A Chinese immigrant who’s been on display in a box six decades as a child-eating cannibal will finally be laid to rest this week.
The body of Si Quey Sae-Ung, one of Thailand’s best-known serial killers and bogeyman to generations of children, will be cremated Thursday at Wat Bang Phraek Tai in Nonthaburi province.
Following a recent surge of evidence which unearthed flaws in the case against Si Quey, leading many to conclude he was more likely a victim of hysteria than cannibal fiend, the court of public opinion now believes he was not guilty of the murders.
Though no formal legal process has exonerated him, evidence that he was a scapegoat was persuasive enough to convince the Siriraj Medical Museum to remove the label “cannibal” from the glass case where his badly preserved remains have been on display for decades.
The man will get a proper funeral this Thursday, according to an official order signed by Montri Boonnak, the warden of the Bang Kwang Central Prison in Nonthaburi.
The funeral will be hosted by the Medical Department of Siriraj Hospital and the Bang Kwang Central Prison.
His body has long been the top attraction at the medical school’s macabre forensics museum, where it is held up as a significant historical artifact alongside jarred fetuses.
Born in the southeastern city of Shantou, Si Quey migrated to Thailand in 1946. He was arrested in 1958 on suspicion of killing seven children in several provinces – including Rayong, Prachaup Kiri Khan, Nakhon Pathom and Bangkok. Rumors led to heated, xenophobic tabloid stories that he ate their organs after killing them.
For generations, parents have warned misbehaving children that he will eat their livers.
Si Quey was said to have confessed and was executed in 1959.
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