Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

A day or two later, the Post followed up with an even bigger splash that tied in the murder of Vitali Hakim, Charmayne Carrou, and Jennie Bolliver. Grisly photographs made the words almost impossible to read. And quickly a climate of fear fell over the tourist business in Bangkok. Meetings were called at the highest levels of government. Police Chief Lieutenant General Montchai announced that the case was “the most shocking that has ever occurred in Thailand.” He was launching an “immediate investigation.”

  All of this Herman found satisfying, shaded as it was by irony, since the Thai police could have arrested the suspects at any time prior to March, and indeed had them in custody only to let them go. Not until Thailand’s vital tourist economy was threatened by printed accounts of death and torture did the police elect to launch their “immediate investigation.”

  Colonel Sompol Suthimai was on holiday in the northern Thailand city of Chiang Mai when he received a cable from the general. It was a “rocket,” a drop-everything order to return to Bangkok and take over investigation of what was becoming known as the “tourist murders,” or, more luridly, the “bikini killings,” so called because Jennie’s corpse had been discovered wearing a bathing suit. The selection of Sompol Suthimai was fortunate. In a country where corruption begins in the rice paddies and rises to the most exalted suites of government, where one study suggested that between 15 and 20 per cent of Thailand’s entire national budget was drained into sticky hands, Sompol was honest. A good cop, smart, sophisticated, the kind of modern Thai who might have made a good prime minister, Sompol lacked the devious bent required for political advancement in the Orient. Instead he was content to boss Thailand’s Interpol division, an elite group containing the classiest cops on the national force. At forty-five, Sompol looked barely half that, with a sweet, unlined, and boyish face. He was a very appealing man with the kind of eye that veteran cops the world over often develop, rather sad, melancholy, as if the years of witnessing tragedy and the darkest corners of the human condition created a glaze of sorrow. Sompol did not smoke, nor drink, nor had he ever been to a massage parlor even in the line of duty, a feat in Thailand somewhat comparable to an Englishman never setting foot in a pub. He spoke several languages, including good English and French, and had studied in both London and New York, with Scotland Yard and the FBI, specializing in narcotics traffic and international fraud. Had Sompol been present on the day when Charles and Marie-Andrée were hauled into police headquarters for questioning, perhaps they might not have strolled out with the ease of paying a restaurant check and calling a taxi. But fate on that day placed him in an office across the street from the pair that would soon dominate and consume his every waking moment.

  The report that tourists were being murdered in Thailand was not altogether new to Colonel Sompol. His French wife, Nicole, had brought the dark rumor to their dinner table earlier in the year. One of her friends in the international community had asked Nicole to inquire of her husband if it was true that killings were going on, and that the police were hushing them up. “Is this possible?” demanded Nicole.

  Sompol’s reply had been that such was not possible. The police did have limitations and were often inefficient, but he could not conceive of mass murder being concealed in an official closet.

  He began by calling on Herman Knippenberg, who was testy and officious, in no mood to waste further time dealing with a Thai cop. “We made a case,” said Herman, “and we gave it to you people. All you did was arrest them and let them go.” Herman had it on good authority—Belle’s—that a bribe of 300,000 bahts had been paid.

  “I have no faith whatsoever left in the efficiency of the Thailand police,” said Herman bluntly. He rose to dismiss Sompol.

  “Please,” countered the young colonel. His voice was soft. “I can’t say that I believe you, because I’m just beginning my investigation. But I promise you this: you won’t be wasting your time if you tell me the story.”

  “How can I believe that?” snapped Herman. Then he stared at the gentle face of Sompol Suthimai and found trust there. Reluctantly he sighed and agreed to plow the field one more time.

  After a few days of studying Herman’s massive files—they now contained hundreds of pages and were several inches thick—Sompol went to his superior, General Montchai. “It’s bizarre,” he said, in effect, “but I believe this Dutchman. I think we’d better move—and move fast.”

  “What do you need?” asked the general.

  “A task force of eight men,” answered Sompol. The best on the force. He would pick them. No interference from anybody. Carte blanche.

