Sukanya Tanyakan, wearing cap, and Supicha Tankyakan, in black, walk to a police station in Nakhon Nayok province Tuesday afternoon.
NAKHON NAYOK — The family of late cadet Pakapong Tanyakan was filing a complaint Tuesday afternoon in the province where he died at an elite military academy.
A day after refusing to meet with military representatives to discuss their son’s death, Pakapong’s parents and sister traveled to Nakhon Nayok province to file a complaint with police there.
They were still meeting with police as of 5.30pm and had not told reporters the details of their complaint.
Already under pressure to remain silent by the military, the family said they wanted to keep the matter private.
“I want to keep information to only among us and police for now,” said Supicha Tanyakan, Pakapong’s sister.
Nakhon Nayok provincial police commander Wattana Yeejeen said Pakapong’s family had asked police to launch a criminal investigation into the events at the military academy that unfolded between Oct. 15 and 17, which they believe caused their son’s death.
“We will gather evidence and witness testimonies,” Maj. Gen. Wattana said Tuesday afternoon. “We will also interrogate doctors who inspected his body and medical experts.”
Wattana declined to say whether the family is convinced that Pakapong has died from abuse.
“I’d let the family talk about it themselves. Our job is to gather evidence,” he said.
Pakapong died in October at 19 from what the military described as “sudden heart failure” one day after returning to the Armed Forces Preparatory School from a break.
Pakapong’s family lashed out during the weekend after an internal army investigation ruled it blameless in Pakapong’s death. Investigators said he died of a heart condition and that abuse – which the family suspected – had not been a factor.
They said a broken rib found in the teen was caused when the cadet fell down eight flights of stairs.
The family first raised its suspicions last month after discovering Pakapong’s body had been returned to them with a number of vital organs missing, including his brain and heart.
The military blocked a civilian investigation and the results of an independent autopsy completed earlier this month were kept secret.
BANGKOK — Despair, grief and thoughts of suicide swept Thailand online Tuesday following the apparent suicide South Korean pop singer Jonghyun in Seoul.
The death of SHINee lead singer Jonghyun met a strong reaction in Thailand where K-pop boy bands are venerated by legions of fans. #RipKimJonghyunwas the top trending Thai tweet Tuesday morning.
“I thought Bangkok and Seoul were far away, but Bangkok and the sky are even farther. Sky, take care of him. He didn’t want to suffer on earth anymore,” tweeted @Chanles4 with a picture of the sky.
Some alarming messages led to worries of copycats.
One Thai Twitter user said her friend, a Jonghyun fan, had killed herself due to the news. The story was widely circulated on social media, especially the popular Drama-Addict Facebook page, but has since been made private and inaccessible. The original author has since acknowledged that the story was not true.
“Please don’t do it. I know you’re sad. I understand because I’m a fan too, but we have to help each other through this,” @W_wa_wan sent wrote to fellow fans. “We can cry together, and some day you’ll only have smiles when you think of your lead [singer].”
Jonghyun was found dead Monday evening in his Seoul apartment. He had lit coal briquettes in the room, a common method of suicide by carbon monoxide. He died at a nearby hospital.
“Were you not listening? Things you can overcome don’t scar you for life… The life of fame was never meant for me,” read a suicide note left at the scene, according to a translation by K-pop news site Koreaboo.
My heart is broken. Please rest well on the other side. Deepest condolences to ur family and you will be forever remebered. ใจหายมากๆ 😭 #RIPKimJongHyun
Jonghyun’s depression prompted Thai fans to open up with their own stories of depression.
“I almost killed myself because of depression. I had many problems at home, I had no friends and nothing to hold me down. I was alone,” Facebooker user Aii Aki wrote in the comments of a Drama-Addict post about Jonghyun. “But when I started liking Korean stars, it gave me the will to live. I had decided to kill myself, but one of my favorite artists kept me living.”
