A Thai woman suspected of cyanide poisoning has been charged with 14 murders, police said on Wednesday, in one of the kingdom’s largest suspected serial murder cases.
Sarat Rangsyotapur is said to have cheated hundreds of thousands of baht (thousands of euros) from his victims before poisoning them with cyanide.
She was arrested last week for nine suspicious deaths over several years, but police have quickly expanded their investigation.
Her husband, a senior police officer, is also accused of fraud and embezzlement in connection with the killings, Surachat Hackparn, deputy chief of the National Police, said Wednesday.
Quickly dubbed “Aem cyanide” (Aem being her nickname, editor’s note) by the media, Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn is suspected of having worked the same way on 15 people: She allegedly poisoned them by offering “herbal capsules” containing cyanide. One of them survived.
“She was asking people she knew to lend her money because she had a lot of debt on her credit cards. When these people started wanting their money back, she killed them, and that was her motive,” Surachate Hackparn told reporters. “We are investigating how much money she received from the victims.”
Last week, the policeman said the sums involved in each case amounted to hundreds of thousands of baht.
Both Sarat Rangsyotapur and her husband have denied the charges.
Sarat – who is four months pregnant – is accused of 14 premeditated murders and one attempted murder, but police are investigating two or three other potentially related cases.
The case began when this Thai woman was suspected of killing a friend in Ratchaburi district, west of Bangkok, about two weeks ago.
Local media reported that the friend collapsed on the bank of a river during a Buddhist fish release ceremony.
After interviewing Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, investigators established a connection with other cases of cyanide poisoning in the provinces of Kanchanaburi (west) and Nakhon Pathom, near Bangkok.
Last week, the police expanded the geographic area it is investigating to five provinces, mostly west of Bangkok.
