Bloomberg, Suttinee Yuvejwattana and Daniel Ten Kate
March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Thai police said they received a false report that the body of a U.K. tourist murdered with a hammer three days ago was found in the Andaman Sea near an island where he and his wife had stopped during a boating trip.
“We haven’t found the body yet,” Virat Onsong, a district police chief in Satun province, which borders Malaysia about 970 kilometers (603 miles) south of Bangkok, said by telephone today. Hundreds of police, navy and fishing boats are still searching for the remains of Malcolm Robertson, he said.
Earlier today Police Colonel Woradee Karawanan said the remains of Richardson, 64, were found near Koh Dong, an island in Satun province, where the couple had stopped on a trip through Southeast Asia. The report turned out to be incorrect, he said later.
The murder, which occurred as Robertson’s wife Linda was tied up, has attracted attention from the U.K. press. Linda Robertson survived the attack by the three Myanmar workers, who were caught by police and confessed shortly after they fled the couple’s boat in a dinghy with computers and mobile phones.
The three attackers, who were in search of food at the time, were charged with burglary today, Virat said. They can’t be charged with murder unless a body is found, he added.
“It was such a bizarre situation because it was like the three boys were having a picnic,” Linda Robertson told the British Broadcasting Corp. in a video posted on its Web site.
The three suspects in the case were “water jumpers” who quit their jobs on a fishing boat by jumping into the sea and fleeing to the island, Woradee said. They were in search of food when they approached the couple’s yacht, he added.
“They are not pirates, they were starving,” Woradee said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Suttinee Yuvejwattana in Bangkok at suttinee1@bloomberg.net, Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net
Related Article:
Bloodshed on Mr Bean: lifetime trip turned to terror
0 comments:
Post a Comment