South Korea has one of the highest suicides rates in the world. Former president Roh Moohyun committed suicide in 2009 and Lotte Group vice chairman Lee Inwon killed himself in 2016. Actresses Lee Eunju and Choi Jinsil committed suicide in 2005 and 2008, respectively. Singer U;Nee killed herself in 2007.
Suicide rates are lower in Thailand, which was ranked 46th in per capita suicides of 183 countries by the World Health Organization for 2017. South Korea was No. 10.
Jonghyun rose to fame in 2008 singing for SHINee, a band known for pop earworms such as hits such as “Replay,” “Juliette,” “Ring Ding Dong,” “Lucifer” and “Sherlock.” He also launched a successful solo career in 2015.
A combination of satellite images provided Monday by the Human Rights Watch / Digital Globe show four villages in Maungdaw township, northern Rakhine state, Myanmar, on Nov. 6 (top) and Dec. 2 (bottom), 2017. Photo: Associated Press
BANGKOK — Satellite imagery shows that Rohingya villages in Myanmar continued to be destroyed even as Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement last month to return refugees from the ethnic Muslim minority who had fled their country amid violence, Human Rights Watch said Monday.
The New York-based rights group said buildings were destroyed in 40 villages in northern Rakhine state in October and November, increasing the total to 354 villages that have been partially or completely destroyed since Aug. 25.
More than 630,000 Rohingya have fled from Myanmar into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when Myanmar’s army began what it called “clearance operations” following an attack on police posts by a group of Rohingya insurgents. Refugees arriving in Bangladesh said their homes were set on fire by soldiers and Buddhist mobs, and some reported being shot at by security forces.
In late November, Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement covering the return of Rohingya who fled across their mutual border to escape the violence in Rakhine.
“Satellite imagery confirms that dozens of buildings were burned the same week” the agreement was signed, Human Right Watch said in a statement.
“The Burmese army’s destruction of Rohingya villages within days of signing a refugee repatriation agreement with Bangladesh shows that commitments to safe returns were just a public relations stunt,” said Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch’s Asia director. “The satellite imagery shows what the Burmese army denies: that Rohingya villages continue to be destroyed. Burmese government pledges to ensure the safety of returning Rohingya cannot be taken seriously.”
Myanmar was formerly known as Burma.
Zaw Htay, Myanmar’s government spokesman, said, “I cannot give comment yet because I have not seen the statement on the satellite images yet.”
Sann Win, a border guard police officer in northern Rakhine, said by phone Monday that “there was no burning of any villagers’ homes in October and November.”
In September, Myanmar’s government said more than 6,800 homes had been destroyed in the wave of violence, with all but about 200 of them belonging to Rohingya villagers.
NEW YORK — With glowing reviews from critics and USD$450.8 million (14.8 billion baht) of worldwide box office in the first three days of release of “The Last Jedi,” all would seem to be right in the “Star Wars” universe.
But some audience reaction metrics suggest not all Star Wars fans are so thrilled with Rian Johnson’s eighth episode in the franchise. While “The Last Jedi” sports a sterling 93 percent fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, the website’s users give it only a 56 percent score. A similar dichotomy is also found on the movie review aggregation website Metacritic, where the movie has a score of 86 out of 100 from critics but earned a woeful 4.9 out of 10 from users.
The role reversal between critics and fans has caused consternation throughout the Star Wars galaxy. Could “The Last Jedi” be a critical smash and a dud with audiences? Is “The Last Jedi” more “Attack of the Clones” than “The Empire Strikes Back”? What in the name of midi-chlorians is going on here?
For starters, the responses on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are to be taken with a Death Star-sized grain of salt. They’re supplied by users to the website who can, by creating numerous accounts, vote limitlessly, and need offer no proof of having actually seen the movie. Some believe a nefarious plot is at play, a theory backed up bythe boasts of a few on social media. Similar ploys, after all, were used against the female-led “Ghostbusters.”
