Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined with our super producer Ball mission controlled decands.
Speaker 4: Most importantly, you are here, and that makes this the
Speaker 4: stuff they don't want you to know. Brought to you
Speaker 4: by four people who have never been to Thailand. Tonight's
Speaker 4: tale is a strange one and may not be appropriate
Speaker 4: for all audiences due to the at times graphic descriptions
Speaker 4: of violence involved. Earlier in Strange News, we shared an
Speaker 4: ongoing story that rocked the nation of Thailand to the core.
Speaker 4: We're returning to this tale tonight. Here are the facts.
Speaker 2: How do you know I haven't been to Thailand.
Speaker 3: I asked you a few years back to something change.
Speaker 2: He's just presumptive of you, sir, okay.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, not to put you in a box, Matt.
Speaker 4: So three people who have not been to Thailand and
Speaker 4: one person who does.
Speaker 3: Either confirm or can I right, Yeah, I've been there
Speaker 3: in my mind and in my heart. I really like
Speaker 3: Thai food. That doesn't count. No, I have not been
Speaker 3: to Thailand, Ben, I can confirm, Matt, that's up to you.
Speaker 3: Do what you will.
Speaker 2: You're You're not the only mysterious one over here.
Speaker 3: Ben, I've never been to Thailand.
Speaker 4: That that is definitely, that's definitely on record, and everybody,
Speaker 4: everybody is a mystery, right.
Speaker 3: We can tay multitudes.
Speaker 4: As Whitman said, speaking of multitudes, there are gonna be
Speaker 4: a lot of Thai names and places in tonight's show.
Speaker 4: We are not native speakers. Maybe that's the first thing,
Speaker 4: so please bear with us. But we can't say, like
Speaker 4: any country, Thailand's home to stunning beauty, innovation, and some
Speaker 4: very troubling imperfections. Have you guys heard you know one
Speaker 4: of the one of the monikers of Thailand is the
Speaker 4: land of smiles.
Speaker 3: I have not heard that, But I'm a big fan
Speaker 3: of the history of Thai like electronic music and like
Speaker 3: disco and stuff. You know that band Krang Been. They
Speaker 3: are not native Thai individuals, but they take a lot
Speaker 3: of influence from that sound. If you're into that. There's
Speaker 3: some really cool deep cut kind of records you can
Speaker 3: find from Thai artists from the sixties and seventies really cool,
Speaker 3: kind of psychedelic, jazzy sort of dance music. Pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been getting really into Turkish psychedelic music from
Speaker 4: the same time period too, But yeah, krongben is perfect.
Speaker 4: It's nice writing studying music. It's very low, fine and chill,
Speaker 4: and krongbin is a Thai phrase or Thai word. But
Speaker 4: I think for a lot of folks who haven't been
Speaker 4: to Thailand, it's easy to forget that, like any other country,
Speaker 4: there's a lot more at play beneath the surface.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: It is a different culture, it is a different part
Speaker 4: of the world. We're talking about this a little bit
Speaker 4: off air. Their government is extremely different from the West,
Speaker 4: especially in their practice of helping with the French pronunciation
Speaker 4: here the Les mageste or Les majeste the rights of
Speaker 4: the king.
Speaker 3: Gessie for a silent s there. But that's my only critique.
Speaker 3: I think the rest was perfect, But who's to say.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I think you nailed it. So what
Speaker 3: is this idea? Right?
Speaker 4: It's like, if you in any way are seen defaming
Speaker 4: or insulting or threatening the monarchy, you can be locked
Speaker 4: up in jail for three to fifteen years.
Speaker 3: Jeez, it's not very smiley behavior. That's the pretty frowning
Speaker 3: stuff right there. That's a good point.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not the main topic of our conversation,
Speaker 4: but it is baffling because it affects freedom of the press.
Speaker 4: It is broadly enforced. Like one example would be you
Speaker 4: can go to jail for three years if you step
Speaker 4: on a newspaper that has a picture of the king
Speaker 4: on it, or if you like a social media comment,
Speaker 4: you can be prosecuted.
Speaker 3: Do you think you could call a witness to say
Speaker 3: that it was an accident that you stepped on that
Speaker 3: newspaper featuring the king and like get out of it.
Speaker 2: Or his majesty, the King of Thailand does not care
Speaker 2: if it was an axident.
Speaker 3: There are no accidents when it comes to defaming the king, right, yeah.
Speaker 4: I imagine you can mitigate it and say something like, hey,
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm a foreigner, I'm a fullong, I didn't
Speaker 4: know I was just walking in a hurry, right. But
Speaker 4: but it is it is weaponized to persecute political opponents
Speaker 4: and activists. I mean, it's it's not the topic of
Speaker 4: our conversation today, but It's a good example of how
Speaker 4: people can stereotype, exoticize, or simplify images of another place
Speaker 4: without realizing that there's a complicated reality for the people
Speaker 4: actually living there. I mean that goes back to, you know,
Speaker 4: the perception of Thailand as like a party city country,
Speaker 4: not the store, but like a country where people go
Speaker 4: to party and do drugs.
Speaker 3: And well, the drug laws are really strict, right you
Speaker 3: already mentioned that, but I mean no, I don't think so.
Speaker 3: They're like very draconian. Yes, yes, sir, you to mess around.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not, No, absolutely not. And foreign sex tourism is
Speaker 3: a thing. Human trafficking is a problem. One thing I
Speaker 3: didn't know much about that plays a role in our
Speaker 3: show tonight. Consumer debt is out of control in Thailand.
Speaker 3: It's like ninety something percent of the total GDP. People
Speaker 3: have all kinds of debt. And there's also a complicated
Speaker 3: relationship with gambling. It as just like the drug laws.
Speaker 4: They have very very strict gambled laws, but it's not
Speaker 4: stopping anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd love to explore this a little more, but
Speaker 3: I'm familiar with the term, I think from the Big
Speaker 3: Lebowski tie stick, and it referred to a really like
Speaker 3: powerful strain of marijuana and even like a way that
Speaker 3: it was like bundled up and sold. And I just
Speaker 3: looked it up and it's totally a thing like there
Speaker 3: was in the sixties and seventies. Thailand was responsible for
Speaker 3: some of the highest quality marijuana out there in the seventies,
Speaker 3: grown by the hill tribes of Thailand, and they use
Speaker 3: these like silk lines to tie these buds on, literally
Speaker 3: tie them to a stick. I wonder if that is
Speaker 3: part of the complicated, you know, relationship with drugs, is
Speaker 3: that it had this you know, reputation, and the government
Speaker 3: decided we don't want that to be part of our
Speaker 3: legacy or whatever, so they got nasty about it. But
Speaker 3: also maybe it's okay to export but not for the
Speaker 3: citizens to use. I'm curious. I'm sorry, I'm just bring
Speaker 3: a bunch of questions. Those are great questions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you could we could see that as
Speaker 4: a react because you know, the recreational drug use is
Speaker 4: heavily vilified right in all of Southeast Asia. We're not kidding,
Speaker 4: do not do drugs in Thailand. But it makes sense
Speaker 4: what you're saying, No, that it could be a reaction
Speaker 4: even if it's not like a moral imperative to stop
Speaker 4: people from smoking cannabis. Maybe it's more of something like
Speaker 4: we need to prove we need to deny drug cartel's
Speaker 4: income streams for sure.
Speaker 3: And last thing on this, because I know it's not
Speaker 3: really the topic today, but I'm just seeing in an
Speaker 3: article that I found that at the time in the
Speaker 3: seventies it was largely run by surfers, by Tai surfers,
Speaker 3: and surfers as a culture at the time in the
Speaker 3: seventies were considered draft dodgers because they were like shiftless
Speaker 3: layabouts who were trying to avoid military service, and they
Speaker 3: were responsible for these very complex smuggling operations that led
Speaker 3: to the stuff being available in the States. So I
Speaker 3: don't know, Sorry, this is interest to me, but maybe
Speaker 3: worth the exploration down the line.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and check out the hippie trail through the
Speaker 4: fifties and seventies. That's another big piece of history here.
