Thai man confesses to decapitating 5-year-old boy

BANGKOK — A part-time Bangkok taxi driver confessed to the gruesome murder of a 5-year-old boy, saying he shot, decapitated and dismembered him after a lover’s quarrel with his mother, whom he also murdered, police said Wednesday.

The child’s body parts were discovered Monday in four plastic bags at an abandoned housing development, stunning Thailand and becoming a national media sensation.

The suspect, 40-year-old Siriphong Kanchannaniwit, fed the media frenzy by turning himself in Tuesday evening at the headquarters of a Thai television station, where he was arrested on charges including premeditated murder. Police then allowed him to hold a televised news conference.

The man said he committed the murders over the weekend while he was driving the woman and her two children in a borrowed taxi, said Bangkok Deputy Police Commissioner Maj. Gen. Amnuay Nimmano. The man told police he sometimes drove the cab, which was owned by a relative.

Siriphong told police his girlfriend, the child’s 38-year-old mother, had been pressuring him to kill her ex-husband, a Japanese man who was the boy’s father, said Amnuay. Siriphong said he refused and the woman insulted him, sending him into a rage.

“She kept insulting me, saying I had no guts,” Siriphong said calmly during the Tuesday news conference.

Siriphong told police he pulled out a gun and started firing shots into the back seat, which killed the boy and the mother.

“He said he did not intend to kill the boy, who was shot when he was shooting the mother,” Amnuay said.

Siriphong told police he dumped the woman’s body on a street where he spotted a police car. He said he then drove home, dismembered the boy’s body and divided the parts into garbage bags, Amnuay said.

The mother’s body was discovered Sunday, and a garbage collector found the child Monday, first opening a bag that contained his head.

“I immediately informed the police, and they found the limbs and the torso in other bags,” the garbage collector, Pratin Panhouy, earlier told Thai television Channel 3. An initial investigation showed the boy was shot at close range in his limbs, his stomach and his face.

The boy’s 13-year-old sister was wounded during the shooting. She was taken to a hospital after Siriphong turned himself in, and police say she has corroborated the main facts of his story but several questions remain about his motive.

“There are many holes and inconsistencies, so we are not going to base the case solely on what he said,” said Bangkok police chief Lt. Gen. Worapong Chiewpreecha.