Thongpin Kiatchanasiri, mother of Siriporn ‘Koy’ Khanwong, holds a picture of her daughter outside the Criminal Court in Bangkok, Thailand, 20 November 2024. EFE-EPA/NARONG SANGNAK
Bangkok, Nov 20 (EFE) – A Thai court on Wednesday sentenced Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, known as Am Cyanide, to death for the premeditated murder of one of the 15 victims she is accused of poisoning, only one of whom survived.
Thongpin Kiatchanasiri, mother of Siriporn ‘Koy’ Khanwong, holds a picture of her daughter while talking to the media outside the Criminal Court in Bangkok, Thailand, 20 November 2024. EFE-EPA/NARONG SANGNAK
According to the verdict, the convicted woman, described by the media as Thailand’s first female serial killer, deliberately poisoned 32-year-old Siriporn Khanwong with cyanide during a trip to the western province of Ratchaburi in April 2023 to attend a religious ceremony, Thai public broadcaster PBS said.
Siriporn collapsed and died by a river where she had gone with Sararat, 37, to release fish back into the wild, a Buddhist practice to generate good karma.
Siriporn’s relatives reported her death to the police, who found cyanide in the victim’s body and began receiving other reports of deaths allegedly linked to Sararat, who maintains her innocence.
This suspicious death was the first clue in the subsequent police investigation of Sararat’s alleged crimes.
Sararat now faces 13 other charges of murder and one of attempted murder.
The alleged murders of friends and acquaintances of the Thai woman, who was arrested when she was four months pregnant but later miscarried, began in 2015.
Police said the motive for the crimes was robbery, as many of the victims had sent the accused five- to six-figure sums of money.
Among the possible victims was her boyfriend, Sutthisak Phoonkhwan, who died in March 2023.
The case has shocked the country and is reminiscent of the murders committed in the 1970s by Frenchman Charles Sobhraj, a serial killer who poisoned some of his victims before killing them in Thailand and other countries.
In the US, Belle Bunness killed 42 people with arsenic between 1900 and 1908, while Amy Archer-Gilligan murdered at least 20 victims with the same poison between 1910 and 1916, making both the modern archetype of serial poisoners. EFE
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