Speaker 2: And if you find yourself in Thailand, one of the
Speaker 2: things you have to do is get a little religious,
Speaker 2: or at least go to the religious sites that are
Speaker 2: out there. Buddhists, some of the Hindu temple.
Speaker 3: Shrines, and the.
Speaker 2: Dude well, some of the watts, some of them that
Speaker 2: are not. Some of them, like the Sanctuary of Truth,
Speaker 2: which is the largest wooden building that's entirely magical place
Speaker 2: it does. If you see it, you would think it's
Speaker 2: even more magical than the name implies. There's so many
Speaker 2: there's so many sites in Thailand that are just they
Speaker 2: defy the imagination, I think when it comes to their architecture,
Speaker 2: in the detailing.
Speaker 3: And the jungles, just I mean the absolute lushness of
Speaker 3: their kind. I guess you call them rainforest kind of,
Speaker 3: but there there's certainly a lot of really absolutely spectacular
Speaker 3: you know forests and you know country side things like that.
Speaker 4: Biodiversity is huge as well, and it's important that we
Speaker 4: mention these really positive things that are unique to Thailand
Speaker 4: that not every country has. But the gambling laws themselves.
Speaker 4: To get back to this, this is a setup the
Speaker 4: gambling laws themselves, because gambling is so heavily regulated. There
Speaker 4: are only two exceptions to gambling laws in Thailand. The
Speaker 4: first is horse racing and the second is the state
Speaker 4: supported lottery, and anything other than that is illegal. However, Yeah, however,
Speaker 4: like more than fifty seven percent of the population is
Speaker 4: into online gambling in some way, and these a lot
Speaker 4: of these gambling outfits are run by shadowy cartels like
Speaker 4: you remember Specter from the James Bond series. Of course,
Speaker 4: there's like a Specter basically for some of this online gambling.
Speaker 4: A transnational group named the Outlaws, not the most creative name,
Speaker 4: but they get other stuff doing going on. Another thing
Speaker 4: that the West doesn't really talk about when it comes
Speaker 4: to Thailand is the number of serial killers that have
Speaker 4: been active at some point there. And part of that
Speaker 4: goes back to what you're talking about with ty stick
Speaker 4: or the drug trade, the hippie trayal these vulnerable populations
Speaker 4: were targeted by people who leveraged the criminal underground to
Speaker 4: get away with crimes that would not be reported right
Speaker 4: or would be ignored because powerful people weren't getting targeted.
Speaker 4: That's where our story starts tonight because recently last year,
Speaker 4: Thai authorities, now it's something new and disturbing, they'd caught
Speaker 4: what they were calling the most notorious known serial killer
Speaker 4: in the entire history of the country. A woman in
Speaker 4: her thirties named Saurat Wrongsiwuthapun good Job, wore on to
Speaker 4: her friends.
Speaker 3: That was impressive and I'm not blown Smoke's barely started
Speaker 3: with that. That was very well well.
Speaker 4: Apologies, apologies again to all Native Tie speakers. She was
Speaker 4: known as AHM to her friends. That's what we're going
Speaker 4: to call her tonight. At least her friends called her
Speaker 4: that until she murdered them allegedly.
Speaker 3: Cool. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: While we while we are not Native Tie speakers, we
Speaker 4: can speak to previous research on the phenomenon of serial killers, right, guys,
Speaker 4: It's much more rare than perceived in fiction. And there's
Speaker 4: a kind of demographic of serial killers who tend to
Speaker 4: get apprehended, right.
Speaker 2: The dumb ones, now I'm just shooking. I'm the ones,
Speaker 2: the ones that, yeah, the ones that escalate too quickly.
Speaker 4: The ones that get caught tend to overwhelmingly be male
Speaker 4: or male identifying, and they have a lot of behaviors
Speaker 4: conforming to the controversial McDonald triad theory, which I no,
Speaker 4: I think in previous episodes we've talked about this, but
Speaker 4: the more I look into it, there's not a ton
Speaker 4: of there's not a ton of later research validating this theory.
Speaker 2: No, that's this is like the behavioral sciences at quantico
Speaker 2: kind of thinking, you know, early on, but you know
Speaker 2: there's there's weird stuff in there, especially harming animals early on.
Speaker 2: That that, to me is one of the biggest the
Speaker 2: whole bed winning thing. I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 2: how much water that holds. He But what's the third one?
Speaker 4: Arson, Yeah, or fascination with fire. I mean fire is fascinating.
Speaker 2: Though, Yeah, like a harming something else that is living
Speaker 2: with a perceived callousness, right, and then watching like viewing destruction,
Speaker 2: watching it occur with the fire, and then at like
Speaker 2: having some kind of uncontrollable part of your physical body.
Speaker 4: I always thought, Yeah, that's a better way to phrase it.
Speaker 4: I always wondered whether the persistent bed wedding thing was
Speaker 4: a psyop meant to like get in the heads of
Speaker 4: the criminals being hunted.
Speaker 3: Maybe.
Speaker 4: So anyway, if you are looking at news about this person,
Speaker 4: you will you will run into the name Sauraat, But
Speaker 4: you are more likely to run into the ghoulish nickname
Speaker 4: the media gave her, which is om Cyanide.
Speaker 3: And we don't know a whole heck of a lot
Speaker 3: about her early life, but the court documents in reporting
Speaker 3: do give us some basic information. Am who how we're
Speaker 3: going to refer to her, because I don't think it
Speaker 3: either matter. I could nearly as good a job as
Speaker 3: Ben did on that pronunciation, but am as a graduate
Speaker 3: of Nakhon pathom oh geez I said that now I
Speaker 3: have to say this Rajabat University, which is west of Bangkok,
Speaker 3: and her some of her teachers lectures profits seemed to
Speaker 3: have a similar sense of her personality, And it's kind
Speaker 3: of stuff we hear often about serial killers that nothing
Speaker 3: out of the ordinary about her looks or behavior, just
Speaker 3: you know, kind of kept to herself, you know, not
Speaker 3: really anything to write home about. She did major in
Speaker 3: public relations and graduated in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an interesting thing, right, the interior lives of everybody.
Speaker 2: It does seem like when you get when you hear
Speaker 2: that about someone that stands out like this as someone
Speaker 2: who's done a lot of harm and has kind of
Speaker 2: a secret life that they're living, it is this weird
Speaker 2: like there's not a big outward show of anything because
Speaker 2: so much is going on in the background, the stuff
Speaker 2: that nobody else gets to see. It is a pretty
Speaker 2: common thing.
Speaker 4: Agree, what's that old lying lives of quiet desperation.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: We know that she was married and divorced with a
Speaker 4: guy named reported sometimes as Vitune or witun Rang Siopon.
Speaker 4: He was a senior police official in their province, Rachabury.
Speaker 4: He is no longer a police official, and although their
Speaker 4: marriage was dissolved, they continued to see each other and
Speaker 4: live together. It's very again, like you're saying the complicated stories, right.
Speaker 4: Everybody has stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's going to come in later. Just her
Speaker 2: connection to the police department, which is really fishy to me,
Speaker 2: I think everybody else. It's just it's a little weird
Speaker 2: because she did have two children with that person, right,
Speaker 2: But then she also has this other thing going on,
Speaker 2: a common law husband.
Speaker 4: And then we'll see that two police officers also die
Speaker 4: in the course of this. So fast forward to the arrest.
Speaker 4: Police arrest Am on Tuesday, April twenty fifth. It's twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three, and they arrest her after a friend of
Speaker 4: hers collapses on a road trip earlier that month, April fourteenth,
Speaker 4: Om was traveling with her friend, a thirty two year
Speaker 4: old businesswoman named Syrpan Quan Wong, and they were west
Speaker 4: of Bangkok. They took part in a pretty common thing,
Speaker 4: a Buddhist protection ritual, which sounds pretty cool. They went
Speaker 4: to a place called Banpong Pier and they were releasing
Speaker 4: fish into the river. And that feels like a wholesome
Speaker 4: hangout time to me. Sure until you see the CCTV
Speaker 4: footage where Am is the last person seeing with Kwang
Speaker 4: Wong before she faints and she dies.
