Man to be executed in ‘rare’ death sentence after German real estate agent was found dismembered and layered in thick tape inside a freezer in Thailand
A Thai man has been sentenced to death after a German real estate agent was murdered and found dismembered in a freezer.
Peter Ralter Mack, 62, was murdered by Shakrukh Karim Uddin and two German nationals in southern Thailand last year.
Piriya Boonmark – Mr Mack’s wife – first raised the alarm about his disappearance on July 4, 2023, after he left their home to visit a property agent but did not return.
Just six days later he was slaughtered, found draped in a thick layer of tape in a freezer in Chonburi province.
Local police soon found the broker’s Mercedes-Benz E350 thoroughly cleaned with chemicals. Investigators stated that this was an attempt to get rid of any evidence.
CCTV footage later emerged showing the trio of suspects taking a freezer to a property just 400 meters away from where the vehicle was discovered.
During the trial at Pattaya Provincial Court, it was revealed that Mr Mack had been kidnapped and 3.35 million baht (£78,000) taken from his bank account before he was murdered by the three.
Peter Ralter Mack, 62, was murdered by Shakrukh Karim Uddin and two German nationals in southern Thailand last year
Shahrukh Karim Uddin was taken into custody on Wednesday after he tried to escape to Maynmar
There were claims that alleged ringleader Olaf Thorsten Brinkmann, Petra Christl Grundgreif and Oulaws Motorcycle club member Uddin planned to throw the man’s body into the sea.
The Thai court found all three guilty of first-degree murder and concealment of a body, but the two German nationals were given life sentences instead of the death penalty because of their confessions.
Shakrukh Karim Uddin has since been sentenced to death.
Under Thailand’s strict legal system, the death penalty remains legal despite attempts to repeal it. The death penalty can be imposed for a long list of crimes, including murder, treason, terrorism, extreme cases of rape and robbery, and drug trafficking.
Although the country has studied other methods of execution, such as lethal injection, executions today are carried out by shooting with a gun.
Condemned prisoners are anesthetized and placed face down on a mattress and shot three times through the heart. If the prisoner has chosen to donate his internal organs, he is executed with a single bullet to the back of the head instead.
As of August, there were nearly 400 inmates on death row in the country, with the last execution taking place in June 2018.
In the incident, a 26-year-old man was killed by lethal injection on charges of robbery and the murder of a 17-year-old boy.