Suspected serial killer Nirut Sonkhamhan hanged himself in prison on Wednesday morning

Suspected serial killer Nirut Sonkhamhan hanged himself in prison on Wednesday morning, but the events leading to his suicide were set in motion last month, when the Mirror Foundation noticed an odd pattern of disappearances in the South.

RIGHT Convenience store surveillance camera footage shows Nirut Sonkhamhanwalking in tobuycoffee,which police believed he would mix with insecticide and give to his victims.

 LEFT Patanapong Sriphinphro, head of the CSD’sSubdivision 5,wholed the investigation.

The organisation, dedicated to finding missing persons, noticed that several pickup truck drivers had vanished under ominously similar circumstances.

The drivers all offered rental services. They all went missing between Prachuap Khiri Khan and Chumphon. And all were hired to go to the same destination.

This information was shared with investigators at the Crime Suppression Division (CSD), who immediately suspected the cases were not only linked, but could lead to a trail of murder.

As the investigators dug deeper, they began to unearth convincing evidence that the missing drivers had been killed by one man.

The first piece of the puzzle was a police report recording the murder of Julsil Salangsing, a driver in Chumphon's Tha Sae district, in early March.

His face was disfigured after being beaten with a rock, but the cause of death was determined to be poisoning with insecticide.

Two more truck drivers, Wachara Suebchuea and Robkwaen Klapsoon, were also missing in the same province.

All three had been hired to go to the same destination in Chumphon. Investigators were certain of a link.

On March 17, Chumphon police informed the CSD of the discovery of another body, thought to be a victim of the same killer.

Jamnong Srirachart, a pickup truck driver for hire, had died from insecticide poisoning as well. The CSD realised this was the fourth victim of a serial killer.

The CSD expanded its investigation to cover other southern provinces. Sure enough, they received reports from police in Cha-am district of Phetchaburi province of two pickup truck drivers who had been poisoned recently.

But Phaithoon Pattalapho and Montree Kalam had survived. The two told police they had cheated death in January and March respectively, at the hands of a man who had asked them to transport something to Chumphon.

Their testimony provided the evidence investigators had been looking for to pinpoint the murderer, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of Nirut, 43, a native of Songkhla province.

The CSD were confident they had identified their man, who was also the subject of an arrest warrant over the death of a 67-year-old woman in Kalasin.

The woman's body was dumped in a river and some of her valuables stolen by her killer, police said.

On April 9 another corpse was discovered _ yet another pickup truck driver.

Somsak Srijampa was found dead in Prachuap Khiri Khan, his manner of death leading the CSD to believe he too had been killed by Nirut.

The CSD believe Nirut stole his victims' trucks and sold them to a gang in Hat Yai district of Songkhla.

After finishing his business he would fly from Hat Yai to hide in Bangkok for a while, before hunting for a new victim.

In his most recent trip, surveillance cameras footage showed Nirut taking a pink taxi from the airport.

The licence plate of the vehicle was captured clearly on the airport's cameras, making it easy to track down the taxi driver.

The driver vividly remembered the passenger he dropped off at a Big C department store in Nakhon Pathom.

Last Monday, a witness helped police locate Nirut, who was staying in a rented apartment. Police captured him at the property that afternoon, confiscating a bottle of powdered insecticide, 17,600 baht in cash, and the clothes he wore on the day he supposedly killed his latest victim.

Police said Nirut claimed he spent most of the money he made from selling the stolen trucks on gambling.

"I think he was the serial killer... he confessed to killing all of them. Two people are still missing because he could not remember exactly where he dumped their bodies at night," said Patanapong Sriphinphro, head of the CSD's Subdivision 5 and leader of the investigation.

Nirut tried to kill himself in custody on the day of his arrest, and was successful in his second attempt, hanging himself with his shirt while detained in Prachuap Khiri Khan on Wednesday.

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