US woman insisted on making tea for victims before poisoning them in cyanide murder-suicide plot at Bangkok hotel
18 July 2024, 16:13
The woman who allegedly killed five relatives in a cyanide-induced murder-suicide plot insisted on brewing the poisoned tea for the group, local reports have claimed.
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Sherine Chong, 56, reportedly declined hotel workers' offer to make the group drinks as she waited in the five-star Bangkok hotel room.
Chong, an American-Vietnamese woman, is accused of dosing six cups of tea with the lethal poison, giving the drinks to three men, two women, and one for herself.
Investigators believe the victims had been dead for 24 hours by the time they were discovered at the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel in Bangkok on Tuesday after they failed to check out in time.
Chong is alleged to have convinced a married couple and two other victims to invest large amounts of cash into a failed business plan, before losing more than £215,000.
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Chong reportedly ordered room service and tea to her room as she waited for the others to arrive, the Bangkok Post reported.
Hotel staff offered to make the drinks for her, but Chong refused and insisted on making beverages for her.
Five cups of tea and two thermos flasks were pictured with a teapot in the hotel room as police scouted out the crime scene.
Police found cyanide traces in the cups and flasks, which were just feet away from the dead bodies.
Chong is believed to have taken her own life with the same beverage after allegedly killing the other five.
Post-mortem reports confirmed cyanide was present in the tea and the bodies of the victims.
Chong is believed to have encouraged the victims to the hotel to discuss the debts they were due to settle in court later this month.
She reportedly accrued enormous debts related to an investment she made in a Japanese hospital and subsequently convinced other victims to pour money into the project.
A husband and wife among the dead invested 10 million baht - around £215,000 - according to authorities.
The victims have been named as American citizens, Sherine Chong and Dang Hung Van, 55.The other four were Vietnamese nationals Thi Nguyen Phuong, 46, her husband Hong Pham Thanh, 49, Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan, 47, and Dinh Tran Phu, 37.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Deputy Bangkok police chief Gen Noppassin Poonsawat said the group had checked into the hotel separately over the weekend and were assigned five rooms - four on the seventh floor, and one on the fifth.
They had been scheduled to check out on Monday but failed to do so.
Debt is thought to be the motivator behind the deaths.
Two of the six had loaned "tens of millions Thai baht" to another of the deceased for investment purposes, authorities said.
Ten million baht is worth nearly $280,000 (£215,000).
The waiter recalled that she “spoke very little and was visibly under stress”, authorities said.
The waiter later left the room. The rest of the group then began streaming into the room at various points, between 14:03 and 14:17.
No one else is believed to have entered the room apart from the six.
Police say there were no signs of a struggle, robbery, or forced entry and they later found traces of cyanide in all six tea cups.
Pictures released by the police show plates of untouched food left on a table in the room, some of them still covered in cling wrap.
