NAKHON RATCHASIMA: Police believe that money was the motive behind the murder of a 62-year-old woman by her granddaughter in Muang district on Sunday.
Pol Lt Gen Thanayut Wutcharasthamrong, commissioner of Provincial Police Region 7, said the 17-year-old girl -- whose name was withheld -- and her boyfriend, Pathiphon Chantharamonthon, 23, admitted to killing Somsri Mamkrathok, 62, and dumping her body in Suphan Buri.
The pair were arrested on Tuesday afternoon in Tak's Mae Sot district.
The girl, who was raised by Somsri, planned the murder when she learned her grandmother had about 100,000 baht in her bank account, investigators said.
The money, they added, was a personal loan that her husband had taken out from the State Railway cooperative and given to Somsri so she could sort out the family's finances.
The girl disappeared immediately after news of the murder broke, but police managed to track her mobile phone and found that she had fled to Mae Sot district in Tak, according to Pol Lt Col Charn Iemwijarn, deputy investigation chief at Suphan Buri's Doembang Nangbuat police station, who is leading the probe.
The girl told investigators during questioning that she quarrelled with her grandmother and admitted to strangling her with a rope.
She then called her boyfriend in Tak for help and promised him 30,000 baht, they said.
Mr Pathiphon drove a pickup truck from Tak to help her dispose of the victim's body, which was put in a bin and dumped by the road along Route 340 between Suphan Buri and Chai Nat. They abandoned the pickup truck further along the road and took a passenger van to Mae Sot.
The pair face charges of conspiracy to murder, premeditated murder, and concealing and/or destroying a corpse.