Speaker 3: That's sorry. This was a detail that really stuck out
Speaker 3: to me. I think in the initial reporting that we
Speaker 3: looked at, you know, when this case kind of came
Speaker 3: full circle. Yeah, and she was. She was initially just
Speaker 3: charged with stealing and the death was believed to have
Speaker 3: been of natural causes, but later charges began to really
Speaker 3: pile up, and according to Deputy National Police Commissioner General
Speaker 3: uh Sura, shot big joke, Hawkparn big joke. I don't know, okay,
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe it's cultural difference. This is like a sort
Speaker 3: of a dis nickname. Maybe he just got a good
Speaker 3: sense of humor. But there was a later autopsy that
Speaker 3: then found traces of cyanide in Sirah Porn's system.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the victim's mother is part of the reason. How
Speaker 4: is part of the reason that Am gets caught at all.
Speaker 4: So the mother's name is Thong Piniri and files a
Speaker 4: police report. She says, I don't believe that these are
Speaker 4: natural causes, right, and I demand that there'd be an
Speaker 4: autopsy done because my daughter's money and jewelry have gone missing.
Speaker 4: I suspect murder and I'm pretty sure that AHM did it.
Speaker 4: And if you look at that footage, the CCTV footage,
Speaker 4: which you can find easily on YouTube or wherever you
Speaker 4: look for videos, you see that Coi Cooi is the familiar,
Speaker 4: familiar name people use for kwand Wong. So kwand Wong
Speaker 4: goes to the pier where she's going to release the fish,
Speaker 4: and Om goes apparently to the restroom. When Am comes back,
Speaker 4: she sees her friend has collapsed. She waves bystanders over
Speaker 4: to come help, but then she leaves the scene and
Speaker 4: she takes her friend's cash, her friend's mobile phone, and
Speaker 4: design her handbag.
Speaker 3: It runs away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she doesn't stick around at all to help her
Speaker 2: friend that you know she was on that trip with, right,
Speaker 2: which is very strange, sus Af. Yeah, and it's also
Speaker 2: it's the moment you're talking about there, Ben, where the
Speaker 2: two of them separate and Koy goes down to the water,
Speaker 2: which is where they're headed and what they're going to do.
Speaker 2: And it gets even weirder when you start here where
Speaker 2: this is only one case out of a bunch of
Speaker 2: them we're going to talk about. But there's something similar
Speaker 2: here with like sharing something that is ingestible. It can
Speaker 2: be many one of many things, but sharing something or
Speaker 2: taking something to drink or eat, it's.
Speaker 3: The same kind of red flag that we saw around
Speaker 3: that Australian case that you brought initially, Matt, I believe
Speaker 3: with the mushrooms and the was it like a beef
Speaker 3: Wellington or something like. It was some you know again
Speaker 3: shared food items that and then all of a sudden
Speaker 3: people are falling ill or dying, you know. I mean
Speaker 3: that was obviously one situation, but this is many. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that was what initially caught our attention about
Speaker 3: that story too, or as hmmm, something funny is going
Speaker 3: on here.
Speaker 2: What we're going to find in this is it like
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't even think about possibly giving somebody
Speaker 2: a pill and telling them, hey, this is a vitamin, yeah, supplement.
Speaker 5: Also, yeah, don't take pills from people no, unless it's
Speaker 5: in a package, right, and that is clearly be Hey,
Speaker 5: by the way, folks, we are just because we might
Speaker 5: be paranoid doesn't mean we're wrong. And guys, I did
Speaker 5: buy the three the three pack of fire extinguishers. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: So so the next time we hang out, they should
Speaker 5: be here. And it has nothing to do with anything unless
Speaker 5: you've heard at earlier conversation.
Speaker 4: We had about this. Anyway, Yes, it goes, it goes deeper,
Speaker 4: and I think you're right. No, there are similarities. There
Speaker 4: are similarities that Australian case stood out to me as well.
Speaker 4: The mother has some juice. The mother Cooy's mom has
Speaker 4: some juice. She knows people, know people, so she is
Speaker 4: able to get the case directly to the Deputy Police
Speaker 4: Chief General Surachat Big Joe Kuckball, and she says, look,
Speaker 4: I'm afraid that if this goes to the local Ratchaburi
Speaker 4: police it'll be buried or it'll be ignored because she
Speaker 4: knows this family and she knows that sauraat or AM's
Speaker 4: former husband was at the time the deputy superintendent at
Speaker 4: the local police station. So wheels within wheels, you know,
Speaker 4: and you have to wonder like what kind of vibe
Speaker 4: did the mom get that made her escalate it like this?
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, well I wonder that a lot. I
Speaker 2: think just I think just the fact that this supposed
Speaker 2: friend definitely took money and belongings. Right, And then when
Speaker 2: you hear I don't, I wonder if she had any
Speaker 2: contact with any of the other victims, like families, because
Speaker 2: there is a pattern, and I think if those victims'
Speaker 2: families or relatives were talking amongst themselves, you would start
Speaker 2: to see that pattern emerging.
Speaker 3: That's true pretty quickly too, right. So that's a good point.
Speaker 4: So a when question denies any involvement in the theft,
Speaker 4: like you said, Nol, she's originally arrested for stealing, which
Speaker 4: is not a hard thing to apprehend her for because
Speaker 4: she does rut off with these belongings.
Speaker 3: It's on video. It's not a deep fake. It happened.
Speaker 4: But then, like you said, Matt, investigators start putting together
Speaker 4: pieces of a puzzle, a puzzle that seems to only
Speaker 4: grow larger and more disturbing with each new discovery. Here's one,
Speaker 4: they fight a bottle of side Eyed at ALM's house
Speaker 4: during her arrest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the bit of a red flag not really a
Speaker 3: standard household item.
Speaker 4: Don't think it's not a staple spice in the spice rack.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, and the big question that we've had in guys,
Speaker 2: I went ahead and sacrifice to my Google search, say
Speaker 2: where where do I where? How can I procure cyanide?
Speaker 2: How could I make cyanide? You know, like it's over
Speaker 2: for me? But yeah, I'm not actually interested in that.
Speaker 2: If anyone's out to.
Speaker 3: Late, that's exactly what someone would say.
Speaker 2: Dang it, it's funny.
Speaker 4: I put that later some of our notes because I
Speaker 4: was I was having a similar feeling. Is researching some
Speaker 4: of this over the over the past few weeks, and yeah,
Speaker 4: I thought, I was like, damn, look at what Look
Speaker 4: at what I'm doing. I'm doing bought to dollar conversions.
Speaker 4: I'm checking on side eyed regulation and Thailand. I'm checking
Speaker 4: on flights to Thailand. I'm looking up Google maps, you know, and.
Speaker 3: How do I set up a post office box and
Speaker 3: another name? Exactly?
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy though, because it'll it's all controlled by
Speaker 2: an algorithm that just sees those as points on a map.
Speaker 2: And then it's like, oh, I see where this guy's going.
Speaker 4: Our search histories are the digital version of egregious faced at.
Speaker 3: This point, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: But the big question remains, how did how did she
Speaker 2: get a bottle of cyanide?
Speaker 3: Right right?
Speaker 4: What kind of parties does she go to? Well, investigators
Speaker 4: say her, oh, she also claimed later she would go
Speaker 4: on to claim, look, I had nothing to do with
Speaker 4: my friend's death, but she probably took illegal drugs that
Speaker 4: were laced with side eye sort of an accidental fetanyl
Speaker 4: overdose argument totally by the way, Yeah, her. It turns
Speaker 4: out that's sister in law owns a pharmacy also in Ratchaburi,
Speaker 4: where police found what they called a collection of suspicious capsules.
Speaker 3: Wait, so is she implicated in this now too, or
Speaker 3: was it maybe just a case of her not knowing
Speaker 3: and sort of taking advantage of that relationship?
Speaker 4: Open open ended at this point, We're not sure, or
Speaker 4: at least the police have not specifically stated this.
Speaker 3: We that they have been.