But why would anyone want to sabotage “The Last Jedi”? Well, there have been growing signs of rebellion against the galaxy far, far away. Some conservative moviegoers have taken issue with the current trilogy’s embrace of multiculturalism. Claiming an anti-Donald Trump agenda,some called for a boycott of last year’s spinoff “Rogue One.” Writer Chris Weitz noted the Empire “is a white supremacist (human) organization.”
Politics have always played a role in “Star Wars.” George Lucas has said he wrote it as a Nixon-era parable for the Vietnam War, about how democracies turn into dictatorships. But in carrying those themes forward to today, “The Last Jedi” has — like virtually everything else — been fed into America’s combustible politics. Even Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)has volleyed with Texas Senator Ted Cruz on Twitter over net neutrality.
“Similar to other movie sites, we’re currently experiencing a high volume of fan activity around ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi,'” said Rotten Tomaotes spokesman Tiyson Reynolds. “We’re closely monitoring all user review activity to make sure it’s valid.”
But their low ratings don’t jive with other, more scientific data.
Like “The Force Awakens,” ”The Last Jedi” won an A CinemaScore, which polls audiences coming out of theaters. CinemaScore counted feedback as 89 percent positive. ComScore’s PostTrak audience survey recorded an average five-out-five star rating from moviegoers, with 80 percent saying they would definitely recommend the film.
And then there’s the mammoth box office. With $220 million in domestic ticket sales, “The Last Jedi” now ranks as the second highest grossing opening weekend of all time, after J.J. Abrams’ “The Force Awakens.” Disney’s distribution chief Dave Hollis estimates “The Last Jedi” will have legs through the holiday season similar or close to those of “The Force Awakens,” which ultimately grossed more than $2 billion worldwide. “The Last Jedi” is likely to eventually rank among the highest grossing films of all time, but it will depend on strong word-of-mouth and repeat viewings to sniff the realm of “The Force Awakens” or “Titanic.”
Yet regardless of any user scores, “The Last Jedi” has proved to be easily the most divisive “Star Wars” film. (Lucas’ second trilogy was too universally panned to be much argued over.)
Even many fans who generally applauded the film have taken issue with its comic flashes, a Princess Leia moment roundly compared to Mary Poppins, and of the film’s treatment of Hamill’s Skywalker. (Cantankerous and ornery, he spends most of the film on an isolated island.) And by shifting the parameters for how the Force works, some have said “The Last Jedi” is,as Variety claimed,“making stuff up as it goes along.”
For its part, Disney has sensed the tremors of backlash.
“Rian Johnson, the cast, Lucasfilm, they’ve delivered an experience that is totally ‘Star Wars’ but at the same time is filled with things that are unexpected and new,” said Hollis. “And in that unexpected and new, it’s going to have people really talking.”
Even the cast of “The Last Jedi” acknowledged they were surprised by the direction mapped out by Johnson, who wrote and directed. “What Rian came up with, I was stunned,”Hamill told The Associated Press earlier this year. Said Daisy Ridleyof first reading the script: “I was going, ‘Uh, I’m not sure about this. It just took us all a second to be like, ‘OK, this is where the story is heading.”
But Johnson made “The Last Jedi” disruptive by design.
“Having been a Star Wars fan myself for the past 40 years, I know intimately how passionate they are about it and how everyone has stuff they love and hate in every single movie,” said Johnson. “That takes the pressure off a little bit just thinking, ‘Ok, there’s going to be stuff that everyone likes, there’s going to be stuff that people don’t like and it’s going to be a mixture.'”
SEOUL — Fans of K-pop star Jonghyun, the lead singer of SHINee, one of South Korea’s most popular bands, were on Tuesday mourning his apparent suicide at the age of 28.
Jonghyun, whose real name was Kim Jong Hyun, was found unconscious in a studio apartment in southern Seoul late Monday, South Korean media reported.
He was taken to a nearby hospital suffering from cardiac arrest but was later pronounced dead, the news agency Yonhap reported.
