The motive of the mass murder of a village headman and his seven household members this week was a conflict over land sales, police chief Chakthip Chaijinda said on Sunday.
At 00.30am on Tuesday, a group of seven armed men dressed in camouflage suits raided the house of Worayut Sanglang, 46, a village chief of Ban Khao Ngam in Ao Luek district, Krabi province.
They allegedly held Worayut and 10 of his family members hostage before their leader killed them execution-style using Worayut’s .38 gun.
Eight died, including Worayut and three girls, and three were injured. A three-month-old baby in the house was spared because he was asleep.
Pol Gen Chakthip said at a briefing in Krabi on Sunday seven suspects were at the scene and a few more were involved but not at the house. All of them were civilians.
“All confessed and some had told their wives. All except the leader felt cheated because they were hired for 1,000 baht a day to collect debts,” he said.
Worayut and the main suspect, referred to at a briefing on Sunday as Bang Fud, were parties to lawsuits involving the sale of a number of plots.
Worayut had allegedly sold a number of plots with redemption rights to Bang Fud, who ran the business of lending money and pledging cars and properties.
When Worayut brought the money to exercise the right to buy back the plots, Bang Fud refused, allegedly because he had sold the plots in the same manner to someone else for loans.
Both had since been locked in a fight both in and out of court and had allegedly exchanged death threats. Bang Fud had made three attempts on Worayut’s life since 2016, the police chief said.
“Bang Fud had planned all this. He staged the scene to lead police to believe that the village headman had financial or personal problems and took his own life and those of his family,” he said.
Police already found Worayut’s three guns and the pistol and BB guns owned by Bang Fud, he added.
“We’re trying to make the case as airtight as possible since we’re after an execution sentence,” he said, adding he prayed they would resist arrest but they did not.
Agreements to sell land with redemption rights, or kai fak, are the kind of contracts allowed by Thai law. Unlike pledging land for loans, which has to go through the process of legal execution before the land can be seized, a seller loses the ownership immediately after the sale takes place but reserves the right to buy back the land over a specified period and at a certain price.
The Justice Ministry this month urged the ban of such contracts after finding they have caused many people to lose farmland and led to numerous legal disputes.