Speaker 4: They have been since twenty twenty three doing the thing
Speaker 4: where they're trying to track down all possible sources of
Speaker 4: cyanide in the country, like where you know where you
Speaker 4: could buy where you could buy this stuff or where
Speaker 4: you could make it. You know the number isn't number
Speaker 4: isn't certain yet, and also the number of victims isn't
Speaker 4: certain yet. People like other families are coming forward, and
Speaker 4: it seemed multiple people connected with Ahm at some point
Speaker 4: that also died under eerily similar mysterious circumstances. It went
Speaker 4: from like eight victims to ten victims, then at least twelve,
Speaker 4: the number rows to fourteen, and then fifteen is what
Speaker 4: is in the courts right now. But the number speculated
Speaker 4: unproven has gone to eighteen, possibly twenty to this day,
Speaker 4: no one's sure.
Speaker 2: Well the big deal. It's almost like with Zodiac killer
Speaker 2: some of these other major serial killers, trying to find
Speaker 2: that first victim date, right, and then you start there
Speaker 2: and then you move that number rises as you move
Speaker 2: towards present day. But then if you start to go
Speaker 2: back a little further, you're like, oh, wait a second,
Speaker 2: there actually might be more this time in Riverside or whatever.
Speaker 2: That's just like the way these things go. And I
Speaker 2: wouldn't be surprised if there are twenty people.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, that first date victim is one of
Speaker 4: the big questions, Like it says, it's tough to answer,
Speaker 4: is it twenty fifteen? Like ty authoritieser said, is it
Speaker 4: two thousand and five, because we're going to have to
Speaker 4: discuss a little bit about the science of autopsies and
Speaker 4: the bureaucracy and just the chemical nom the group name cyanide.
Speaker 2: Right, maybe the big question is when what was the
Speaker 2: inciting incident that made that escalation to of the first poisoning,
Speaker 2: Like when what is that thing that pushed her there?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: If she is in fact the serial killer that's killing
Speaker 2: people with cyanide, because I was just trying to I
Speaker 2: was thinking back because she graduated in two thousand and nine, right, right,
Speaker 2: so if it started at college, that would kind of
Speaker 2: match up, right, two thousand and five date.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if the two thousand and five date is is
Speaker 4: our date? You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Anyway, this is fun. Would I would I would
Speaker 2: want to go as deep as possling down as rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: But okay, yes, for sure, and we will go at
Speaker 3: least as far as the information we have currently leads us.
Speaker 3: After a quick word from our sponsor and we have returned.
Speaker 4: Other families are coming forward, other civilians coming forward as
Speaker 4: soon as the news of suspected cyanide poisoning breaks, and
Speaker 4: a lot of these people are saying a lot of
Speaker 4: these people are saying, you know, we have a loved one,
Speaker 4: a family member who died and died the same way,
Speaker 4: and the last person who kicked it with them was
Speaker 4: omb There's another thing we mentioned right before the break
Speaker 4: that I think we also have to point out, which
Speaker 4: is in cases like this or like Zodiac, when things escalate,
Speaker 4: there are also going to be some false positives. Just logically.
Speaker 4: There are people who lost a loved one in a
Speaker 4: way that might seem similar, and they they will rightly ask,
Speaker 4: is my loved one's death part of it? And the
Speaker 4: answer is not always yes. But that's why there's sometimes
Speaker 4: a fog of war and speculation around the numbers. We
Speaker 4: do know, however, that in at least one case, OM
Speaker 4: allegedly tried to kill someone who survived.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's something that you do see from time
Speaker 3: to time and hunts for serial killers. Is the one
Speaker 3: that got away, that makes some report or something that
Speaker 3: tends to trigger things, or maybe isn't even a red
Speaker 3: flag until after the fact, and then it's used as
Speaker 3: a way of kind of backtracking and finding more about
Speaker 3: the person's m O.
Speaker 4: Right right, like the like a serial assaulter or killer
Speaker 4: who inexplicably at some point kidnaps someone and lets them go,
Speaker 4: or chases them but or tries to shoot them but
Speaker 4: doesn't shoot them fatally.
Speaker 3: Well, like at the time, it might not match a pattern,
Speaker 3: so the report might not set off any you know,
Speaker 3: alarm bells. But then after their suspicion and then maybe
Speaker 3: cross reference for that type of report, you know, then
Speaker 3: you see, oh what about this, It's in the right area.
Speaker 3: Let's go talk to that person. I'm not saying that
Speaker 3: happen in this case, but it certainly could have been
Speaker 3: a break.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there definitely is that kind of that break
Speaker 4: in the in the case here when after this initial reporting,
Speaker 4: a thirty six year old woman at the time named
Speaker 4: Katima Passeyard known as Plaw to her friends, she comes
Speaker 4: to the police and she says, I was poisoned in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, but I made it to a hospital where
Speaker 4: doctors resuscitated me. She was at a mall and she
Speaker 4: got a pill offered to her by her friend Om,
Speaker 4: and they parted ways. She felt a tightness in her chest,
Speaker 4: she lost feeling in her hands. She was calling Om.
Speaker 4: The story goes to pick her up, but Om got
Speaker 4: lost and so someone contacted emergency services and they were
Speaker 4: able to keep her alive.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the way I've read the story was that
Speaker 2: she was trying to call an am was kept like
Speaker 2: canceling the phone call basically, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like someone sees there's an incoming call, just hits decline.
Speaker 2: That's what she was saying. Happy, but she got through
Speaker 2: to there's a hotline number sixteen sixty nine there that
Speaker 2: she called and was able to get through, which thank goodness.
Speaker 2: But she at the beginning, she was unsure that it
Speaker 2: was poisoning. She thought, oh, well, something is just wrong
Speaker 2: and I'm having a medical emergency. Sure, and then she
Speaker 2: sees some of the reporting and other events occurring and thinks,
Speaker 2: oh wait a second.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she didn't put it together. She thought she just
Speaker 4: had a close call, you know, and got lucky. She
Speaker 4: also told the police as she is putting these pieces together,
Speaker 4: that she loaned two hundred and fifty thousand bought to earlier.
Speaker 4: Bought is the currency of Thailand, that is right now,
Speaker 4: that's probably it's a little bit north of seven thousand
Speaker 4: dollars US seven forty eight dollars and change. So there
Speaker 4: was a financial incentive, it appeared.
Speaker 2: So we're thinking that it would be a tap. If
Speaker 2: I'm on I'm taking money from someone, I'm barring that money.
Speaker 2: Then I'm killing that person, so I don't owe her anymore, right,
Speaker 2: She's some.
Speaker 3: Seems like a plan that could go awry really quickly.
Speaker 3: I am shocked, frankly that it went on as long
Speaker 3: as it did. Agreed.
Speaker 4: I mean, and let's pause here as as we set
Speaker 4: up previously to talk a little bit about the nature
Speaker 4: of cyanide and have a moment of silence for our
Speaker 4: search histories. Paul, could you hit some sad music.
Speaker 3: There we go, you know the I think this is
Speaker 3: an area where in our initial conversations about this, we
Speaker 3: all had questions about like how cinide acts on the body,
Speaker 3: what kind of traces does it leave behind, how long
Speaker 3: does the stick around in the body? So this is
Speaker 3: I think exciting for all of us to kind of
Speaker 3: get to the bottom of it. I think we're on
Speaker 3: the fly kind of answered some of those questions at
Speaker 3: the time, but this is a much deeper dive here.
Speaker 3: So this is very cool.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not cool, it's well, we're talking about
Speaker 2: sources of cinide poising first, right, so how does it
Speaker 2: actually get in your system? I think we've probably heard
Speaker 2: that cigarettes can often contain cyanide. We've heard that, but
Speaker 2: often I think it's it's like, how much of that
Speaker 2: is the anti smoking I don't I don't want to
Speaker 2: say propaganda, but it's the anti smoking message.
Speaker 3: Right, like saying it contains jet fuel or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, we know there are additives to cigarettes, but
Speaker 2: I think sinide is just one of those, like, oh wow, okay,
Speaker 2: that's scary, but I've heard that.
