Thai Police Arrest Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn After Her Friend Dies of Cyanide Poisoning
Siriporn Khanwong collapsed beside the Mae Klong River on a merit-making trip. Within days police had arrested her friend and were looking at more than a dozen deaths.
Published
Siriporn "Koy" Khanwong, 32, of Kanchanaburi, went with a friend to the Mae Klong River in Ban Pong district of Ratchaburi province on April 14, 2023, to release fish, a Buddhist act of merit-making. She collapsed on the riverbank and died. Cyanide was found in her body. Her mother and elder sister filed a complaint, and 11 days later, on Tuesday, April 25, police arrested the friend, Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, 36, at the government complex on Chaeng Watthana Road in Bangkok on a warrant from the Criminal Court.
She was taken to the Criminal Court the next day to answer a charge of killing Siriporn, and by Thursday, April 27, the case had already grown far beyond one death. "She has been charged with premeditated murder," Deputy National Police Chief Surachate Hakparn told reporters in Bangkok. Police said they had found a substance at her home that they believed to be cyanide, and they suspected she had poisoned her victims' food and drink. She denied all the allegations against her, police said.
The arrest had come over nine alleged murders, according to AFP. By that Thursday, Surachate said, investigators were looking at at least 13 suspicious deaths going back to 2020 across five provinces, most of them west of Bangkok. A 14th person, police said, had survived after vomiting up poisoned food. Police said they believed money was the motive, and that Sararat had previously been diagnosed with psychiatric issues. The Department of Corrections confirmed after health checks in custody that she was four months pregnant.
Her husband was a senior police officer, Pol Lt Col Withoon Rangsiwuthaporn. The two were divorced, the Bangkok Post later reported, but still lived together and were raising two children.
A week later
At a briefing on Wednesday, May 3, Surachate said police now had 15 reported cases linked to Sararat: 14 people who had died and one who had survived. All 15, he said, had been poisoned with cyanide placed in drinking water, food or medicine capsules. "Financial problems were the motive for carrying out the cyanide murders," he said. "Aem was failing financially. She had huge debts from credit cards." The national police chief, Pol Gen Damrongsak Kittiprapas, said no witness had seen her put cyanide in anyone's food or drink, but that investigators had enough circumstantial, witness and forensic evidence to prosecute every case.
By then her former husband had been fired from the force, arrested and charged with receiving stolen property and with jointly forging and using official documents. He had not admitted any role in murder, Surachate said.
The number of cases changed quickly in the first days: nine alleged murders at the arrest, according to AFP; at least 13 deaths under investigation by April 27; and 15 cases, 14 dead and one surviving, by May 3. Reports also described Withoon differently, as her husband in AFP's April 27 report and as her ex-husband in the Bangkok Post, which said the couple had divorced but still lived together. In November 2024 the Criminal Court sentenced Sararat to death for Siriporn's murder, the first verdict in the cases against her.
Sources
- Thai woman charged with cyanide murder as list of victims grows, AFP, via Malay Mail
- All 15 reported victims of 'Aem Cyanide' poisoned, Bangkok Post
Related News
- November 20, 2024: Thai Court Sentences Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn to Death in the First of 14 Cyanide Murder Trials