and theft.
Malee Jindawong, 33, is seen in security camera footage leaving her apartment in southern Pattaya after she allegedly drugged three foreign tourists at a hotel.
The dead body of 57-year-old Bangladeshi tourist, Business Chan, was found in his hotel room on the morning of May 12 after he met a Thai woman on a beach the night before. His two friends _ Sanjib Saha, 54, and Rashid Harunur, 58 _ were unconscious and had to be taken to hospital.
All three were allegedly drugged by a woman who made off with their valuables. The crime happens with some regularity, police said, although in most cases the victims are only rendered unconscious.
Local officers made solving the Chan murder a top priority as they didn't want the case to scare away tourists from the holiday and party town.
Provincial Police Region 2 commissioner Panya Mamen decided to look into the case himself. Just four days after the murder, his investigators managed to arrest the suspect, a woman from Nakhon Si Thammarat.
Investigators admitted it was not easy to identify the woman from among the myriad of prostitutes in Pattaya.
They had to gather clues gradually from footage obtained from security cameras. They also spoke to nearly 100 prostitutes in Pattaya as they attempted to track down the suspect.
Pattaya police inspectors Pol Lt Col Anak Prasongsuk and Pol Lt Col Chetsadawit Inpraphan began by comparing the footage obtained from a security camera at Bella Express Hotel Pattaya, where the victims stayed, and a photo on an identification card, which was thought to be the suspect's.
Hotel staff told them they had asked the prostitute for her ID card, of which they made a copy. However, the image on the video footage didn't match the picture on the ID card.
The inspectors discovered that the ID card actually belonged to a 19-year-old woman who had reported it missing.
As a result, investigators were forced to rely on the footage from the video camera, and pounding the pavement.
They mainly questioned prostitutes in front of hotels and others who ply their trade along the beach.
After a while they focused on the prostitutes on the beach, who usually attract customers from South Asia. South Asian men, unlike Europeans, usually don't go to pubs and go-go bars to meet prostitutes.
Their search started bearing fruit after one prostitute said she recognised the suspect in the video footage.
She and the suspect had once provided sex services at the same hotel and she later heard that a foreign tourist there had been drugged by the suspect, according to her account.
"This case did not reach the police because the tourist didn't want a confrontation with the woman," she said. "He also needed to hurry back home."
Investigators also learned from a bar employee that the suspect lived in an apartment in Pattaya.
The apartment owner identified the woman in question as Malee Jindawong, 33, a Nakhon Si Thammarat resident.
However, she moved out of the apartment on May 12 _ the day she allegedly drugged the tourists.
The investigators checked the footage of the apartment's security camera and identified the registration number of a car Ms Malee had rented.
They then located the owner of the car, who led them to Ms Malee at her new apartment in tambon Nong Prue in Chon Buri. She was arrested there.
"I didn't intend to kill him," Ms Malee allegedly told police after the arrest.
Police say Ms Malee confessed to the crime. They quote her as saying that Chan had offered her 2,000 baht and she accompanied him to his room, where she met another two men. She fooled Chan and his two friends into taking sleeping pills by claiming that they were sex pills.
They allegedly took them and became unconscious. Chan died, possibly of an overdose. She then took their valuables and fled.
Ms Malee admitted to drugging two other customers in the past, police said.
"Cases like this often occur in Pattaya," said Pol Lt Gen Panya. "Foreigners rarely complain to police because they cannot wait until the investigation is finished."
To ensure no others share the same fate as Chan, Pol Lt Gen Panya has told his officers to compile a list of women who are suspected of selling sex and will ask staff to record the names of prostitutes who stay with their guests.
"Tourists should be handed warning guides to alert them to the problem," he said. "Buying sexual service can put them at risk of becoming crime victims."
Pattaya police are keeping a close eye on prostitutes in the seaside city after one of them turned a night of sex services into a night of murder and theft.
Malee Jindawong, 33, is seen in security camera footage leaving her apartment in southern Pattaya after she allegedly drugged three foreign tourists at a hotel.
The dead body of 57-year-old Bangladeshi tourist, Business Chan, was found in his hotel room on the morning of May 12 after he met a Thai woman on a beach the night before. His two friends _ Sanjib Saha, 54, and Rashid Harunur, 58 _ were unconscious and had to be taken to hospital.
All three were allegedly drugged by a woman who made off with their valuables. The crime happens with some regularity, police said, although in most cases the victims are only rendered unconscious.
Local officers made solving the Chan murder a top priority as they didn't want the case to scare away tourists from the holiday and party town.
Provincial Police Region 2 commissioner Panya Mamen decided to look into the case himself. Just four days after the murder, his investigators managed to arrest the suspect, a woman from Nakhon Si Thammarat.
Investigators admitted it was not easy to identify the woman from among the myriad of prostitutes in Pattaya.
They had to gather clues gradually from footage obtained from security cameras. They also spoke to nearly 100 prostitutes in Pattaya as they attempted to track down the suspect.
Pattaya police inspectors Pol Lt Col Anak Prasongsuk and Pol Lt Col Chetsadawit Inpraphan began by comparing the footage obtained from a security camera at Bella Express Hotel Pattaya, where the victims stayed, and a photo on an identification card, which was thought to be the suspect's.
Hotel staff told them they had asked the prostitute for her ID card, of which they made a copy. However, the image on the video footage didn't match the picture on the ID card.
The inspectors discovered that the ID card actually belonged to a 19-year-old woman who had reported it missing.
As a result, investigators were forced to rely on the footage from the video camera, and pounding the pavement.
They mainly questioned prostitutes in front of hotels and others who ply their trade along the beach.
After a while they focused on the prostitutes on the beach, who usually attract customers from South Asia. South Asian men, unlike Europeans, usually don't go to pubs and go-go bars to meet prostitutes.
Their search started bearing fruit after one prostitute said she recognised the suspect in the video footage.
She and the suspect had once provided sex services at the same hotel and she later heard that a foreign tourist there had been drugged by the suspect, according to her account.
"This case did not reach the police because the tourist didn't want a confrontation with the woman," she said. "He also needed to hurry back home."
Investigators also learned from a bar employee that the suspect lived in an apartment in Pattaya.
The apartment owner identified the woman in question as Malee Jindawong, 33, a Nakhon Si Thammarat resident.
However, she moved out of the apartment on May 12 _ the day she allegedly drugged the tourists.
The investigators checked the footage of the apartment's security camera and identified the registration number of a car Ms Malee had rented.
They then located the owner of the car, who led them to Ms Malee at her new apartment in tambon Nong Prue in Chon Buri. She was arrested there.
"I didn't intend to kill him," Ms Malee allegedly told police after the arrest.
Police say Ms Malee confessed to the crime. They quote her as saying that Chan had offered her 2,000 baht and she accompanied him to his room, where she met another two men. She fooled Chan and his two friends into taking sleeping pills by claiming that they were sex pills.
They allegedly took them and became unconscious. Chan died, possibly of an overdose. She then took their valuables and fled.
Ms Malee admitted to drugging two other customers in the past, police said.
"Cases like this often occur in Pattaya," said Pol Lt Gen Panya. "Foreigners rarely complain to police because they cannot wait until the investigation is finished."
To ensure no others share the same fate as Chan, Pol Lt Gen Panya has told his officers to compile a list of women who are suspected of selling sex and will ask staff to record the names of prostitutes who stay with their guests.
"Tourists should be handed warning guides to alert them to the problem," he said. "Buying sexual service can put them at risk of becoming crime victims."