  Montchai agreed. He was under intense pressure from the military men who stood behind the King’s ceremonial throne and ran the booming country. Montchai wanted “Alain Gauthier” and “Monique” and “Ajay” arrested posthaste. If they had fled the country, then he wanted them extradicted back to Bangkok. Thailand has a very convenient means of dealing with major criminals, a clause that allows instant execution, without trial, of those people deemed dangerous to society. They can be stood against a wall and shot.

  The silver Citroën crossed the frontier of India and stopped in Amritsar, principal city of the Punjab and spiritual home for the Sikhs, those men who embody the poster image of India. Their hair, uncut since birth, is stuffed into a turban and thus makes the skull so insulated that, legend dictates, no enemy’s sword can slice into the brain. Amritsar’s streets and bazaars swarm with Sikhs, most on pilgrimage to the Golden Temple, where three centuries earlier a courageous Sikh named Baba Dip led a raiding expedition in an attempt at wresting the holy shrine from Moghul hands. In mid-battle, Baba Dip had the misfortune to encounter a Moghul warrior who decapitated him, but the Sikh, undaunted, placed his severed skull back onto its bleeding neck and fought bravely until the temple was liberated. Today the grisly portrait of Baba Dip, head in hands, hangs everywhere in Amritsar.

  While Charles led the others to view the temple, Marie-Andrée feigned illness and instead found the international telephone office. She placed an urgent call to her sister in Canada, awakening Denise in the middle of a Quebec night. Though her words were guarded, maneuvering around the sword over her head, Marie-Andrée sounded so grave and distraught that Denise immediately knew something was wrong. The connection was poor and the two sisters shouted at one another across the globe. Marie-Andrée kept wanting to know if anyone had been asking questions about her in Canada. Had the Canadian Government been bothering her parents? Was her name in the newspapers? Confused, Denise pleaded for more information. She did not understand what her sister was saying. Then, in mid-question, the line went dead. In Quebec, Denise stared in annoyance at the telephone. In India, Charles lifted his hand from the depress button. He warned her not to try that again. His voice was cold. He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her from the booth.

  In mid-June the gang paused briefly in Delhi, where Mary Ellen Eather made her debut. As police would later charge, the Australian girl was sent forth with newly coiffed hair and seductive clothes to sit in the lobby of the YMCA Hotel, one of the better middle-class inns in the capital. There she encountered three young French tourists. Quickly they fell ill, worsening after taking medication recommended by their new friend. Next came unconsciousness. When they awoke, their salable possessions were gone. Proceeds: a few hundred dollars.

  Surfacing next in Bombay, Charles installed his associates in a cheap hotel while he hit the familiar streets, looking no doubt for a riper plum, one that would bring more substantial nourishment. He had many mouths to feed. At a cafe favored by would-be actors and peripheral people pretending to be in the motion picture business-its counterpart in Hollywood would be Schwab’s Drug Store-Charles examined the customers, idling and waiting to be discovered. His eye fell on an interesting girl. Smoky, dark-haired, she was obviously English, for her cheeks were as soft and as clear as a cream-colored rose. Although her clothes were grimy, Charles thought she might be transformed into a spectacular counterpoint for Mary Ellen, one dark, t
he other light—together an irresistible promise. The new girl’s name was Barbara Smith, barely twenty. And when Charles sat down at her table he immediately discerned that she was a trifle eccentric. When she spoke, her sentences had gaps in them, like clouds crossing the sun and blocking the warmth. But when she kept her mouth shut, Barbara Smith was enchanting. He could use her.

  Coincidentally, Barbara was in the company of a dolt whom Charles knew vaguely, from some long ago moment in India. He was a Belgian named Hugey Courage, a hulking giant well over two meters tall, with cheeks sunken from chewing opium balls, and a face almost handsome save those unfortunate moments when he laughed, for the few teeth he had left were mostly jagged stumps.

  Hugey Courage was a classic character from a Joseph Conrad novel, the European degraded by the East, too mired to pry himself free. Mercenary, construction worker, cook, brawler, petty crook, the Belgian had migrated to India a decade before and married a stout, shrewish Portuguese woman in Goa. Together they ran a beach shack cafe that sold omelets and fiery sausages to the youth who frolicked on the sand, but Hugey relished every opportunity that permitted him escape to Bombay, where his wife’s curses did not assault his ears from dawn to midnight. In Bombay, Hugey occasionally got a walk-on in a film, since his face was Western, albeit ravaged.