His sister had called emergency services after receiving a text message that indicated he was about to commit suicide including one which read, “Please let me go. Tell me I did well.”
He had reportedly been depressed and his final Instagram post on November 20 read “I pray for you not to be hurt.”
His fans posted messages of grief on his account after the news of his death broke.
“Your fans will never forget you. So talented, so kind, so handsome, so amazing, and so much more. Your music and SHINee’s will always be here,” wrote one.
Jonghyun first shot to fame in 2008 as SHINee’s lead singer, but he had since also found success as a solo singer and songwriter.
Myanmar Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, center, attends a meeting with foreign ministers from Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) last year at a hotel in Yangon, Myanmar. Photo: Associated Press
BANGKOK — Myanmar’s presidential spokesman said Monday that the president authorized the arrest last week of two Reuters reporters for allegedly violating the state secrets act.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested Dec. 12 after police accused them of violating the Official Secret Act, which is punishable by up to 14 years in prison, for acquiring “important secret papers” from two policemen. The police officers had worked in Rakhine state, where abuses widely blamed on the military have driven more than 630,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.
“President Htin Kyaw authorized the arrest of the Reuters reporters and the case will be carried out according to the law,” said presidential spokesman Zaw Htay.
Htin Kyaw was hand-picked as president by Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, his former classmate and close ally. Suu Kyi is constitutionally barred from becoming the president.
International and local concerns have arisen over Myanmar’s press freedom under Suu Kyi. Rights groups say her government is following in the steps of the previous military government in oppressing the country’s media.
“It’s turning out that this civilian government doesn’t have views that are terribly different from the previous military government when it comes to freedom of the press,” said Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director. “But evidently all they care about is power and their controlling of the narrative.”
Myanmar press groups say the two journalists’ whereabouts have been unknown since their arrest and the reporters’ family members have not been able to see them. Local journalists in Myanmar said Monday that they have begun wearing black T-shirts and armed bands to demonstrate against the government’s prosecution of journalists.
“We are walking in the dark age of media freedom and we are conducting a “black campaign” to point out to the government that they are oppressing the media unfairly,” said Tharlun Zaung Htet, a member of the Protection for Journalists Committee, Myanmar.
Claudette Lum lifts a Marquesan Drum tiki mug in the lounge at Trader Vic's, Dec. 2 in Emeryville, California. Photo: Eric Risberg / Associated Press
EMERYVILLE, California — She’s worn a gardenia in her hair every day since she started working in 1960 at Trader Vic’s, the legendary home of mai tai cocktails.
But now Claudette Lum is about to preside over her final seating as a maitre d’ at the tiki-themed restaurant. She’s retiring at the end of this year at age 80.
She never imagined she’d stay this long when she was hired 57 years ago by Trader Vic’s founder, the late Victor Bergeron.
“I just kept going,” Lum said. “Making people happy means so much to me, and I’ve known five generations of families. I feel like all the customers are like my family.”
Trader Vic’s has grown from a bar in Oakland in the 1930s to a 21st century chain with nearly two dozen outposts in London, Tokyo, Munich, Bangkok, the Middle East and elsewhere. Lum worked at the restaurant’s San Francisco location at Cosmo Place, which was its flagship for decades, before moving to its Emeryville restaurant 10 miles away, now its main U.S. location.
A 5-foot-2-inch powerhouse who always sports that trademark gardenia in her hair, Lum was instrumental in defining the Polynesian hospitality for which Trader Vic’s became known.
“Claudette is Trader Vic’s. She really embodies the true aloha hospitality,” said Cathy Bayer, a customer who’s known Lum since 1972. Lum personally welcomes “every single person, whether you are a queen or a Jane Doe.”
In fact, welcoming a queen is one of Lum’s most memorable moments. In 1983, she was summoned to work on her day off when Queen Elizabeth II and Nancy Reagan came in on short notice for dinner in the Lord Trafalgar Room. She had a quick practice session curtsying in front a mirror before getting to work.
