Somkid Phumphuang was convicted of killing five women in five Thai provinces between January and June 2005. The Thai press called him "Jack the Ripper of Thailand", and later "Kid the Ripper". He was tried in five separate cases in the Criminal Court in Bangkok, and every one of them ended in a sentence of life imprisonment. Under Thailand's system of sentence reductions for good conduct, he left prison in May 2019 after serving about 14 years.
In December 2019 a 51-year-old woman, Ratsami Mulichan, was found dead in Kranuan district, Khon Kaen province. He had been living with her for less than two weeks. He was arrested three days later on a train, after two passengers recognized him, and in March 2021 the Khon Kaen Provincial Court sentenced him to death for her murder. His release, and what followed it, set off a national argument about how Thailand reduces sentences and grants early release, and drew an order from the prime minister to overhaul the system.
Somkid was born in Thung Song district of Nakhon Si Thammarat province, in the south of Thailand. When the case returned to the news in December 2019, a Naewna reporter went to the village and spoke to people who had known him as a child. His aunt, then 86, and a cousin described a quiet, polite boy who spoke little and gave short answers, and who was never known to fight or bully other children. A former primary school classmate said the same. At home he went by the nickname Daeng. His father, the cousin said, had died many years earlier.
He left home at about 20, and his family did not know where he went. The cousin said he had not been in touch with them, or visited, for more than 30 years, and that the family learned from the news that he had killed someone. Several reports later described him as a native of Trang, the neighboring southern province; The Thaiger reported in 2019 that his household registration was in Huai Yot district of Trang.
A criminologist at Rangsit University, Kritsanaphong Phutrakun, told the Bangkok Post in December 2019 that Somkid had dropped out of school as a young child and had lived with a violent and abusive stepfather, and that a lack of socialization lay at the root of his behavior. That was the academic's account; the reports from his home village did not mention a stepfather.
Little was reported about how he lived in the years before 2005. The Thaiger reported that he had faced 17 criminal cases in all, and that one was a six-month prison term for giving false testimony in the case of the murder of a former governor of Yasothon province. The Bangkok Post reported that he had used several names, among them Chuchart Charnchai, Chuchart Kingkaew, Wichai Promphan and Suwat Charnnarong. People who dealt with him described him in similar terms. Pairoj Thaiputsa, a police colonel who investigated the first of the 2005 killings, told Thairath in 2019 that Somkid was talkative, polite and well spoken, with a manner that made people like him and believe him. A retired deputy national police chief who had been on the 2005 team, Winai Thongsong, called him "a real smart person" and said he had not been easy to catch.
He had a son. The son told reporters in 2019 that he had seen his father only once, at his birth, and that he had grown up in children's shelters from the age of three.
The five killings for which Somkid was convicted took place between the end of January and the third week of June 2005. The women lived and worked in different provinces, in the northeast, the north and the south. Similarities between the cases led investigators in different provinces to suspect one man.
Warunee Phimphabut was 25. She died in Mueang Mukdahan district of Mukdahan province, in the northeast, on the night of January 30 to 31, 2005. Money worth 50,000 baht was taken. She was the first of the five.
Pongpan Sapchai died in Mueang Lampang district, in northern Thailand, in June 2005; Thai PBS and Matichon dated the killing to June 4. She was strangled, and a mobile phone worth about 5,000 baht was taken.
Patcharee Amatanirand died in Thap Thiang subdistrict of Mueang Trang district, in the south, on the night of June 11, 2005. The courts found that she died of suffocation. Prosecutors said a mobile phone and 2,000 baht in cash had been taken.
Porntawan Pangkhabut was 37. She came from Nong Khai, where her father, then 75, still lived in 2019. She died in Mueang Udon Thani district between June 17 and June 19, 2005, and her phone was taken.
Sompong Phimphonphirom was 25. She died in Chumhet subdistrict of Mueang Buri Ram district, in the lower northeast, on the night of June 20 to 21, 2005. She was strangled, and a gold ring and a necklace worth 12,200 baht were taken. She was the last of the five. Four of the killings came in June.
Reports in 2019 gave the causes of death in the other cases as drowning in the Mukdahan and Udon Thani cases and strangulation in Lampang, Trang and Buri Ram. Police drew different conclusions about motive. In 2019 senior officers described the killings as unplanned and said property had not been the main aim; The Thaiger reported that police had concluded the 2005 crimes were premeditated and committed for money, and had rejected his claim that he acted in sudden anger.