  Charles spoke mundanely of this and that, but he was in truth forming a new plan, a drama for his stock company to enact that, if successful, would break box office records. Quickly he recruited both Hugey and Barbara as employees, neither inclined to press for details as to what the job entailed.

  When Charles installed yet another comely young woman in their hotel room, Marie-Andrée watched with silent anguish as the man she loved dressed Barbara Smith with new clothes and arranged her hair and cleaned her face. In a chair sat Mary Ellen Eather, saucy, beautiful, and very very young. Marie-Andrée had almost stopped looking at her own face in the mirror. Each time she did, back came a woman whose hair was shiny with black dye, a shade achieved by the vain and elderly, and a face pinched, like a pouch containing secrets. She was thirty-one and in this competition she probably felt a hundred.

  In Bangkok, Sompol Suthimai assembled his squad and told them that the reputation of the Thai police force was at stake. “We cannot rest until these people are in our custody,” he said. They must answer for the lives destroyed and burned and tossed into ditches. Sompol had personally supervised the identification of Charmayne Carrou by means of dental charts. He had shuddered when the remains were removed from a deep freeze and dropped onto an examining table. “These killings were merciless,” Sompol told his team. “They were the work of a savage. The Dutch people were set afire and burned while they were still breathing. The Turk—the same. The American girl was drowned by forcing her head into the sea and holding it there until her lungs literally burst. We cannot call ourselves a civilized nation when atrocities like this go unpunished.”

  Over the next few weeks, Sompol and his men covered familiar territory, that already developed by Herman and his dogged diplomats. But with the force of police credentials, Sompol was able to build a more thorough indictment. Belle and Raoul told their stories once more, and then again, and the maid and concierge of Kanit House were interviewed. May and Suzy, the two Thai girls romanced by Charles, gave detailed statements. In Australia, Sompol interviewed the Lapthorne couple, whose honeymoon ended in their being drugged and robbed in Hua Hin. When the couple was shown photographs of the suspects—those taken by Belle with her long lens camera—they immediately identified Charles and Marie-Andrée as the charming couple who had used the false names “Mr. and Mrs. Belmont” while dispensing chocolate milk laced with sleeping potion.

  Working around the clock and grabbing brief naps on the floor of Sompol’s office, the investigators poured through hotel registers, airport landing and departure cards, money exchanges, the spoor left behind by tourists in any country. By mid-May, Sompol was able to report to General Montchai: “We have five dead bodies positively identified. We can place each of them in Alain Gauthier’s apartment just before death, and we have personal belongings of the victims that were found in the apartment. We have eyewitness testimony from others in the building, and statements from employees which tell how some of the victims were carried out in a drugged state. One witness can testify the killers returned smelling of gasoline, with mud on their trousers.”

  Interesting and grotesque stones were turned up by Sompol’s digging. “To dispose of the Dutch youngsters, Gauthier rented a car,” said the detective. “He paid for the rental with traveler’s checks stolen from Mr. Bintanja, the victim.” And Gauthier also asked May, the Thai girl who worked in the hotel jewelry shop, to cash traveler’s checks for him. “These were stolen and the signatures a forgery,” remarked Sompol. “When some of them were kicked back by banks as being fraudulent, May was unable to collect from Gauthier … Thus did she fulfill her role. She thought she was his lover. What she was was a dupe.”

  Toward the end of May 1976, arrest warrants were issued by the Thai Government charging “Alain Gauthier,” Marie-Andrée Leclerc, alias “Monique,” and Ajay Chowdhury with (1) conspiring to murder other persons by premeditation, (2) forging and using forged documents, and (3) receiving stolen goods. The warrants were specifically stated to be valid for twenty years. At the same time, Sompol prepared dossiers on the three suspects and cabled Interpol headquarters in Paris, requesting that the news be flashed immediately to police departments throughout the world.

