Gory Killing Of British Husband
A wealthy British farmer was murdered by relatives of his Thai bride, who then helped burn his body on a barbecue, a court was told yesterday.
The remains of Toby Charnaud's body were scattered in a tiger sanctuary in Thailand and only found after his family in Britain put pressure on the Thai authorities to solve his disappearance.
Mr Charnaud had begun a new life in Thailand after meeting his wife-to-be, Pannada, when she worked in a Bangkok bar. But the relationship turned sour and they divorced.
In March last year Mr Charnaud was ambushed when he went to his former wife's new home to pick up their young son after his regular visit to his mother.
The attackers tried to shoot him with a hunting musket, but it backfired so they picked up an iron bar and wooden staves and beat him to death.
Helped by Pannada, they burned his body on a fire, cut up the remains and hid them around the Kaeng Krajan national park on the Thai-Burmese border.
The court heard the couple had split after Pannada amassed gambling debts, and the prosecution suggested that Mr Charnaud, 41, was murdered so she could inherit his fortune through their son.
Mr Charnaud was bought up in Wiltshire, attending Marlborough school and the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester. He was popular and a little eccentric, owning a 1954 Rolls-Royce he called Emma.
As well as working on the family farm in West Kington, near Chippenham, he loved to travel and it was during a trip to south-east Asia that he met and fell in love with Pannada.
The pair married in Thailand. They returned to Wiltshire and for two years worked together on the family's sheep and cereal farm before moving back to Thailand, setting up a successful business in the beach resort of Hua Hin.
Mr Charnaud was a well-known member of the expat community. They had a son, Daniel, who was five at the time of his father's death, but the relationship deteriorated when she began to gamble heavily at cards.
The couple split and Mr Charnaud got custody of Daniel. He paid off Pannada's gambling debts of £6,000 and she received £11,000 as a divorce settlement. She went to live at Kaeng Krajan, a 45-minute drive from Hua Hin.
In March last year Pannada told the police her former husband was missing. She claimed he had not arrived to pick up his son. The Thai authorities investigated but failed to find him.
Suspicious, Mr Charnaud's family in Britain hired a Scottish private investigator based in Thailand to look into the case. He checked mobile phone records and discovered Mr Charnaud had been at his former wife's home on the day he disappeared. Police raided the house and were led to where the remains of the body had been hidden.
At the court hearing in Petchaburi, 100 miles west of Bangkok, Pannada denied murder. She said: "I was at the market and returned home to find my ex-husband's body." She accepted she had helped dispose of the body.
Three of her accomplices, friends and relatives, admitted "murder with provocation", claiming Mr Charnaud interrupted them as they were drinking whisky. Two others deny murder.
Boonchu Yensabai, prosecuting, told the court: "The only motive can be that Pannada expected to inherit everything through their son."
In a letter to the court, Mr Charnaud's mother, Sarah, said: "One of the worst horrors of his death is the fact that the first attempt to kill him failed and he would have been aware of his murderers making their fatal attack.
"Toby was a wonderful father to his son and it is so unfair that a small boy has been deprived of a great father and a father has been deprived of seeing his son grow up.
"We welcomed Toby's ex-wife into our home and family and to repay us by murdering my son is beyond comprehension."
After the hearing Mr Charnaud's sister, Hannah Allan, said he may have predicted his death in a short story he wrote for a Bangkok magazine.
Entitled Rainfall, the story tells of a British man who falls in love with a Thai woman. The man's life falls apart when she builds up gambling debts and he is murdered by the wife's best friend.
Mrs Allan said: "The story is eerie. I am sure he had his suspicions." Mrs Allan claimed Pannada had "lured" Mr Charnaud to his death by telling him his son wanted to be picked up at once.
The case will resume in September.
- Guardian, Thursday September 7 2006
- John Aglionby, south-east Asia correspondent
Source: The Guardian Unlimited Newspaper [London]
