Complaints from guests about the eerie sound of babies crying spurred the police investigation that led to the discovery of six dead fetuses in a hotel in Bangkok’s Chinatown.
Police investigated the room booked by suspect Mr. Choe Hok Kuen, a British national of Taiwanese origin, but found no sign of any infants. They did however find a key in his shoulder bag to another room in a nearby hotel.
A search of that room uncovered six fetuses in a suitcase, wrapped in gold leaf and tied with religious treads. The fetuses had been obtained from abortion clinics, put over fire to dehydrate them, embalmed, scribbled with what appears to be ancient Khmer script, and thus turned into kumarn thong (baby charms).
Mr. Choe is the self-professed leading master of witchcraft in East Asia, with his own website that advertises his services of black magic and divination. He also wears amulets of Mae Nak Phra Khanong, a legendary ghost from folklore in which the central character died in labour, and Khun Paen around his neck, according to The Bangkok Post.
Mr. Choe had used fetuses in black magic rituals and admitted that he planned to sell this batch to Chinese businessmen. Perfectly shaped and well-preserved fetuses would fetch the highest prices, he said, and he admitted to previously selling a fetus for THB30 million.
Police said Mr. Choe has travelled to Thailand 16 times since 2007 and he may have bought many more kumarn thong on earlier trips.
The ghoulish discovery may be the first of its kind claims Pol Col Wiwat Kamchamnan, inspector with the Children and Women Protection Sub-division of the Royal Thai Police.
“I believe it’s the world’s first body snatcher bust involving the commercial trade in fetuses,” he said
Mr. Choe was charged with concealing human corpses, punishable by up to a year in jail and a THB2,000 fine. Pol Col Wiwat expanded the investigation and nabbed another Taiwanese man, Kun Ye Chen, 32, who had allegedly supplied the kumarn thong to Mr. Choe.
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