The investigation began with separate provincial inquiries. Pairoj Thaiputsa, then an investigator at the Mueang Mukdahan police station, told Thairath in 2019 that the guest register in the Mukdahan case bore Somkid's name. Police in Lampang shared information about a second case with a similar profile, and a third case followed. The officers suspected one man but could not confirm it until the Udon Thani killing, where clear closed-circuit camera footage linked the cases. At that point, Pairoj said, he was sure the same person was responsible, and the Crime Suppression Division, Thailand's national investigative police unit, took over the inquiry.
In Buri Ram, the provincial investigation team was led in part by Adul Chaiprasitkul, then an investigation inspector and by 2019 a deputy commander of the Buri Ram provincial police. He told Thai PBS that a telephone number found during the inquiry led detectives to the karaoke bar where the young woman worked, and that staff there told them she had left with a man. Because his methods matched the earlier killings, police in several provinces were already looking for Somkid, and the Buri Ram team joined forces with the Crime Suppression Division to track him down.
He was arrested on June 29, 2005, in Chaiyaphum province, according to Thai PBS; Matichon credited the arrest to the Crime Suppression Division. In his statement about the Buri Ram killing, Matichon reported, he said the dispute had been about payment.
Each killing was prosecuted as a separate case in the Criminal Court in Bangkok, under its own case number. The Patcharee Amatanirand case, for example, was filed by public prosecutors on November 2, 2005.
In the Lampang case, the Criminal Court sentenced him to death for the murder of Pongpan Sapchai. On March 2, 2010, the Appeals Court reduced the sentence to life imprisonment.
In the Buri Ram case, the Criminal Court also imposed the death penalty for the premeditated murder and robbery of Sompong Phimphonphirom, then commuted it to life because he had confessed. The Bangkok Post published a file photograph from early 2010 showing him at that sentencing. The Appeals Court upheld the life term in a ruling the Post described as his third appeal; the Post reported in 2019 that the appeal ruling came in August 2012.
In the Mukdahan case, Thai PBS reported that he was first sentenced to death and that the sentence became life after he pleaded guilty. The Appeals Court affirmed life imprisonment for the murder and robbery of Warunee Phimphabut on February 21, 2012.
In the Udon Thani case, the Appeals Court affirmed a life sentence for the killing of Porntawan Pangkhabut on November 25, 2012.
He contested the Trang case. He was charged with premeditated murder and with theft at night. The Criminal Court sentenced him to life for the murder and two years for the theft, which merged into a single life term, and ordered him to pay 700 baht to the victim's heirs. On appeal he argued that the evidence did not prove he was the killer. The Appeals Court, in a ruling read on July 31, 2013, disagreed. It pointed to witnesses who described his appearance and identified him, to a hair and fingerprints of his found in the room, and to a DNA match. It found that he had been in the room when she died and that he was the person who killed her. On the theft count it gave him the benefit of the doubt, because no witness could confirm that she had been carrying the cash. It rejected his plea for a lighter sentence, saying he had shown no fear of the law, had fled and made trouble for the police, and had shown no remorse, denying the charges throughout. The life sentence stood. With that ruling, MGR Online reported, all five cases had been decided. He was 50 years old.
He was held at Bang Khwang Central Prison from 2005, according to Thai PBS, and later asked to be transferred; he served the rest of his time at Nong Khai Provincial Prison in the northeast.
Inside, he was classed as a well-behaved prisoner and over the years reached the "excellent" conduct class. Each step brought sentence reductions. Naras Savestanan, the Director-General of the Department of Corrections, said in December 2019 that the law then in force did not exclude him from those reductions, so they continued until he qualified for release. Khaosod English reported that he had been freed under a royal pardon; it noted that pardons are signed by the king but are largely symbolic, and that the decisions on release are made by prison officials. The Corrections Department called him a "model prisoner".
He walked out of prison in May 2019, after about 14 years. The date is reported two ways: May 17 by the Bangkok Post, Matichon and Thai PBS, citing corrections records and the Director-General, and May 27 by The Nation and The Thaiger. He had no identity card and was not on the population register.
That May, an official at the Nong Khai provincial social development office later said, he came to her office asking for financial help and for bus fare to visit a girlfriend in Khon Kaen. Because he had no identity card, the office could not give him state aid, only money from community donations. The Thairath newspaper reported that he made similar requests at social development offices in six northeastern provinces, and that the Udon Thani office confirmed it.
In June he met a woman, whom the Bangkok Post identified by her first name only. They moved in together in Rayong, on the eastern seaboard, and ran a noodle shop. She did not know he had been convicted of murder; he told her he practiced law.
