Wife of man murdered in Thailand hit gets life in prison

[MidTMike]

CALGARY — The wife of a former Calgary man murdered in Thailand last year has been sentenced to life in prison along with her boyfriend and the hitman who carried out the attack.

Dale Henry, 48, was shot in the head while laying in bed at his home in Ban Nong, Thailand on Feb. 3, 2008.

Henry’s 27-year-old wife, Maneerat, was convicted of the murder along with her boyfriend, Amornsak Keskaew and a hitman, Jinda Sae Tae, with police saying the three plotted to kill Henry to collect on a $1 million life insurance policy.

“I’m so relieved, it’s been such a long haul,” said Dale’s brother Richard Henry from Thailand where he has been for the past seven months working to see justice served.

“It’s all surreal right now, it’s hard to believe.

“At first I didn’t understand because it was all in Thai, but when it was (translated) I was just relieved because justice was finally done.”

A former Cochrane firefighter and paramedic, Henry was recovering from a badly broken leg when he was killed, which Richard said was likely the result of an earlier attempt on his life.

Maneerat and Keskaew were originally sentenced to death, said Richard, but the judge commuted that to life in prison.

Richard is now moving forward with a civil case he launched against Maneerat to try and get back some of Dale’s things she took from their house after he was killed and money she withdrew from his bank account, with the next hearing set for Sept. 7.

“She stole about US$21,000,” he said.

“The money started coming out his personal account the day after he was murdered.

During the trial, Richard said the three accused had contempt for the justice system there and didn’t seem to take thing seriously.

“They would just laugh at me and figured they owned the world up until this last court appearance,” he said.

“They thought they had everything in the palm of their hand.”

But that changed when the guilty verdict was read.

“They were standing in front of the judge so we couldn’t see their reaction, all we could see was their backsides,” he said.

“They had to turn around when the court security came in to put handcuffs on them and (Maneerat) started to cry.”

Navigating the legal system in a foreign country has been tough, said Richard, especially since he doesn’t speak the language.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/alberta/2009/08/27/10643281.html

By DAVE DORMER, Sun Media

[nyoen]

i hope that she will be okay...

[Bob]

i hope that she will be okay...

Huh? The woman who had her husband murdered? I think you misread something there.

[lvdkeyes]

I think Nyoen has a lack of command of English.

[Thaimo]

Nyoen from Indonesia. He's doing the best he can. I doubt I would do much better if I was trying to write in a language not native to me.

[lvdkeyes]

Exactly!!!!!

[nyoen]

i'm sorry.. i'll try to my best. and thank you for input...

i've missing some text yesterday... so here, i'm say i'm sorry..

peace of all.

[Thaifan]

Luckily in the two years in which I have been living in Thailand I see very little crime or violence maybe I am being protected by my Thai partner but I found this story very shocking. Maybe if I lived in Bangkok or Pattaya then I would see more bad things but here in the countryside but still close enough to visit those places I feel much safer here in Thailand than I ever felt in Australia or UK.

[Wino]

i hope that she will be okay...

Although she is a low-life murderer, I hope she will be okay, too. From some of the accounts of jail life in Thailand and other SE Asian countries, I wouldn't want to wish that on my worst enemy.

[lvdkeyes]

The punishment fits the crime. You take a life, yours is taken in one way or another.

[Wino]

The punishment fits the crime. You take a life, yours is taken in one way or another.

Ahhhh yes, an eye for an eye arguement. After all is said and done, it is in the bible.

[lvdkeyes]

I certainly was not referring to the bible. I just believe if you do the crime you should do the time.

[Wino]

I certainly was not referring to the bible. I just believe if you do the crime you should do the time.

I believe in the justice system. Cases are not always pure black and white. My point in this case, the woman, even if guilty, does not deserve cruel and unusual punishment that is sometime found in the Thai penal system.

[lvdkeyes]

So, what you are saying is, no one should be put in a Thai prison because you consider it to be cruel and unusual punishment. Is that right?

[Thaifan]

I believe one of the deterrents which keeps Thailand a reasonably crime-free country compared to most Western countries, is the fear of going to prison. In most Western countries it is no deterrent at all as the prisons are more like luxury hotels. Without any experience of the Thai prison system I don't actually believe it is as bad as some say. I admire the useful way in which they try to rehabilitate prisoners - much of my furniture was bought in a prison sale - where once a year they hold a huge market in Bangkok to sell furniture produced by prisoners. The quality is excellent and the price way below that found in Department Stores.

[Wino]

My basis for stating that a Thai prison may be cruel and unusual punishment is based on a book I read a few years ago. Can't remember the name but it was about an Australian man that was thrown into prison for drug smuggling. The horrors he endured were unbelievable. I hope as Thaifan believes, the Thai prison system is not as bad as some say.

