In order to ease the workload on police, the forgery case and the murder case will be separated in the recent case of a dismembered body found in a freezer during a raid on a forgery house.
Metropolitan Police Bureau Chief Lt. Gen. Sanit Mahathavorn told officers to divide the cases into two investigations so that they are under less pressure.
Pol. Lt. Gen. Sanit explained that Thai law states that those people possibly behind the passport forgeries could be held for 48 days while police investigate but, in the case of the murder, the suspects may be detained for 84 days.
Officers are still investigating whether or not the three American suspects being charged with the passport forgeries were also involved in the murder, reported Bangkok Post.
The suspects are Herbert Craig La Fon, James Douglas Eger and Aaron Thomas Gabel. All three hold American passports and were arrested on Sept. 23 during a raid on a Sukhumvit Soi 56 shophouse based on suspicion of passport forgery happening at the address.
Police found evidence of passport forgery but also found the body of a foreign man in a freezer. The dead body was found to be American businessman Charles Edward Ditlefsen.
The American men on the premises were arrested due to resisting arrest, illegally having firearms, document forgery and hiding a body.
The police have made progress in their investigation but don’t know when it will be complete and a toxicology report on the body is not yet ready.
However, Udomsak Hoonwijit, the director of forensic medicine at Chulalongkorn University, said Saturday that sodium thiopental, a drug used to cause unconsciousness, was found in the liver of the deceased man.
The man’s family has been contacted and they have been asked to come to Thailand.
