A Pattaya Court handed down a death sentence for two Germans and a Thai National Friday for the gruesome murder of a German property broker whose dismembered body was found in a freezer in Pattaya last year.
The Pattaya Provincial Court delivered the death sentence to German nationals Mr. Olaf Thorsten Brinkmann, 52, and Ms. Petra Christl Grundgreif, 54, and Shahrukh Karim Uddin, 27, a Thai national, on Friday.
During the trial, Mr. Brinkmann and Ms Grundgreif, the first and second defendants, confessed to the crimes. The court found their confessions useful and commuted their sentences to life imprisonment.
Mr. Uddin, a member of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, maintained his innocence so his death sentence wasn’t commuted.
In July 2023, the brutal murder of German real estate businessman Hans Peter Ralter Mack, 62, made international headlines after he was kidnapped and killed, and his dismembered body was concealed in a freezer.
A Pattaya Police investigation of CCTV footage showed the three suspects transporting a freezer to a house in Pattaya City approximately 400 meters from where Mack’s Mercedes Benz was found.
A police raid on July 10, 2023, led to the discovery of Mack’s dismembered body inside a 1.5-meter freezer.
The three lured Mack to his death and dismembered his body with plans to dispose of it at sea. They then transferred 3.35 million baht (US$97,000) from his account.
Pattaya police forensic accounting investigators recovered 1.25 million baht ($36,500.00) of the stolen money for the victim’s family.
According to Thai Media, the prosecution built a strong case using witness testimonies, documentary evidence, physical evidence, and forensic science, establishing a clear connection between the three suspects from the planning stage to their arrest.