Other celebrities welcomed by Lum included Debbie Reynolds, Michael Douglas, Richard Burton and Marlon Brando. She recalled that tennis great John McEnroe and baseball legend Pete Rose refused to wear ties in the days when the restaurant required it. And she remembered a close encounter with the Bee Gees – close because Lum, not recognizing them, turned them away at closing time.
Lum calls her retirement bittersweet. “I love the customers, and they love me, and that’s what I’m going to miss the most,” said Lum. A mother of four and grandmother of eight, she plans to continue cycling 40 miles a week and spend more time with her partner, who was a chef with Trader Vic’s for 46 years.
Peter Seely, CEO and president of Trader Vic’s and grandson of founder Bergeron, said, “Claudette isn’t employed. She’s a member of our family who happens to work in the restaurant. There are four generations of us that all love and adore her. Trader Vic’s won’t be the same for us once she leaves.”
Longtime customer John Huffman of Seattle called her “the epitome of style and grace in the era of fine dining.”
Several customers have asked if they’ll see her again.
“You’ll probably see me walking around with a mai tai,” she says, “and now I will be able to sit down and talk to you.”
Cars from an Amtrak train lay spilled onto Interstate 5 below alongside smashed vehicles as some train cars remain on the tracks above Monday, Dec. 18, 2017, in DuPont, Wash. The Amtrak train making the first-ever run along a faster new route hurtled off the overpass Monday near Tacoma and spilled some of its cars onto the highway below, killing some people, authorities said. Seventy-eight passengers and five crew members were aboard when the train moving at more than 80 mph derailed about 40 miles south of Seattle before 8 a.m., Amtrak said. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
DUPONT, Wash. — An Amtrak train making the first-ever run along a faster new route hurtled off an overpass south of Seattle on Monday and spilled some of its cars onto the highway below, killing at least three people, injuring more than 100 and crushing two vehicles, authorities said.
Attention quickly turned to the train’s speed. A website that maps location and speed using data from Amtrak’s train tracker app showed the train was going 81.1 mph (129 kph) about a quarter of a mile from the point where it derailed, where the speed limit is significantly lower.
Seventy-seven passengers and seven crew members were aboard when the train derailed and pulled 13 cars off the tracks. Authorities said there were three confirmed deaths and more than a dozen people with critical or serious injuries.
About two hours after the accident, a U.S. official who with others was briefed on the investigation said he was told at least six people were killed. No additional briefings were provided by late afternoon, and the official said he had no new information to explain the discrepancy in the numbers.
The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
A track chart prepared by the Washington State Department of Transportation shows the maximum speed drops from 79 mph (127 kph) to 30 mph (48 kph) for passenger trains just before the tracks curve to cross Interstate 5, which is where the train went off the tracks.
The chart, dated Feb. 7, 2017, was submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration in anticipation of the start of passenger service along a new bypass route that shaves 10 minutes off the trip between Seattle and Portland.
It was not clear how fast the train was moving at the precise moment when it derailed.
Cars from an Amtrak train that derailed above lie spilled onto Interstate 5, Monday, Dec. 18, 2017, in DuPont, Wash. The Amtrak train making the first-ever run along a faster new route hurtled off the overpass Monday near Tacoma and spilled some of its cars onto the highway below, killing several people, authorities said. (Bettina Hansen/The Seattle Times via AP)
Kimberly Reason with Sound Transit, the Seattle-area transit agency that owns the tracks, confirmed to the AP that the speed limit at the point where the train derailed is 30 mph (48 kph). Speed signs are posted two miles before the speed zone and just before the speed zone approaching the curve, she said.
Positive train control — the technology that can slow or stop a speeding train — wasn’t in use on this stretch of track, according to Amtrak President Richard Anderson.
He spoke on a conference call with reporters, said he was “deeply saddened by all that has happened today.”
