01 October 2016•Update: 07 October 2016
By Max Constant
BANGKOK
Thai forensic experts have determined that a man whose dismembered body was found in a freezer during a raid on a suspected passport forgery den in Bangkok was “likely an east European”, local media reported Saturday.
The frozen parts were discovered Sept. 23 after police raided the compound rented by three American nationals that led to an exchange of gunfire in which one officer and one suspect were injured.
Udomsak Hoowijit, head of forensic medicine at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn Hospital, was quoted by the Bangkok Post as saying that the dead man “is believed to have hailed from the southern part of Eastern Europe. He was possibly a Hungarian.”
He added that the man was between 40 and 50 in age and 179.5 centimeters in height, but the time of death could not be exactly determined since the body had been frozen for an extended period of time.
“The victim probably died from a lack of oxygen or use of drugs,” Hoowijit said.
Hoowijit’s statement came after a dental examination and a computerized tomography of the body was conducted this week, following an earlier traditional autopsy.
The autopsy determined that the body had been cut up using an electric chainsaw.
Police launched the raid after having been alerted of suspicious activity in the building in eastern Bangkok, which led to the arrests of three foreigners.
After initial confusion about their nationalities given the large quantity of fake passports found in the building, the three were identified as Americans Aaron Thomas Gabel, 33, James Douglas Eger, 66, and Herbert Craig La Fon, 63.
La Fon, who shot and injured a police officer and was himself injured during the raid, is being treated at a local hospital.
The men have been charged with resisting arrest, attempt to kill an official, possession of firearms, counterfeiting official documents and concealing a corpse.
Records of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations show that a federal arrest warrant was issued for La Fon in 1979 in Baltimore, Maryland, in connection with credit card fraud but the case could not proceed after a key witness died.
Bangkok’s police chief, Gen. Sanit Mahathavorn, said Saturday that he believed that the victim found in the freezer was part of the passport forgery operation and that it is “highly likely” that he was murdered.
The investigation showed that the large-size freezer was bought in 2008 by La Fon, which has led the police to think the body could have been frozen since then.
