BANGKOK JANUARY 19 2011
British pensioners in Thailand have started a murder fund after a court released a Thai wife who allegedly commissioned the death of her London husband and then began to milk his bank accounts.
Raymond Hind with his wife Fon
Mr.B * (see note at end of story), 65, have put £11,000 into a fighting
fund and today they began a series of court actions on behalf of their
murdered friend 68-yr-old Raymond Hind and his 30-yr-old daughter, Zoe.
Raymond Hind, from Cheshunt, a former garage proprietor in Enfield Highway, was clubbed and stabbed to death at his home in Hua Hin last May. Two months previously he had been attacked in his home and he had taken to keeping a shotgun in his bedroom.
He had throat cancer and restrictions to his arteries and friends said his time was limited anyway.
Messrs A & B, who have retired to Hua Hin, initiated a private murder prosecution at the provincial court in Prachuap Kiri Khan against Raymond’s wife, Bunnag, known as ‘Fon’, 38, her brother, and her boyfriend, after Thai police failed to establish a legal case. They have also made moves to freeze his assets on behalf of his daughter.
After the murder in May last year Thai police told a press conference that it was an open and shut case. Fon’s boyfriend, Thanakorn Bussa, police said, admitted he had been commissioned by Fon to carrying out the murder with her brother, Pomgrit. Fon had even bought a knife for the process.
Fon Hind with her lover (insert brother)
Mr. A said: ‘There have been a series of killings of husbands in Thailand by Thai wives. We are determined that this one will not be covered up.’
A & B, have managed to freeze Hind’s offshore and Thai bank accounts but said they were unable to stop Hind’s account with the NatWest bank in Cheshunt being cleaned out through ATMs in Thailand. Both men claimed that Fon had told Thai police that 70 million baht – ?1.5 million would be available.
B, said Fon had turned up crying at the murder scene but then asked him to collect a black bag from inside the house. Inside the bag were all her husband’s bank books and credit cards. Hind’s gun had been removed from his bedroom before the attack, they said.
Fon Hind, a British citizen, has denied charges of murder and has been released on bail pending further investigation. The case was adjourned for a month.
The local expatriates are now seeking disclosure from police to see what progress the investigation made.
In Britain daughter Zoe : ‘I’m grateful to hisa friends in Thailand helping me out with this case. I knew something was up after my dad was first attacked. I guess in the end he was stuck in the house with nowhere to turn. I have a seven year old daughter and he had promised to bring us both out to see him.
‘We have to fight for him now.’
Toby Charnaud, a gentleman farmer from Chippenham, Wiltshire was murdered in 2007. Charnaud, 41, predicted his own death in a short story he wrote for an English language magazine in Thailand in which the central character, an Englishman, is murdered by his Thai wife’s Thai lover.
Charnaud, had divorced his Thai wife Pannada, 35, but she aimed to get his inheritance through their son. Charnaud was beaten to death, and his body was barbecued and cut into pieces and scattered around Kaeng Krajan National Park near the Burmese border to be eaten by tigers and other wildlife.
Pannada and two cousins were convicted of the murder and jailedfor life in September 2008 after Charnaud’s sister and parents in the UK hired a lawyer and private eye to investigate the case.
In 2008 Ian Beeston, a 69-yr-old retired engineer at the Ford plant in Dagenham, was beaten to death by his wife’s Thai lover in the north-eastern Thai province of Roi-et.
Ian Beeston with Wanna presenting water heaters to local police
Thai lawyer Boonchoo Yensabai, an expert on these cases, who helped prosecute the Toby Charnaud case warned: ‘In the worst of these cases if the wife has access she can and will attempt to pay off the relevant authorities and foreigners will wonder may why the case is going nowhere.’
