'I'VE NEVER SEEN anything like it, and I pray that I never have to again,' says police sergeant Niwat Siwantawong, taking a fierce pull on his cheroot. 'I mean, this is a pretty wild province - we're close to the Burmese border - and I've seen some things in my time. But nothing like this.'
The wiry policeman, who sports a bejewelled pistol and two sets of handcuffs on his cowboy belt, oversees a small corner of Ratchaburi province's Damnoen Saduak district, three hours' drive west from Bangkok. It's a beautiful part of Thailand, home to the famously photogenic floating market, where women in big straw hats paddle small wooden boats laden with all manner of produce, about cool green canals. Dotted between the palm plantations are fruit and vegetable orchards, criss-crossed by irrigation ditches full of lotus flowers.
The district is chiefly famous for having given Thailand one of its recent prime ministers: Chatichai 'No Problem' Choonhaven. That was until October 4, when a crime - so bloody, disturbing and bizarre that it would shock a nation - was perpetrated in the rural idyll.
That afternoon began much like any other, Niwat says. It was warm and sunny, and life was unfolding at its usual lazy pace. 'There wasn't much happening. I was in the garage tinkering with my motorbike. That's when I got the call.' A man known in the district as Tong 'Bet' Jiamcharoen called police headquarters in Damnoen Saduak, shouting about human sacrifice and strange happenings in his mother's house in Bak Khlong Khut village. The village is about 10km from Niwat's outpost, so he was sent to check things out.
'I know the family, and I'd heard a few weird rumours,' he says. 'But I was thinking someone had probably drunk a bit too much lao khao [rice whiskey] and was having a bit of fun.'
He arrived at the two-storey house and immediately felt something was wrong. 'It was quiet - strangely quiet,' he says. 'There were no birds singing, no dogs barking.' He called out for 'Bet', but there was no reply.
