Two Chinese suspects in the murder case of a Chinese man whose body was found in the Ping River have confessed to killing the man and a woman over online gambling debts.
Fan Gang Gang, 24, and Qin Miao, 31, were taken to a rented house in Pattaya for a crime re-enactment on Thursday.
Pol Maj Gen Damrong Phetphong, deputy chief of the Provincial Police Region 6, said they and two other Chinese were involved in the double murder, but the pair did not go into details what each of them had done.
The suspects alleged they had strangled the Chinese man with a cord and then crammed his body in a suitcase. They also reportedly admitted to having stabbed the young Chinese woman to death at the Pattaya house because she shouted for help while they were strangling the man. The pair insisted their gang did not have conflicts with the woman before, said Pol Maj Gen Damrong.
After the killing, they also put her body in another suitcase and dumped it into the Ping River in Kamphaeng Phet, the same place where they dumped the suitcase containing the man's body.
The body of Wang June, 30, with his arms and legs bound, was found stuffed in a black suitcase floating in the Ping River in Muang district of Kamphaeng Phet on Feb 25. Local residents who discovered the body immediately alerted police.
Kamphaeng Phet police investigators later sought approval from the provincial court to issue warrants for the arrest of Fan Gang Gang, Qin Miao and two other Chinese men for colluding in the murder, illegal detention and concealment of a body.
Fan Gang Gang and Qin Miao were recently caught in Myanmar and handed over to police and immigration officers at the Tak-Myawaddy border crossing on Wednesday. They were flown back to Kamphaeng Phet before being taken to Pattaya where the murder allegedly took place.
Pol Maj Gen Damrong said divers were searching for the body of the Chinese woman whom the suspects claimed to have killed and stuffed in another suitcase.
Police said the suspects and the two victims first met in Bangkok and knew one another through online gambling. They then went to Pattaya and lived separately at a hotel and a rented house.
Before the crime, the four Chinese men allegedly had a problem with Wang June over online gambling debts and plotted to kill him, said the deputy police chief.
The other two suspects — Xiou Xiang Yu, 26, and Hu Zheng Xiong, 23 — were held by Myanmar immigration officers. Thai police will pick them up for a crime re-enactment in Kamphaeng Phet.