Speaker 3: We also know there are allowable levels of mercury and
Speaker 3: fish that people can consume.
Speaker 2: So yeah, anyway, yeah, mercury doesn't like kill you.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing, right.
Speaker 4: Like in fiction and in those atrocious spy novels and
Speaker 4: all that stuff, cyanide is often portrayed as this super secret,
Speaker 4: fast acting thing only am I, six no and Nazis
Speaker 4: know about it or whatever. But to your point, Matt,
Speaker 4: it might be surprising for love or fellow conspiracy realists
Speaker 4: to know that you can be exposed to this toxin
Speaker 4: from everyday chemicals and even common food stuff like lima beans, yucca, cassavas, almonds,
Speaker 4: apple seeds, burning plastic spoil from a house fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is that one of those things where you is
Speaker 3: m of beans is one of those things where you
Speaker 3: can cook it down in a certain way and get
Speaker 3: an extract some bad things from it, like the breaking
Speaker 3: bad thing with the whatever the ricin brought to you
Speaker 3: by the Anarchist cookbook.
Speaker 2: I see, Okay, God, I knew about pits right in
Speaker 2: some fruit right specifically cherry, the stones and cherries, and
Speaker 2: how dangerous that's. Yeah, but I've heard that's really dangerous,
Speaker 2: But I never really understood. I guess that you could
Speaker 2: weaponize it in a way. I thought it would just
Speaker 2: be careful with it. Oh man, quick cursory Google. Most
Speaker 2: cooking research related to sinide removal has been conducted on cassava.
Speaker 2: Boiling in water for long periods of time greater than
Speaker 2: thirty minutes in a large excess of water is the
Speaker 2: most effective method for reducing sinide. Eighty percent of the
Speaker 2: original SIGNI.
Speaker 3: Will be removed. So that's extraction in terms of making
Speaker 3: it safe to eat. But I guess what do you
Speaker 3: do with the extract? Man?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: But is that like with all root vegetables where it
Speaker 2: absorbed like they absorb things in the ground or are
Speaker 2: we saying cassava and like yuka, it just has that
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they got that dog in them man. But
Speaker 3: the also, your own dry beans is something you got
Speaker 3: to be a little bit careful about. Like if you're
Speaker 3: not using jarred or whatever canned beans that are pre cooked,
Speaker 3: if you're doing it from the raw beans, soaking them
Speaker 3: and stuff, you do have to be thoughtful about that
Speaker 3: because you can't accidentally not do it right. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And and one common misconception that the fictional stories miss
Speaker 4: is that cyanide in general refers to any chemical that
Speaker 4: contains a carbon nitrogen bond. The issue is that lots
Speaker 4: of stuff contains cyanide, but they're not automatically deadly poisons
Speaker 4: as a results.
Speaker 3: So we're not trying to also be alarmist about beans.
Speaker 3: Just it's just to put that out there. No one
Speaker 3: needs to be scared about eat eating their vegetables, right,
Speaker 3: Oh you should.
Speaker 4: You should follow the directions though, Yeah. Sure, we don't
Speaker 4: take vegetables for strangers. Don't take vegetables or pills from strangers.
Speaker 4: If someone says, hey, you want a pill and you
Speaker 4: say no, and they say, hey, do you want this
Speaker 4: handful of lina beans also say no.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a jack in the beanstock kind of scenario. Exactly,
Speaker 3: it really does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like sodium cyanide, potassium cyanide, hydrogen cyanide, these
Speaker 4: kind of things are they all have that carbon nitrogen bond,
Speaker 4: and those things can be lethal. But there are a
Speaker 4: bunch of other compounds called nitrils. You've probably ingested them.
Speaker 4: That's the stuff in the cassava, the almonds and so on.
Speaker 4: If you do have a case of sinaide poisoning and
Speaker 4: acute sinai poisoning, it does kill people quickly.
Speaker 3: It works.
Speaker 4: It doesn't like two to five minutes and then they're
Speaker 4: dead heart failure. But it's not a silent killer. That's
Speaker 4: that's why it's it's weird for it to be so
Speaker 4: commonplace in espionage fiction because if you are a medical professional,
Speaker 4: you know what you're looking for. It is pretty much
Speaker 4: impossible to hide sinai poisoning in a legal dose. That
Speaker 4: stuff is readily apparent in a corpse for several months
Speaker 4: after death.
Speaker 2: That's what you mean by silent Caroll like you undetectable?
Speaker 2: I guess right, Okay, Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's also a very painful death, right, I mean,
Speaker 4: so it's an effective poison if you want someone out
Speaker 4: of the picture, but it's not something you would realistically
Speaker 4: use if you want to avoid getting caught. So it's
Speaker 4: kind of amateur hour to use it.
Speaker 2: Well, unless it's in your fake tooth, right and you're
Speaker 2: getting tortured or you're.
Speaker 4: Killing yourself, right, Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly, which also I
Speaker 4: don't know. Apparently it's something that chemists have used historically
Speaker 4: when they commit suicide. But the reason they do it
Speaker 4: is not because it's painless. It's because it's one of
Speaker 4: the most certain ways to do it, like to end
Speaker 4: your life. It's just an ugly thing to think about.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, Well I feel better, Yeah, so fun at parties.
Speaker 4: Okay, let's get back to the investigation though. So that's
Speaker 4: a little bit of cyanide science, right, that's a little
Speaker 4: bit why this is unusual. One of the first questions
Speaker 4: we could all have is, Okay, so guys, you're saying
Speaker 4: this kind of poisoning is readily apparent in an autopsy
Speaker 4: of people know what they're looking for. So how did
Speaker 4: someone do this for so long?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Or with so many people we'll get to that towards
Speaker 4: the end, but right now, maybe we talk a little
Speaker 4: bit about about the the unfolding of the investigation. Authorities said, hey,
Speaker 4: owed a lot of these victims' money, she also had
Speaker 4: started businesses with them or kind of lows.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's is interesting because it's not like you would
Speaker 3: necessarily turn that up from say a credit check or
Speaker 3: something like so to oh individuals, multiple individuals money. To
Speaker 3: find that out takes a little detective work, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's you got to give props there for
Speaker 3: them to figuring out that that particular pattern because it
Speaker 3: is in a way kind of smart because it's not
Speaker 3: something that there's just like a uniform record of necessarily.
Speaker 3: Some of the business is sure, but you know, in general,
Speaker 3: just like taking out a loan from an individual, she
Speaker 3: must have ingratiated herself to a lot of these people
Speaker 3: to even be in a position where they would have
Speaker 3: done that for her. You know, it's very interesting the manipulation.
Speaker 3: The levels of manipulation really start to kind of you know,
Speaker 3: show through here. I think public relations degree. Right, Oh yes, you're.
Speaker 2: Right, Ben, tell me correct me if I'm wrong here.
Speaker 2: I had read that there are even instances where it
Speaker 2: wasn't like a formal loaning of money to on but
Speaker 2: just meeting with somebody that I guess she assumed is
Speaker 2: going to have a lot of money on them and
Speaker 2: then taking them or attempting to take them out, or
Speaker 2: allegedly attempting to poison them, like at a restaurant or
Speaker 2: at an outing kind of like she did when they
Speaker 2: were feeding the fish, things like that, Like did you
Speaker 2: find that too or was it all like loans?
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of thanks to the National out of
Speaker 4: Thailand for some great, great reporting on this, and of
Speaker 4: course the public statements of Big Joke, and we have
Speaker 4: a bit of an epilogue about Big Joke at the
Speaker 4: end of this. But yeah, you're on the money there,
Speaker 4: because she would target people, according to prosecutors hashtag allegedly
Speaker 4: allegedly allegedly, she would befriend people she perceived as wealthy,
Speaker 4: earn their trust, and then say, you know, like, hey,
Speaker 4: we should hang out more often, classic manipulation moves, and
Speaker 4: then get them to consume food, drinks, or herbs, and
Speaker 4: then search them for money or to deprive them of possessions.
