Police investigating the horrific incident in a Bangkok suburb are beginning to look at the state of the officer’s personal relationships in an attempt to understand the motive behind Monday morning’s appalling murder-suicide tragedy where three lives were lost.
A senior police officer with Bangkok’s Metropolitan Police Bureau is at the centre of a criminal investigation after his body was found on Monday morning by local police in the Thung Khru district of Bangkok together with his wife and 14-year-old daughter. Police are understood to be treating the incident as one of murder-suicide driven by sexual jealousy linked to the personal life of the senior officer.
Police investigators in Bangkok are examining a murder-suicide incident in the Thung Khru district of the Southwestern area of the capital on, Monday, in which a 57-year senior police officer is believed to have murdered his 39-year-old second wife and 14-year-old daughter before taking his own life in what is looking like a crime driven by jealousy with reports of love rivalry and ongoing affairs within the officer’s personal relationships.
The alarm was raised at 10 am on Monday when Police Lieutenant Colonel Pongpon, an officer working with Metropolitan Police Bureau Division 8, whose surname police authorities are withholding, for now, arrived back at his home in his black Mercedes E 220 car with his wife’s dead body.
Police retrieved one 9mm bullet casing from the driver’s side of luxury black Mercedes car parked outside the home on Monday morning
Police reportedly retrieved one bullet casing from the inside of the car whose registration was 8639 Bangkok near the driver’s door as well as other forensic evidence.
This included traces of blood from the left-hand passenger seat where his wife was sitting and also from the central gear area.
It is reported that he had earlier taken Ms Benjawan, his wife, to a hairdressing appointment but something transpired between the pair and the woman was killed with a gunshot wound to the right temple while in his car.
Police find dead bodies in upstairs bedrooms
Upstairs, on the first floor of the home, in the main bedroom, police found the body of the woman wearing a white dress with a red pattern lying next to her husband wearing denim jeans and a cream shirt.
He also had a bullet wound to the right temple.
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A 9mm handgun was found near the bed.
In another bedroom on the same floor, police discovered the body of the couple’s 14-year-old daughter, also dead, lying on her bed. She was dressed in a purple T-Shirt with purple striped shorts.
A son of Police Lieutenant Colonel Pangporn from his previous marriage, also staying in the house, was on the upper floor and came down after hearing the shot that killed his sister.
Son encounters father carrying the body of his lifeless wife after hearing the shot that killed his half-sister
He encountered his father on the landing carrying the lifeless body of his wife.
The policeman told his son to go and attend to his half-sister, then to sit down for a while and breathe.
It is understood that six people were living in the house including the officer’s children, relatives and children from his previous marriage.
The policeman’s sister, who also lived within the home, was also present during the murder of his daughter.
The son’s aunt heard the shot and rushed to the scene after which he set off to find help from the local health centre to provide assistance to his sister.
The police from Thung Khru Police Station were also summoned to the scene.
Reports of tangled relationships and a marriage riven by jealousy and illicit affairs as probe opens
Police have launched a full investigation into what happened during the ill-fated trip by the couple to the wife’s hairdressing appointment and later at the home on Soi Pracha Uthit 54.
It is believed that this will focus on the relationship dynamics between the six people who lived at the home with reports suggesting that the police officer also had a girlfriend or other love interests.
Sources suggests that the relationship between Police Lieutenant Colonel Pangpong and Ms Benjanwan, his wife, was a tumultuous one riven with tensions over illicit affairs and jealousy.
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