In a radio transmission immediately after the accident, the conductor can be heard saying the train was coming around a corner and was crossing a bridge that passed over Interstate 5 when it derailed. Dispatch audio also indicated that the engineer survived with bleeding from the head and both eyes swollen shut.
“I’m still figuring that out. We’ve got cars everywhere and down onto the highway,” he tells the dispatcher, who asks if everyone is OK.
Aleksander Kristiansen, a 24-year-old exchange student at the University of Washington from Copenhagen, was going to Portland to visit the city for the day.
“I was just coming out of the bathroom when the accident happened. My car just started shaking really, really badly. Things were falling off the shelf. Right away, you knew that this was not something minor,” he said.
The back of his train car was wide open because it had separated from the rest of the train, so he and others were able to jump out to safety. He was at about the middle of the train, either the sixth or seventh car, he said, and was “one of the lucky ones.”
Emma Schafer was headed home to Vancouver, Washington, on winter break from the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and was napping when the crash occurred.
She awoke to find her body at a 45-degree angle and her train car dangling from the overpass. Someone behind her was pinned by the legs, she said, and she and others who could walk exited the train by crawling onto a car underneath theirs that had been crushed.
“It felt oddly silent after the actual crashing. There was a lot of metal, a lot of screeching, a lot of being thrown around. It was very quiet. Then there was people screaming,” Schafer said.
“I don’t know if I actually heard the sirens, but they were there. A guy was like, ‘Hey, I’m Robert. We’ll get you out of here.'”
Dr. Nathan Selden, a neurosurgeon at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, said he and his son drove through the accident scene while traveling north to visit Seattle. The doctor asked if he could help and was ushered to a medical triage tent in the highway median.
The most seriously injured had already been whisked away, but the patients he helped appeared to have open head wounds and skull, pelvic or leg fractures, as well as small cuts and neck sprains, he said.
He called it a miracle that an infant child he saw from the scene appeared completely unharmed.
President Donald Trump used the deadly derailment to call for more infrastructure spending in a tweet sent about three hours after the accident. He said the wreck shows “more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly.” The accident happened on a newly completed bypass.
The train was making the inaugural run on the new route as part of a $180.7 million project designed to speed up service by removing passenger trains from a route along Puget Sound that’s bogged down by curves, single-track tunnels and freight traffic.
The Amtrak Cascades service that runs from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Eugene, Oregon, is jointly owned by the Washington and Oregon transportation departments. Amtrak operates the service for the two states as a contractor and is responsible for day-to-day operations.
The Amtrak schedule called for the train to leave Seattle around 6 a.m. and arrive in Portland about 3 1/2 hours later.
The new bypass was built on an existing inland rail line that runs along Interstate 5 from Tacoma to DuPont, near where Train 501 derailed. Track testing began in January and February in advance of Monday’s launch and continued through at least July, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.
The tracks, known as the Point Defiance Bypass, were previously owned by BNSF and were used for occasional freight and military transport.
The mayor of Lakewood, Washington, a city along the new route, predicted a deadly crash — but one involving a fast-moving train hitting a car or pedestrian at a grade-crossing, not a train tumbling off an overpass. At a recent public meeting, he called on state planners to build overpass-like rail structures instead of having trains cross busy streets.
Eric Corp, a councilman for the small city of DuPont near the derailment, said he rode the train with about 30 or so dignitaries and others on a special trip Friday before the service opened to the public Monday.
“Once we were coming up on that curve, the train slowed down considerably,” he said, adding that “in no way did it make me feel like we were going too fast.”
National Transportation Safety Board investigators were at the scene.
All southbound lanes of I-5 were closed south of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and motorists were being warned to avoid the area.
Story: Rachel La Corte, Gillian Flaccus and Michael Sisak
Herbert La Fon, 63 of the United States, is led from an interrogation session on Sept. 30 in Bangkok.