While he was living with her, Somkid began a relationship with Ratsami Mulichan, 51, who lived in Nong Ko subdistrict of Kranuan district, in Khon Kaen province. They met on Facebook. He told her he was a lawyer who handled cases around the country, and he told the woman in Rayong he would be working away in Khon Kaen. Ratsami was divorced. She told her son, who lived elsewhere, that her new partner was a lawyer, that he planned to move in with her, and that he had offered to buy her a new car. Police later said he persuaded her to pay a down payment on a car. He moved into her house on December 2, 2019. Her son chatted with her on Facebook on Saturday, December 14, and saw nothing that suggested she was in danger.
Ratsami was found dead on December 15, 2019. She had been strangled. Three days earlier, police said, he had taken her motorcycle, telling her he was having it repaired in the city of Khon Kaen; no repairs were made, and he left it at Khon Kaen Hospital. Investigators found his fingerprints and belongings. His own phone had been left behind, so it could not be used to trace him, and police later said he dropped another phone, which belonged to the woman in Rayong, in Khon Kaen to mislead them.
The Khon Kaen Provincial Court issued a warrant for his arrest for premeditated murder on December 15. By the next day his name was public. Matichon reported that the Crime Suppression Division, which had caught him in 2005, sent a tactical unit to Khon Kaen to join the hunt, and that the commander of its Division 3 was put on the case. Police issued his photograph under the heading "Most Wanted" and offered a reward of 50,000 baht. More than 500 officers took part. Exit routes from the country were watched, and immigration officers were told he might try to cross into Laos. Tips came in from Udon Thani, Nong Khai and Roi Et, among them a report that he had been seen dressed as a monk; none of them led to him. Ratsami's sister criticized the justice system for letting him go so easily, and the case set off a wide public argument in Thailand about royal pardons and early release.
After the killing, he later told police, he took a bus into Khon Kaen, collected the motorcycle from the hospital and rode it through Maha Sarakham and Roi Et to Buri Ram, spending nights along the way. Police noted that he knew Buri Ram because one of his earlier victims had lived there. He left the motorcycle at a hospital in Buri Ram and bought a train ticket. On the morning of Wednesday, December 18, he boarded train No. 234, an ordinary service from the northeast to Bangkok, at Buri Ram station, which it left at 6:07. He was heading for Ayutthaya.
At 8:37 a university student and his girlfriend boarded the same train at Khok Kruat station in Nakhon Ratchasima province. They took seats in the second carriage, opposite a man in a jacket, cap and face mask. The young woman noticed a mark above his left eyebrow that matched the photographs police had released, and she asked to move to another carriage. Once there, she told her boyfriend why. He went back to look again, and the man pulled his cap down over his face. The student took photographs and a short video and sent them to the Kranuan police station. The station chief asked him to keep watching the man, to report regularly, and to say at once if he left the train. "That mark over his left eyebrow confirmed to me that the man was Somkid," the student told the Bangkok Post.
The train reached Pak Chong station at about 10:35 to 10:45 a.m. Police boarded and found him asleep alone by a window, the cap on his head, the mask over the lower half of his face, a jacket pulled over him. He did not resist. Officers from Provincial Police Region 3, the Crime Suppression Division and the railway police took part, and the arrest was announced from the regional police offices that afternoon. Major General Puttipong Musikul of the Khon Kaen police told AFP that he had been caught "thanks to information from the public." The couple asked not to be named. The Kranuan police chief gave them 50,000 baht.
He was taken to the Region 3 police offices in Nakhon Ratchasima and questioned through the night. Police said he confirmed that he was the man named in the warrant and admitted the killing. His account was that it had happened in a fit of rage: they had argued after he came home late and failed to pick her up from work, and he had lost his temper. He said he had tried to end the relationship when he could not keep up the car payments.
Police did not accept that. Pol Col Boonlue Phadungthin of the Crime Suppression Division said the evidence pointed to a planned killing, and police cited the motorcycle he had left at the hospital in advance and his escape route. Commanders told reporters that he showed no remorse, and that he had told them he was not afraid of death because a person dies only once. Initial tests found no sign of drug use, and doctors were asked to examine his mental state.
On December 19 he was taken to Kranuan police station in Khon Kaen. He declined, citing his legal rights, to take part in a reenactment at the house, but he agreed to point out the places along his escape route. Hundreds of people gathered outside the station holding signs calling for his execution, and more than 200 officers secured the area. As he was walked to a police van at a bus stop in Nong Ko, a man in the crowd struck him on the head. Ratsami's aunt joined the protest and said the family did not believe the killing was unplanned. The father of Porntawan Pangkhabut, the fourth woman killed in 2005, told Thai Post that he felt relief at the arrest, that he forgave Somkid, and that if he was not executed he should never be released.
