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Police in the northern Thailand city of Chiang Mai are hunting for an attractive, short-haired woman who allegedly drugged and robbed two foreign tourists, killing one of them.

Chiang Mai’s deputy chief of police, Police Colonel Piyaphan Phattarapongsin, called a meeting of investigators earlier this week.

The corpse of Indian tourist Tharak Bart Hamas, 56, was found lying on a hotel bed in downtown Chiang Mai last Monday, with a cup of coffee close at hand, Thailand’s English-language newspaper The Nation reported.

Hotel staff told police the victim had checked in with “a pretty Thai woman with short hair”.

The second case, the following evening, involved an American tourist, 69, found unconscious in a hotel room in Tambon Chank Phuek in Muang district.

After two days in hospital, the American recounted how he had met a woman in a bar and taken her back to his hotel room. She was “pretty, plump and had short hair”. She ordered a cup of coffee for him – and after drinking it he passed out.

The American said when he came to, USD 5000 in cash, THB 9500 (AUD 400) and his credit card had gone missing. He later discovered his credit card had been used to buy a diamond ring worth about THB 1 million (AUD 42,000).

Piyaphan said police concluded that the same woman had carried out both crimes. There’s good evidence for this – Piyaphan revealed that a credit card stolen from the dead Indian man had been used the previous evening in an attempt to buy the same diamond ring. The card had failed to clear the bank’s approval process.

Anyone sighting a pretty, plump, short-haired woman wearing an expensive diamond ring in the area should report the sighting to police immediately. If she offers you coffee, refuse.

 

MEANWHILE, at about the same time, news arrived that a 19-year-old British female tourist has told police that someone spiked her drink in a bar before she was robbed and raped on a beach. This happened at the other end of Thailand, on the southern Thai isle of Koh Tao, or Turtle Island. The rape is alleged to have occurred on the island’s notorious Sairee Beach.

Sairee Beach was the location in 2014 of the rape and murder of young British tourists Hannah Witheridge, 23, and David Miller, 24. Witheridge was raped and died from severe head wounds and Miller died from drowning and repeated blows to the head, believed to have been inflicted with a farming hoe.

The Samui Times has reported that the latest alleged rape took place in exactly the same place as the earlier double murder.

In the latest case, the victim says she remembers having a drink in the Leo Bar and suddenly becoming very tired. She woke later on the beach to find her shorts and underwear had been removed and she noticed a “smiling” man next to her leaving the scene.

The young woman flew back to Britain last month and delivered to British police a T-shirt she says could contain potentially incriminating DNA.

A number of young tourists have died or disappeared in unexplained and mysterious circumstances on Koh Tao in recent years, sometimes followed by bungled police investigations.

 

According to the Samui Times, the list of people to die while visiting Koh Tao includes Hannah Witheridge and David Miller (both from the UK), Ben Harrington (UK), Nick Pearson (UK), Luke Miller (UK, no relation to David Miller), Christina Annesley (New Zealand-born UK resident), Elise Dallemagne (Belgium), Dimitri Povse (France), Silje Mathisen (Norway), Hans Peter Suter (Swiss) and Bernd Grotsch (German).

Additionally, a 23-year-old Russian tourist, Valentina Novozhenova, disappeared without trace from a hotel on the island in February 2017.

Thailand’s Tourism and Sports Minister Weerasak Kowsurat said earlier this week that more CCTV cameras would be installed on Koh Tao Island to help ensure tourist safety.

Written by Peter Needham