Trying To Recover A Life The Wrong Way

This story is of a German man who was about 57 years old a pig farmer, let’s call him Hans. He had some money saved, sold his German farm and moved to Thailand to start a new life. He married a bar girl from Phuket. They moved to the North of the
country and bought a three rai farm. He builds a very nice and modern house and started a pig breeding business. All was done up to German farm standards. The property and his Toyota truck of course were in his wife’s name to comply with
Thai laws <no need for the truck to be in hr name – Stick>. After a few years he had many contacts in the farang restaurant trade in Chiang Mai and Bangkok especially as he also smoked the meat to European
standards and made very tasty sausages, after all he was a pig farmer. After the business was starting to make tons of money, his wife disappeared.

A few weeks later his stepdaughter arrived with her husband and a whole truck load of relations and they told him to get off their property, and also leave the truck behind. What had happened was that his wife (Thai family marriage) went
to the Amphur and transferred all the property and also the car into her daughter’s name. There was nothing at all he could legally do about it. He had to leave especially as he was threatened with bodily harm by the family if he stayed
on.

Well he still had some small money left, not enough to start a new life, so he went together with a Swiss gentleman and they decided to smuggle drugs to Switzerland which could be big money indeed. This way he tried to recover his fortune
and start again from scratch. The Swiss man went back to Europe and apparently arranged for the distribution. He also did send a vacuum packing machine to Hans so that sniffer dogs in the Swiss airports would not find the Amphetamines. It appears
to have been very well organized from the Swiss side.

Hans then goes out and buys 15,000 Amphetamine tablets; or so the police claimed, from a local dealer; not knowing that it was a police informer, vacuum packs the tablets and tries to fly out of Chiang Mai International Airport. It is needless
to say; as soon as he passed immigration and had his departure stamp in the passport half of the local police force descended on him and arrested him for drug smuggling. They waited until he officially left the country, otherwise it would only
have been possession, now it was smuggling which carries a much stiffer penalty.

He waited for many years in the local prison for his court case; people who visited him told me he was a pitiful sight. His normal weight was 98 Kg, after only one year he was down to 48 Kg, he also had a very bad infection on his legs from
the ball and chain which he had to wear in prison. I wanted to visit him but one of my family friends, a lawyer (a prosecutor in the Northern Province) told me not to do this. He said that the case was much more complicated than it had looked
at first and even he would not touch it with a bargepole, he gave the prosecution to one of his deputies. He also said that they waited with the court case until the German Bundespresident made a visit to Thailand, as they usually pardon prisoners
during a state visit. They did not want that to happen in this particular case.

After four years waiting he finally had his court appearance, as he pleaded guilty as charged the judge was humane and only gave him a 50 year prison term and not the death penalty. Well if he survives, which is most unlikely, he will be only 111 years
old at his release. The German government tried to get him released to spend his sentence in a German jail but the Thais flatly refused. Ok it is his own fault; he must have known the risk he took and I feel no pity for drug smugglers or dealers.

However this does not seem to be the whole story as I found out much later.

His Swiss friend came back to Thailand; he entered the Kingdom at Phuket. As he was on the wanted list the police promptly arrested him on arrival. He started to talk very big in the lockup and said if they keep him many high up people which
were involved with it will have problems to. Also he wanted to know where the rest of the drugs disappeared too. He claimed that there were 160,000 and not 15,000 tablets, and if he wasn't released he would start making great problems for
everybody by talking to the overseas media.

They released him within two days and he went to his property in the north. Two days later they found him with his car smashed against a tree, his tongue was cut out and he was hanging by his neck from a tree branch. It was obviously suicide;
he smashed his car up then cut his tongue out and hanged himself from a tree. Or so it was recorded. However I believe this is the way the mafia deals with informers, I really would not know.

I do not have pity for the two people; I do believe they got what drug smugglers should get. I have seen too many cases of drug abuse and believe that it should be stopped by whatever means possible. I hope this is a warning to many farangs,
not to buy or use drugs in Thailand; even marijuana possession of 10 grams or more can and will get you 10 to 30 years in the Bangkok Hilton. It would be a very long all expenses paid but not so nice holiday for the guilty people.

Stickman's thoughts:

The moral of this story? Don't marry a Thai woman – it is all down hill after that…..just kidding!