[Bob]

I believe one of the deterrents which keeps Thailand a reasonably crime-free country compared to most Western countries, is the fear of going to prison. In most Western countries it is no deterrent at all as the prisons are more like luxury hotels. Without any experience of the Thai prison system I don't actually believe it is as bad as some say.

Some respectful disagreement on all fronts.

While I am quite fond of Thailand (i.e., the Thai people), the "reported" statistics reflect, for example, that the murder rate in Thailand is higher than the murder rate in the US (which, of course, is far higher than in the UK). I have put the word "reported" in quotes as I do trust the reported rates in the US although I don't believe the Thai statistics are accurate (i.e., I believe they are below reality). Those falang that are tourists rarely see much crime or hang in areas more prone to crime. Plus the tourist areas seem to have a substantially higher number of police around to deter some things.

I've been to the prison up by Nakhon Ratchisma and I can tell you it surely would be no picnic. Too many people crammed into one cell and a very spartan existence, damn-near unedible food, some dangerous and wacky fellow inmates, etc. I've talked to people that have been to the Bangkok Hilton and just the thought of going there gives me the willies. Based on what I've been told and read, it is as bad or worse than what you hear.

As to western prisons being like luxury hotels, that is absolutely untrue with respect to state prisons and jails. I'm from Michigan and you'd be rather unhappy with the likes of the state prisons at Jackson or Marquette (those facilities would scare the shit out of you - and you ought to be scared too). As to county jails (typically where people serve terms for less than a year), not quite as bad or dangerous there (so long as you don't mind sharing a small cell with 2-4 people with an open toilet hanging on the wall - and you don't mind drunks and wackos moaning and yelling throughout the night).

Some federal prisons - but only those for minimum security inmates - are about as good as it gets and a few can be compared to low budget hotels; yet, nobody volunteers to go there.

[WannaGo]

Thaifan, as Bob said, no disrespect, but I have to agree with him.

I always laugh when I see people talking about how prisons are so nice that it's like vacations for the inmates, or how inmates have it better than poor people because they have air conditioning, three hots a day and free cable.

The only people who say stuff like that are the ones who've never actually seen the inside of a prison. We're talking tiny cells where you have just enough room to stretch both your arms out straight to your sides without touching the walls, bunks that are basically metal slabs built into the walls, stainless steel toilets where you shit out in front of your cellie, and about the only light you get in that cell is from those damn fluorescent bulbs.

Then, there's the culture of prison, where you are constantly being told what to do and when you can do it, every minute of the day. You're locked up with hundreds or thousands of other men who are all trying to get over on you and each other one way or another. If you aren't careful, you'll ending up getting your ass beaten, either by another inmate or by a CO, or you're going to find somebody putting something in a hole you'd rather they didn't. I know a prisoner who was beaten into critical condition because he was a trusty and wouldn't pass a kite for two other inmates. In some states, like California, you have to contend with extremely powerful and violent prison gangs on top of everything else.

Even in supposedly "safe" county jails, people get hurt and die all the time. The career criminals get to know things about the jail, like where the blind spots are in the security camera coverage, and take advantage of that. Another inmate I know was in a county lock-up awaiting trial on purely white-collar stuff...he was in no way a tough guy. He wouldn't give another inmate his deodorant, so that inmate and another dragged him into a blind spot in the cameras, stuffed some dirty socks in his mouth and raped him.

And, of course, the system itself hurts plenty of people. The Florida Department of Corrections had a scandal a few years back in which a group of COs stomped an inmate to death. It turned out they were part of a group of COs with white supremacist leanings who beat on minority inmates whenever they got the chance. Most of the prisons here are located in rural counties, so ugly things like that can happen and keeping happening without anyone knowing, unless an inmate dies.

Sometimes, the system doesn't kill through violence, but just plain neglect. We had a female inmate in a county jail who had some problems with depression. The lowest-bidder private contractor that provided medical services to the jail kept feeding her anti-depressants, even after she complained they were making her sick. When she was found lying on the floor of her cell, nearly catatonic, the jail doctor said she was malingering and left her there. A couple of days later, she was dead.

Oh, and all that stuff about air conditioning, three hots and free cable? Bullshit. I've never been in a prison or jail that wasn't hot, stuffy and stinking of feet and ass. Three hots? Depending on the budget of the county or state, that's more like one or two hot meals a day. Free cable in prisons is just a joke. Maybe, and I mean maybe there are TVs with a few basic channels in the dayrooms, but inmates only get to use them for a few hours each day.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that people who've committed crimes don't deserve to be locked up somewhere unpleasant. But this idea that criminals are coddled in prison is usually just conservative propaganda.