Cyanide found in blood of dead Vietnamese and Americans in Bangkok hotel

BANGKOK– Initial autopsy results have revealed traces of cyanide in the blood of six Vietnamese and American guests of a luxury hotel in central Bangkok. One of them is said to have poisoned the others because of a bad investment, Thai authorities said on Wednesday.

The bodies were found on Tuesday at the Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok, a landmark at a central intersection in the capital with many shopping malls, government buildings and public transport.

The six were last seen alive when food was delivered to the room on Monday afternoon. Staff saw a woman accept the food, and surveillance footage showed the others arriving one by one shortly afterward. There were no other visitors, no one was seen leaving the room, and the door was locked. A maid found them on Tuesday afternoon when they failed to check out of the room.

When hotel staff entered the room, they found that the food from the previous day had remained untouched, with some portions of fried rice still wrapped in plastic wrap. While the food was untouched, several used teacups were on a nearby table, next to two thermos flasks.

Lieutenant General Trairong Piwpan, head of the Thai police’s forensic department, said traces of cyanide were found in the cups and thermoses found by police.

The initial results of autopsies of the six bodies, conducted at Chulalongkorn Hospital in Bangkok, were announced later on Wednesday. Kornkiat Vongpaisarnsin, head of the department of forensic medicine at Chulalongkorn University’s medical school, told a news conference that cyanide was found in the blood of all six bodies and a CAT scan showed no signs of blunt force trauma, supporting the hypothesis that they had been poisoned.

Chanchai Sittipunt, dean of Chulalongkorn’s medical school, said the team had gathered enough information about the cyanide to determine it as the likely cause of death.

Bangkok police chief Lt. Gen. Thiti Sangsawang identified the dead as two Vietnamese Americans and four Vietnamese citizens, and said they were three men and three women. Their ages ranged from 37 to 56, according to Noppasin Punsawat, Bangkok’s deputy police chief. He said the case appeared to be of a personal nature and did not concern the safety of tourists.

A couple among the dead had invested about 10 million baht ($278,000) along with two others, and that could be a motive, Noppasin said, citing information from relatives. The investment was for the construction of a hospital in Japan, and the group may have met to settle the matter. Police say one of the six perpetrators killed the others, but did not say which of the six was the suspect.

Bangkok police chief Lt. Gen. Thiti Sangsawang said on Tuesday that four bodies were found in the living room and two in the bedroom. He said two bodies had apparently tried to reach for the door but collapsed before doing so.

Noppasin said Wednesday that a seventh person, whose name was part of the hotel booking, was a sibling of one of the six and left Thailand on July 10. Police believe the seventh person had nothing to do with the deaths.

The Vietnamese and US embassies have been contacted about the deaths and the American FBI is on the way, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said.

“This was not an act of terrorism, nor was it a security breach. Everything is fine,” he said.

Trairong said a mass suicide was unlikely as some of them had organised future parts of their trip, such as guides and drivers. He added that the bodies found in different parts of the hotel room suggested they had not knowingly consumed poison and waited together to die.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller in Washington sent his condolences to the families of the dead. He said the US was closely monitoring the situation and communicating with local authorities. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his Thai counterpart on Tuesday, but Miller said he believed the phone call took place before the deaths were reported and he did not know whether it came up in their conversation.

The five-star Grand Hyatt Erawan hotel is one of Bangkok’s landmarks. The eponymous Erawan Shrine on the corner of the building has been a major tourist attraction since it was built in 1956 on the advice of astrologers when the hotel was built to ward off bad karma.

Visitors worship at the shrine and seek divine help with issues ranging from relationship problems to exam preparation. The shrine was the target of a bomb attack in 2015 that killed 20 people and injured more than 100.

In 2023, Thailand was rocked by reports of a serial killer who poisoned 15 people with cyanide over several years. Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, or “Am Cyanide” as she was later known, killed at least 14 people to whom she owed money, becoming the country’s first female serial killer. One person survived.