Pla, then 36, started googling the symptoms of cyanide poisoning and found that they included difficulty breathing and stiff hands. “At that moment, I was very shocked,” she said.
She was the only survivor out of 15 victims identified by the police in what has become a historic set of cases, involving a pattern of deaths in different provinces starting as far back as 2015.
Aem, now 39, is the “most prolific serial killer in Thai history”, according to Surachate Hakparn, the deputy police chief from 2022 to 2024. “She’s killed more people than Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac and BTK (did individually),” he charged.
Only one of those three — BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill), the moniker for American killer Dennis Rader — was caught.
And it took one of the largest investigations ever conducted in Thailand for the Royal Thai Police to catch their killer better known as Aem Cyanide. The series, Death Loans, tells how the country’s cyanide murders finally ended.
WATCH PART 1: ‘She didn’t go alone’ — This CCTV footage helped expose Thai serial killer (46:57)