Speaker 4: And then it goes to the idea of accomplices, because
Speaker 4: if you are, if you are moving hard cash below
Speaker 4: a certain amount, not that difficult to move. Possessions, especially
Speaker 4: bespoke things or relatively rare things like very high end
Speaker 4: designer autrement, that's a little bit tougher, right if you're
Speaker 4: if they're only x amount of you know, just for example,
Speaker 4: they're only x amount of uh Erme's bags in this town, right,
Speaker 4: then the people have those bags know who else has
Speaker 4: the bags, so it's all harder to sell it.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about one specific case that happen in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen without chivid too far ahead?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So there's this one case where OM well, a
Speaker 2: person died who was close to AM, and then OMS
Speaker 2: seemed to swoop in to try and take over the
Speaker 2: finances of this person that died sketch Monta tepe Cowen
Speaker 2: or something like that. This person who was who had
Speaker 2: left Thailand for quite a while, like I think, got
Speaker 2: married somewhere and then came back and when she arrived
Speaker 2: back died very soon after, and saraat Om jumped in
Speaker 2: to like handle all the post death finances for this person,
Speaker 2: which is really weird.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me handle this in your time of grieving,
Speaker 4: and unfortunately con artists do that all the world round.
Speaker 4: You know, you find somebody at the worst moment in
Speaker 4: their life, having lost a loved one, You're a rock
Speaker 4: for them to lean on, your purported safe space, and
Speaker 4: dangerous things can happen there if people have ill intent.
Speaker 3: We know that.
Speaker 4: A week after that initial arrest, when all this stuff
Speaker 4: has started to come together, the authorities also arrest Ahm's
Speaker 4: ex husband, the senior police official, and he gets charged.
Speaker 4: This is okay, this is still confusing to me. He
Speaker 4: gets charged with fraud and embezzlement, both related to and
Speaker 4: not related to the deaths.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but because I think there's more going on there,
Speaker 2: And again why I brought up the common law husband
Speaker 2: that she had. And then also do we mention that
Speaker 2: she was four months pregnant when she was picked up
Speaker 2: when she was arrested.
Speaker 4: We haven't, We haven't she and it is and I'm
Speaker 4: glad you brought that up because that is crucial to
Speaker 4: other events in the story. She was it's the term
Speaker 4: of her pregnancy gets reported at different months to pay
Speaker 4: on where you look. But she was definitely She's definitely
Speaker 4: pregnant at the time of Houoy's death.
Speaker 2: Well, and so it just for me, it brings up
Speaker 2: this issue of interpersonal pressures. So if you think about
Speaker 2: on pressuring potential victims, alleged victims to you know, do
Speaker 2: what she wants to end up getting things from them
Speaker 2: for her, I wonder if she has or has had
Speaker 2: people in her life that are pressuring her to do
Speaker 2: things right as well, because often it's not just a
Speaker 2: lone wolf actor doing something like this, right, So I
Speaker 2: don't know, I wonder, like, whose father who fathered that child?
Speaker 2: Is it the ex is it the common law? Is
Speaker 2: it somebody else? And what are those relationships like, right?
Speaker 3: And did she have accomplices? Spoiler?
Speaker 4: The Thai courts concluded, yes she does or the type
Speaker 4: police did.
Speaker 3: We already kind of red flagged her sister in law
Speaker 3: a little bit with that, you know, pharmacy. Yeah, well
Speaker 3: the pharmacy suspicious capsules or whatever. And so police say
Speaker 3: that this gentleman who's now I'm not going to try
Speaker 3: to pronounce because you've already done such a great job,
Speaker 3: turned himself into police after authorities issued a warrant. He's
Speaker 3: just like here I am. The couple though they were
Speaker 3: divorced were actually still living together, and police said that
Speaker 3: mister rangsa utha porn it's not too bad, was most
Speaker 3: likely involved in the alleged murder of an ex boyfriend
Speaker 3: by the name of Suthi Sak Pun Kwan, Yes, and
Speaker 3: that he also helped destroy evidence of Kwan Wang's murder. Dude,
Speaker 3: that's quite yea quite yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we didn't even really talk about that that
Speaker 2: this is the common law husband, the pun Quan. This
Speaker 2: suitisak that you just said. So this person died March twelfth,
Speaker 2: I think, twenty twenty three. But this person was potentially
Speaker 2: a poisoning victim. Well, at least the reporting that I
Speaker 2: was reading in May of last year, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: they kept saying potentially another one of the victims. I
Speaker 2: think it's I think it's pretty certain at this point
Speaker 2: that this person was a victim. But they're also reporting
Speaker 2: we're talking about the husband, the ex husband now who
Speaker 2: was just arrested. That we mentioned this person I saw
Speaker 2: as a lieutenant colonel. But this is also like the
Speaker 2: what did you call him, ben or his title at
Speaker 2: the police station.
Speaker 4: Oh, I just used a senior police official because he
Speaker 4: had he had he was a high level police officer
Speaker 4: at one point, and it gets a little confusing for
Speaker 4: us because Thai police is the Tai police are a
Speaker 4: little bit more militarized than Yes police.
Speaker 2: That's why I was so confused when I saw lieutenant
Speaker 2: colonel okay, interesting, I wonder what that actually means. And
Speaker 2: then was used in a different like he was given
Speaker 2: a different standing in another piece of reporting I saw,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know, and it didn't say if he
Speaker 2: was still an officer employed at the time when he
Speaker 2: turned himself or if he had like retired.
Speaker 4: No, he was still an officer. He got he got fired.
Speaker 2: Got it?
Speaker 4: He got fired for this or a life He's like
Speaker 4: in very shortcuver of that, you know, because you can't
Speaker 4: have you know. It's like, yes, yes, statistically there are
Speaker 4: more arsenists in the fire department than there are in
Speaker 4: other jobs. But if they find out you're an arsonist,
Speaker 4: then you're out of a job, right, They just can't.
Speaker 2: That's not very nice. Just think about how much they
Speaker 2: love that job.
Speaker 3: Are you looking at? Why are you taking the side
Speaker 3: of the arsonists.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying it, like that's like dream job for.
Speaker 4: Why Another disturbing statistic from a while back when people
Speaker 4: still went to breaking mortar stores, something like twelve percent
Speaker 4: of shoe store employees are working entirely because they have
Speaker 4: a foot fetish.
Speaker 3: Sick jeers speaking of I saw an Instagram video earlier
Speaker 3: today where a fan met Quentin Tarantino on the street
Speaker 3: in la and asked him to sign her foot and
Speaker 3: also to rate her foot. Did he do it? He didn't.
Speaker 3: He refused to rate the foot, but you could tell
Speaker 3: he got a kick out of him. There we go,
Speaker 3: it's worth it.
Speaker 4: So this is going to lead us to other people
Speaker 4: who charged his accomplices. Her lawyer, ALM's lawyer gets accused.
Speaker 4: They say the lawyer knowingly helped destroy or conceal evidence.
Speaker 4: They're saying she couldn't have gotten away with it for
Speaker 4: as long as she did. But they also discovered something
Speaker 4: very important about the motive. And we're going to take
Speaker 4: a quick break for word from our sponsors in return
Speaker 4: will break it down. We're back in May of twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three. Police discover what they believed to be the
Speaker 4: primary motive. We danced around it a little bit earlier.
Speaker 4: Here money again the great reporting that the nation shows
Speaker 4: us that police these stats are astonishing that police discovered
Speaker 4: was in possession of seventy eight million bots. That's almost
Speaker 4: two point two million dollars spread over Get this, one
Speaker 4: hundred and eighty separate bank accounts.
Speaker 2: No, she had a system because think about how many
Speaker 2: times that Maybe maybe they're all set up online, but
Speaker 2: I mean that the passwords.
Speaker 3: Alone, WHOA and Ben. I think you did a great
Speaker 3: job of teasing it and really not quite getting to
Speaker 3: what it was about. We were talking at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the show about the laws in Thailand and about
Speaker 3: the cultural issue with gambling and Thailand, and it was
Speaker 3: apparently a lot of these accounts, or many of them,
Speaker 3: maybe most of them, had been linked to various gambling
Speaker 3: sites and accounts. Do you want to do that?