On December 20 police took him to the Khon Kaen Provincial Court for the first period of pretrial detention and opposed bail. By then he faced three charges: premeditated murder involving torture or cruel acts, concealing or moving a body, and theft. He admitted causing her death but denied intent and premeditation, and denied the other charges.
His son, then living in Udon Thani, said publicly that he would accept whatever the courts decided, including the death penalty, and that he expected his father would never leave prison again. He said he planned to be ordained for a time as a monk and to dedicate the merit to the six women who had died.
The Khon Kaen Provincial Public Prosecutor brought the case as black case No. 87/2563. At trial he denied the charges and fought the case in full. The court read its judgment in March 2021. MGR Online and one Bangkok Post report gave the date as March 14; Thai PBS and another Bangkok Post report gave March 17.
The court found him guilty of premeditated murder involving torture or cruel acts under section 289(4) and (5) of the Penal Code, of theft under section 334, and of concealing or moving a body before an autopsy to hide the death or its cause, under section 150 bis of the Criminal Procedure Code. It treated them as separate offenses. For the murder it imposed the death penalty. Under the Penal Code's provisions on increased penalties (sections 92 and 93), the theft term of two years was raised to three, and the term for the offense relating to the body, set at 12 months, was raised to 16 months. Death being the maximum penalty, the court did not add the prison terms to it.
It gave its reasons plainly. He had confessed when arrested and in his first police interview, the court said, because the evidence left him little choice, and then denied everything at trial; it saw the early confession as a tactic aimed at a lighter sentence, not as help to the case. The killings were a continuing series of similar acts, and this case brought the number to six. Killing again about six months after leaving prison showed that he did not fear the law and did not regret what he had done. The court described him as a great danger to society and found no reason to reduce the penalty. He was 56. Whether he appealed has not been reported.
The Bangkok Post placed the Khon Kaen killing among the major crimes of its 2019 year in review. On December 17, two days before the arrest, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha ordered the justice minister to overhaul the sentence-reduction system so that no prisoner convicted of serious crimes would again be freed early and go on to kill. "We have to correct what is wrong by working together," he said.
The Director-General of Corrections admitted a lapse in the release process and said his department would add measures to stop early reductions for repeat offenders convicted of serious crimes. "There should be new and tougher regulations to fix this loophole," he told the Bangkok Post. The parole committee began discussing how to weigh the nature of a prisoner's crimes in early-release decisions. AFP reported that the department was urgently reviewing its policies and that Thai prisons were holding about 370,000 inmates, three times their capacity.
The Justice Minister, Somsak Thepsutin, set up a special committee to monitor current and former prisoners convicted of serious crimes, and ordered a probe into whether the Corrections Department had erred in reducing Somkid's sentence. A first survey found about 100 such inmates. He compared the idea to Megan's Law in the United States, said more electronic monitoring devices might be needed, and suggested separating dangerous violent offenders from other prisoners while the rules were reviewed. Winai Thongsong, the former deputy police chief who had helped catch Somkid in 2005, said he "shouldn't be released ever again."
Undated: Born in Thung Song district, Nakhon Si Thammarat province; leaves home at about 20.
January 30 to 31, 2005: Warunee Phimphabut killed in Mukdahan.
June 2005: Pongpan Sapchai killed in Lampang.
June 11, 2005: Patcharee Amatanirand killed in Trang.
June 17 to 19, 2005: Porntawan Pangkhabut killed in Udon Thani.
June 20 to 21, 2005: Sompong Phimphonphirom killed in Buri Ram.
June 29, 2005: Arrested in Chaiyaphum province.
November 2, 2005: Prosecutors file the Trang case in the Criminal Court.
March 2, 2010: Appeals Court reduces the death sentence in the Lampang case to life.
February 21, 2012: Appeals Court affirms life in the Mukdahan case.
August 2012: Appeals Court upholds life in the Buri Ram case.
November 25, 2012: Appeals Court affirms life in the Udon Thani case.
July 31, 2013: Appeals Court upholds life in the Trang case; all five cases decided.
May 2019: Released from Nong Khai Provincial Prison after sentence reductions (May 17 or 27).
December 2, 2019: Moves into Ratsami Mulichan's house in Kranuan district.
December 15, 2019: Ratsami Mulichan found dead; arrest warrant issued.
December 17, 2019: Prime Minister orders a review of sentence reductions.
December 18, 2019: Arrested on a train at Pak Chong station, Nakhon Ratchasima.
December 20, 2019: Brought before the Khon Kaen Provincial Court; bail opposed.
March 2021: Khon Kaen Provincial Court sentences him to death (March 14 or 17).
April 2, 2021: Judgment reported in the Thai press.