Autopsies completed on 6 Vietnamese poisoned in Bangkok

Chanchai Sittipunt, director of Chulalongkorn Hospital in Bangkok, said Thursday at a press meeting that the hospital is awaiting police approval for the handover.

Cyanide was the likely cause of death of the four Vietnamese citizens and two Vietnamese-Americans, but discussions with all relevant parties, including the police, must be held before the autopsy results are disclosed, Thai PBSWorld quoted him as saying further.

The hospital had released the preliminary autopsy findings on Wednesday.

Head of the forensic medicine department at Chulalongkorn University’s faculty of medicine, Kornkiat Vongpaisarnsin, had said then that cyanide was detected in the bloodstream of all six individuals.

CAT scans had revealed no indications of blunt force trauma, lending support to the theory that poisoning was the cause of death, Khaosod English reported.

The six had been found dead in a locked room at the Grand Hyatt Erawan hotel on Tuesday.

Police identified Vietnamese-American woman Sherine Chong, 56, as the suspected killer, and attributed the deaths to cyanide poisoning. Chong had also killed herself.

The other five were another American Dang Hung Van, 55, and Vietnamese nationals Nguyen Thi Phuong Lan, 47, Pham Hong Thanh, 49, Tran Dinh Phu, 37, and Nguyen Thi Phuong, 46.

The six had had a dispute over debts related to an investment, according to the police, who are still investigating how Chong obtained the cyanide and whether she had accomplices.

General Noppasin Poolsawat, deputy chief of the Bangkok police, told correspondents that the deceased had a dispute over a hospital construction project in Japan.

A Vietnamese couple in the group had given Chong around 10 million baht (US$278,000) to invest in the project. There were delays, leading the couple to suspect Chong of trying to deceive them and filed a lawsuit against her.

According to Khaosod English, Chong often presented herself in Vietnamese business circles as a credible American businesswoman, inviting them to invest with her.

Ten years ago she was reported to the San Francisco City police for fraud related to U.S. citizenship applications, but the case was not prosecuted, it said.