Speaker 4: That quote from Big Joke. Sorry, we know he has
Speaker 4: a real title, it's just the name.
Speaker 3: It's hard. It's hard to shake a nickname like that.
Speaker 3: That is wild Man before Luke, I just wanted to
Speaker 3: say to ask, is it sick that in my mind?
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, money, that's boring. I want my serial
Speaker 3: killers to only kill for abject pleasure or divine Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm joking, but it is the way we've been conditioned
Speaker 3: to think about serial killers, you know, and this is
Speaker 3: basically an elaborate and deadly grift, you know, series of them.
Speaker 3: If if everything is as it's as it's said here,
Speaker 3: so big joke had this to say. She was gambling
Speaker 3: to the tune of about one million bot per day.
Speaker 3: The investigators also found that these accounts received money that
Speaker 3: had been transferred from directly from some of the victim's accounts.
Speaker 2: Oh what, what's that? Translated to one million bots?
Speaker 3: That's out twenty eight nine dollars A y go. Do
Speaker 3: we know what kind of this matters? Do we know
Speaker 3: what kind of games she was playing?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 3: What? Like?
Speaker 2: As you said, no, I don't know, because you had
Speaker 2: said that there's a lot of very specific guidelines or
Speaker 2: guardrails around gambling, with horse racing being one of the
Speaker 2: only like physical versions.
Speaker 3: I just wonder if there are similarly guardrails around what
Speaker 3: kind of you know, virtual games are allowed to be
Speaker 3: played online.
Speaker 4: Gambling is illegal, but it's just it's impossible to see,
Speaker 4: it's impossible to stop it.
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 2: Do we think she was laundering money for someone? Don't know,
Speaker 2: because if you're spending that much money a day, pushing
Speaker 2: it through various whatever gambling sites, casinos, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: I imagine that you're actually moving that money for somebody.
Speaker 3: It just seems like a risky way to move money. Though,
Speaker 3: if you're because you got to place bets, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, like you can lose it. You would be.
Speaker 2: Well, why would you have one hundred and eighty accounts? Like,
Speaker 2: what is the reason for one hundred and eighty accounts?
Speaker 3: Just maybe just maybe they're under different names to obscure
Speaker 3: how much money you have by spreading it around.
Speaker 4: Maybe there's a limit that one online outlet has allow you.
Speaker 3: To do per day, that's per account. And also, you
Speaker 3: gotta wonder too, it seemed like she was really keen
Speaker 3: on quote unquote taking over people's accounts and finances. You
Speaker 3: gotta wonder if she maybe just did that too with
Speaker 3: someone I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's true, that's possible, right because what they
Speaker 4: they they're not they're saying that the accounts belonged to her,
Speaker 4: But that's not quite the same thing as saying that
Speaker 4: she used her real name on all of these And
Speaker 4: this leads to two other big issues in Thai society.
Speaker 4: This online gambling thing that we've mentioned Uh, it doesn't
Speaker 4: seem to have the same sort of in practice regulation
Speaker 4: they'd be familiar with in other countries. It is apparently
Speaker 4: an open secret that a significant portion of these operations
Speaker 4: are touched by, or indeed run by transnational crime cartels
Speaker 4: like Spector Level stuff, possibly with the assistance from corrupt
Speaker 4: government officials. In twenty twenty two alone, the one we
Speaker 4: have the most recent numbers for fifteen hundred people were
Speaker 4: arrested for some version of fraud and online gambling.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 4: It really makes you think about the you know, the
Speaker 4: folks on this side of the pond who cheat at
Speaker 4: multiplayer games, right, little hacker guys on Call of Duty
Speaker 4: or whatever.
Speaker 3: I can't remember.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, what if one of them is what if
Speaker 4: one of them is working for an international crime ring
Speaker 4: and they're just in the test case where they have
Speaker 4: to try out, try it out and see whether there's
Speaker 4: money to be made cheating a Call of Duty or
Speaker 4: Tech and eight which just came out and slaps and
Speaker 4: it's fun and everyone should play it.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that you're playing Tech and eight for
Speaker 2: a second, Ben, you do not have time to be
Speaker 2: playing Tech and eight.
Speaker 3: Trust Come on, I'll tell you what I got recently,
Speaker 3: just to light in them a little bit. I think
Speaker 3: it's street Fighter five Championship Edition, which gives you all
Speaker 3: of the street Fighter games up to five and has
Speaker 3: like intense online capabilities. Really fun. Those games are so
Speaker 3: fun still and hold up really beautifully to this day.
Speaker 2: Does they have street Fighter Alpha?
Speaker 3: I think it does. Yeah. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 3: got all the ITAs leading up to five if I'm
Speaker 3: not mistaken, but I haven't really exported, but it's pretty
Speaker 3: big package. That's so crazy.
Speaker 4: Why did it take street Fighter ten, like more than
Speaker 4: ten years to learn to count to three?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? It's unfortunate, but.
Speaker 2: Well because they had better words like turbo, you know.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess it's one of those things sort of
Speaker 3: like with Mario Kart eight. You know where we've been
Speaker 3: on Rock and Mario Kart eight for going on a
Speaker 3: decade now, and they just keep kind of upgrading the
Speaker 3: game because they don't need to release another iteration if
Speaker 3: the previous one's still killing it. That was the case
Speaker 3: with street Fighter too. It was just like blockbuster game
Speaker 3: for Capcom, you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, and these blockbuster games, like gaming makes a
Speaker 4: lot of money spoiler. Folks, you can probably tell we're
Speaker 4: gearing up for some episodes on gaming in the future,
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 3: Especially with everything that's going on in China. We got
Speaker 3: a email recently. I listened to mail kind of breaking
Speaker 3: down some of that stuff about the regulations of online
Speaker 3: gaming and how it actually pertains to another cultural seeming
Speaker 3: cultural issue with you know, this kind of stuff. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's hard to say, like we certainly
Speaker 3: have that here too, but I think it's different. I
Speaker 3: think it varies from culture to culture, the relationship with
Speaker 3: gambling and even with just like screens and stuff, you know.
Speaker 4: And then there's also the question of whether prohibition works
Speaker 4: and if so, degree right, the biggest question. Yeah, So
Speaker 4: this in twenty twenty two alone, fifteen hundred people arrested
Speaker 4: for some sort of online gambling thing. Did a little
Speaker 4: bit of digging and found that there's a group called
Speaker 4: International out Laws who are known for their work in
Speaker 4: online gambling in Thailand. Their other work includes human trafficking
Speaker 4: and the drug trade. So this is like when the
Speaker 4: cartels got involved in avocados, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: they count an income stream. And the second thing this
Speaker 4: triggers in Thailand, which is going on today still is
Speaker 4: a national concern among the Taie public. Concern that we
Speaker 4: share here, which is how easy is it to get
Speaker 4: cyanide or make cyanide?
Speaker 3: How easy? Why does it.
Speaker 4: Seem so easy for the average person to use it
Speaker 4: repeatedly in a multi year killing spree? Why didn't the
Speaker 4: coroner catch any of this stuff?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: We don't even know how far back it went, So
Speaker 4: we have some things to return back to at the
Speaker 4: end here. First, the public was also horrified to learn
Speaker 4: that would not receive the death penalty. Thailand does have
Speaker 4: capital punishment, they do have a heart justice system. Again,
Speaker 4: never do drugs in Thailand. We cannot emphasize that enough.
Speaker 4: But the law there does not allow for the death
Speaker 4: penalty in the case of pregnancy.
Speaker 3: In jew I would argue that's humane and appropriate. I
Speaker 3: would also question as to whether she knew that yeah,
Speaker 3: and acted accordingly. Wouldn't you say this is someone who
Speaker 3: lacks remorse if everything is as it's being alleged. This
Speaker 3: is like, you know, for people throw around the black widow.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's sexist. I don't know, It's just a term
Speaker 3: pop culture has sort of you know, thrown around for
Speaker 3: years the idea of someone using poison to kill people
Speaker 3: who are close to them, whether it be a spouse
Speaker 3: or you know, a loved one, or someone who's trust
Speaker 3: they've earned. But it seems to me this is someone
Speaker 3: who absolutely, whether feeding an addiction to gambling or just
Speaker 3: out of callousness and lack of remorse, is is doing
Speaker 3: this to people. You know, This is someone who is
Speaker 3: not not a good person.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's really weird to me that her ex
Speaker 2: husband lived and then her new common law husband died fight, which.