  To INTERPOL PARIS-INPOL 270658

  We wish to inform you that a number of foreign tourists have been murdered in Thailand … by the group of persons named as follows: Mr. Gauthier, Alain—French national, Miss Leclerc, Marie-Andrée Lucie, Canadian national, and Mr. Chowdhury, Ajay, Indian national. Stop. These three persons fled Thailand. Stop. They are being sought by our police authorities for questioning concerning five murder cases. Stop. The victims were drugged and later murdered. Stop. According to the post-mortem report, death for two Dutch victims was caused by being hit over the head with a hard object that caused cerebral hemorrhage. They were then set on fire with gasoline when they were still breathing. Stop. The French girl victim was strangled to death. Stop.

  Alain Gauthier is believed to have many passports belonging to his victims. Stop. Miss Leclerc may have obtained new passport recently in Europe. Stop. Suspects are now believed in France. We have requested Interpol Paris to keep the suspects under close surveillance. Stop. Extradition will be requested.

  As the cables sped to the designated world capitals, Sompol rang up Herman Knippenberg to share the satisfying news. “We’ll get them,” he said. “I want them as bad as you do.” But for now, all Sompol could do was wait. Impatiently he sat in his small office with color portraits of Thailand’s king and queen on the wall beside him, and a painting of two dragons guarding a temple, and, in a corner, the small mountain of paper sacks, cardboard boxes, and junk. A pathetic pile, it was the sum of all the dead, the young people now being mailed home in metal urns.

  The two new young women working for Charles had personalities contradictory to their looks. Mary Ellen, the blond Australian, seemed as vibrant as the sun. But she was more often than not quiet, morose over the breakup of a love affair, shy, sullen. She enjoyed burying herself in philosophy and poetry. Conversely, Barbara Smith, the brunette English girl, would be taken on first glimpse as an introverted, naïve, and dim-witted child. Her reading tastes leaned more to the Sunday matrimonial ads in India’s newspapers, those astonishing and anachronistic listings of men and women who sought specific marriage partners.

  Barbara turned out to be far the more interesting—and troublesome—of the two. She had been born in Pakistan to an English mother who would die soon thereafter and a father who had “something to do with radar.” He was not the kind of man who communicated much about his life, or his feelings, or his work. All Barbara could remember from her early years was being yanked about from place to place,
from country to country, landing in England at age three, and moving continually through small towns south of London. When Barbara reached the teen-age years, her father remarried, to a woman who became The Classic Stepmother. “I hated her, and vice versa,” Barbara would recall. “Our house was constant fighting, continuing anger, endless screaming. It grew so hostile that Daddy put me in a house for wayward girls … a place right out of old Oliver Twist.” Mainly the shelter contained very young children, and the few girls of Barbara’s age were expected to perform hard labor—washing, cleaning, peeling potatoes. At sixteen, Barbara was transferred to an “Assessment Center,” where it was assessed that she was not yet rehabilitated. Another two and a half years were dictated in various institutions. Part-time work allowed her to save up $800 and in June of 1975, Barbara fled England with no purpose in mind other than to search and to wander. She took the ferry to France, and there met a boy named Clifford. They decided to go wherever the winds blew. Here and there they worked a little, hitchhiked around Europe, maneuvered through the Middle East, into Afghanistan, and broke up. Clifford experienced some mystical and religious stirrings—he later became a Jesus freak—and the couple parted in Kabul. “We couldn’t identify any longer,” said Barbara.

  She decided to venture into India. Perhaps settle down. Later someone asked why, and she answered, “I just couldn’t see any point of pretending to live in the English society. All it did was punish me. Nobody cared about me. Nobody wanted me. So perhaps India would adopt me.”

  Barbara headed immediately for the beach community of Goa. She rented a shack and shared it with other free spirits. “For the first time in my life I really enjoyed myself. Total freedom! I ran naked on the sand, I ate fresh fish just pulled out of the sea, I climbed palms and fetched coconuts, I found friends from England who built a huge tent out of palm fronds. There were times that eighteen people lived in the tent and on top we flew a banner that read, ‘Royal Rock and Roll Hut.’”