BANGKOK — Police said Monday they still don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle to explain why an American calendar publisher wound up in a shophouse ice box after their lead suspect was sentenced to over four decades in prison.
The Phra Khanong District Court on Friday sentenced Herbert La Fon to 43 years in prison and a 300,000 baht fine over a year after a forgery ring raid led to the surprise discovery of the frozen body parts.
“He never confessed to anything really,” Maj. Gen. Somprasong Yenthuam said in an interview. “But he did say that he obtained the freezer himself.”
La Fon was convicted of illegally possessing weapons, attempted murder of a police officer, drug possession, passport forgery and concealing a body.
Of the 43-year sentence handed down by the court, 33 years were for the attempted murder of a tourist police sergeant La Fon shot when the authorities raided his residence on a tip that there was a foreign forgery ring operating there. The officers were attacked by La Fon, who is 64 and has been on the run from the US FBI since 1979.
Co-defendants Aaron Gabel and James Eger were both acquitted of crimes due to insufficient evidence, according to the court verdict.
The body was later found to be that of Charles Edward Ditlefson in the freezer, a Californian known for publishing calendars featuring trains.
No one has been made to answer for his death as neither Gabel, Eger nor La Fon were charged with his murder.
Who killed Ditlefson – and why – remains a mystery as La Fon heads to prison – probably for the rest of his life. From analysis of the slain man’s remains, police believe he could have been killed any time between 2008 and January 2016. A “truth serum” drug was also found in his blood.
On the raid date of Sept. 23, 2016, police found dismembered body parts in four bags in the freezer, dozens of fake passports and drugs including methamphetamine and marijuana.
In court, housemaid La Nanda and her husband Sor Ka Por Myin testified they both saw the freezer at La Fon’s while in his service. Sureeporn Sae-tang, a refrigerator seller at Kluay Naam Thai Karn Chang shop said she remembered that La Fon purchased the freezer in October 2008.
La Fon used the false names Peter Andrew Colter and William Peter Johnson and was on the run from the FBI for nearly four decades.
In court, he claimed to have fought in the Vietnam War.
Pakapong Tanyakan poses for a photo with his mother Sukanya on Aug. 18. Image: Sukanya Tanyakan
BANGKOK — The military said Monday it has invited the family of late cadet Pakapong Tanyakan to discuss the circumstances of his death after its own review found it shared no blame.
Pakapong’s family lashed out after the army’s investigation ruled Friday that Pakapong died of a heart condition and not any mistreatment. After reportedly not inviting the family to its news conference announcing the results, a military representative said he wished they could meet to explain all the facts to them in person.
“If Nong Meay’s family does not have the faith or confidence in the committee’s proceedings, I’d like them to come talk with us about what they don’t have confidence in,” Deputy Chief of Staff Chawarat Marungruang said. “We are willing to explain every point that they have doubt about.”
Pakapong’s parents have declined the invitation so far, Gen. Chawarat said.
On Friday the military announced the results of its investigation into Pakapong’s death and maintained that he died of “sudden heart failure” and not a beating, as his family suspects.
While Pakapong’s family pointed to a broken rib as evidence of possible abuse, the army said the fracture was due to the cadet falling down eight flights of stairs.
His family has not spoken to the media since the investigation results were announced, but his mother Sukanya took to Facebook to describe the inquiry as “shameful.”
She also questioned why the military did not have security camera footage of the alleged fall.
Pakapong’s sister Supicha Tanyakan said prior to Friday’s news conference that she intended to take legal action against the military regardless of how its investigation concluded.
Pakapong died in October from what the military described as “sudden heart failure” one day after returning to the Armed Forces Preparatory School, an elite military academy, from a break.
Suspicions about his death became public in late November after the family took his body away in secret from a cremation ceremony to a private hospital where they discovered some of his internal organs went missing.
Following a public outcry, the military returned the organs to Pakapong’s parents and said they had been kept for medical examination.