Speaker 3: Maybe he didn't have any money, maybe he wasn't a
Speaker 3: worthwhile target, you know.
Speaker 2: Well, and then she's allegedly still hanging out with her
Speaker 2: ex husband, so I you know, it just the fact
Speaker 2: that he's a police officer, that there was so much
Speaker 2: suspicion that there would be some kind of information leaking
Speaker 2: or you know, something fishy going on, if that local
Speaker 2: police department was involved in her prosecution or arrest and
Speaker 2: all that stuff. It does it just makes me wonder,
Speaker 2: like what was that relationship actually?
Speaker 3: Like I have a hot, wild prediction, y'all. There's going
Speaker 3: to be a movie, probably a few varying degrees of quality.
Speaker 4: It's also surprising, as we were talking about off here,
Speaker 4: it's also surprising just how little exploration this story has gotten,
Speaker 4: considering conservas.
Speaker 3: Of mainstream media.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I had to, like, I had to come of
Speaker 4: people who speak tay, you explain this to me just
Speaker 4: in general.
Speaker 3: When it came up as a strange news it was
Speaker 3: almost like it was mega under the radar feeling, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are stories about American technology malfunctioning that
Speaker 3: gets more press than this, right, and this is a
Speaker 3: huge story in Thailand.
Speaker 4: Of course, we don't have there is more news. In
Speaker 4: June of twenty twenty three, al was sent to the
Speaker 4: Police General Hospital in Bangkok after prison officials failed to
Speaker 4: detect the heartbeat of her child. The child was lost.
Speaker 4: Medical staff performed the abortion, so she is no longer pregnant.
Speaker 3: We don't know. Wait, what does that mean? Does that
Speaker 3: mean there can be a change on your zone?
Speaker 4: No, okay, I mean in the penalty right, unknown and
Speaker 4: social media already in Thailand already had you know, quite
Speaker 4: an adverse reaction to the idea that this person was
Speaker 4: possibly going to escape the death penalty by virtue of
Speaker 4: carrying a child. So it has changed the conversation. We
Speaker 4: don't know the full updates. By the way, the reason
Speaker 4: we kept saying allegedly Alm has not been officially convinced.
Speaker 3: She hasn't been sentenced, right, so then absolutely could change.
Speaker 3: It would change. I would think this would change everything
Speaker 3: in terms of what's on the table. I don't know
Speaker 3: how different the tie legal system is than ours, but
Speaker 3: you'd think there would be similar prosecutor type things seeking
Speaker 3: the death penalty.
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, well, I mean we're talking about when
Speaker 4: the police concluded their investigation. She's going to trial for
Speaker 4: fourteen murders. But as happens often in the cases of
Speaker 4: alleged improven serial killers, those are only the murders they
Speaker 4: feel they can prove in court. That does not mean
Speaker 4: it's the entirety and she is. These murders occurred across
Speaker 4: eight different provinces. This creates a grand total of eighty
Speaker 4: separate charges. That is the highest for a single person
Speaker 4: in the entire history of Thailand.
Speaker 2: Can we talk? Can we just how did that go
Speaker 2: on for so long? Guys?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my question top of mind. I think for
Speaker 3: all of us throughout here.
Speaker 2: How expensive is it and how time consuming is it
Speaker 2: to test for cyanide or poisoning in general. Right when
Speaker 2: you're when you're looking at a victim or someone who
Speaker 2: has died, right and they're going through the system, would
Speaker 2: it be that bad to just let's just test everybody's
Speaker 2: blood a little bit, just to see, just to see, right,
Speaker 2: Because I guess you wouldn't order a toxicology report for everybody,
Speaker 2: for everybody that you come upon, you know, in any
Speaker 2: provincial police department. But my goodness, maybe we just should do.
Speaker 4: That right there are I mean there there should always
Speaker 4: be an autopsy, even when even when the cause of
Speaker 4: death seen is readily apparent. I believe under tie law,
Speaker 4: I was reading about this got my search history, guys,
Speaker 4: rip I was reading about Thie law for autopsies as well,
Speaker 4: right after searching for some specifics about cyanide and autopsies
Speaker 4: are supposed to be the standard operating procedure.
Speaker 2: No matter what.
Speaker 4: Okay, right, But the coroner's office had a lot of
Speaker 4: controversy with this because it goes back to what do
Speaker 4: we mean when we say autopsy? Does that include toxicology?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And then there are cases. The thing that stood out
Speaker 4: is the family relatives can request that an autopsy not
Speaker 4: be done and requests just automatic cremation instead. So some
Speaker 4: of the reason I think the murder count may be
Speaker 4: higher the alleged murder count account is because there were
Speaker 4: several people who apparently died under similar suspicious circumstances, but
Speaker 4: their bodies were cremated in accordance to their religious beliefs.
Speaker 2: I think that goes on the suspicious list. The moment
Speaker 2: a family member says, no autopsy please go yeh, the
Speaker 2: police can.
Speaker 4: Say, the police can say, with all due respect, sorry, man,
Speaker 4: you know you are you just.
Speaker 2: Say okay, and then you go do the autopsy.
Speaker 4: Right, But you know it's it's up to the discretion
Speaker 4: of them. It's like, you know, if you're standing by
Speaker 4: a burned down house with a can full of gas
Speaker 4: and a handful of matches, right.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, you don't need to this is just a
Speaker 2: natural fire. Do you no need to look into this one?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think it was the wiring anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this this leaves us with more questions. One
Speaker 4: of the last updates you can find in the West
Speaker 4: is that and Olm filed a defamation case against a
Speaker 4: guy who is a prominent coordinator for claims of the
Speaker 4: victims kind of an organizer for group statements from them
Speaker 4: or from their families. And that defamation suit. You know,
Speaker 4: Thailand again takes those very seriously, even if you're not
Speaker 4: the king. But that defamation suit was dismissed by the
Speaker 4: courts about four months ago, so things are moving forward.
Speaker 4: There's a huge concern in Thailand overall about autopsy procedures
Speaker 4: and that big question how did one person, a troubled
Speaker 4: civilian with no training, get away with these horrendous acts
Speaker 4: so often for so long? Perhaps most troubling, is it
Speaker 4: possible someone else could be doing the same.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, nothing really indicated this along the way,
Speaker 3: but it does make me wonder if there is an
Speaker 3: inside person with law enforcement, even you know, like someone
Speaker 3: helping cover the trail or whatever. I don't know. It
Speaker 3: just doesn't seem like it makes sense for this to
Speaker 3: be able to have gone on for so long.
Speaker 2: Who was that seventy eight million bought four right? Who
Speaker 2: is it for? Why would she need to go and
Speaker 2: take more victims to get small amounts of cash like
Speaker 2: that because she didn't get huge amounts from every victim.
Speaker 2: What is she using that money to fuel? And who's
Speaker 2: benefiting from it. Besides her, that's the big question.
Speaker 4: I think kind of like the kind of like the
Speaker 4: question about the various strings leading off from the story
Speaker 4: about the two Oklahoma guys who got busted for cannabis tracking.
Speaker 4: And we've received some excellent correspondence about that folks quite recently.
Speaker 4: So thank you for the letters. Keep them coming, give
Speaker 4: us new leads on different episode topics you think your
Speaker 4: fellow conspiracy realist would enjoy. Let us know what you
Speaker 4: think about this case, because again we're being fully transparent.
Speaker 4: We don't have all the answers here. This person has
Speaker 4: not been convicted in court, but there are deeply, profoundly
Speaker 4: disturbing things about this case, even aside from the headlines.
Speaker 4: So tell us where you think these puzzle pieces go.
Speaker 4: We can't wait to hear from you. We try to
Speaker 4: be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: That's right, and we hope that we succeed. And you
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