by Colin Martin
Again and again I tried to tell them that I hadn’t killed anyone, but they just ignored me.
If they wanted to kill me there was nothing that I could do to stop them. I didn’t want to die, but I accepted that it was about to happen.
But I was not going to confess.
When they realised that I had accepted that I was going to die and I no longer cared what they did, they began to beat me once again.
One of them grabbed me in a headlock. They placed a plastic bag over my head again, only this time the air was forced out completely, leaving the plastic clinging to my face.
This time, they’d grabbed me so fast that I had no time to prepare myself or catch my breath. In only seconds I was struggling once more for air. I could feel myself slipping. This time I was going to die.
* * *
I had held out, but at that moment in time, if they had promised to free me, I would have admitted to killing John F. Kennedy. Nobody wants to die; the human mind will do anything to keep itself alive. They had tortured me for about five hours, but I felt as if I’d been tortured for days.
Every man has a breaking point, and I had reached mine. I couldn’t take it any more; I would have done anything for this nightmare to stop.
They had broken me.
‘Okay, okay!’ I screamed. ‘Whatever you want!’
They never said a word. They just removed the plastic bag and the blindfold.
I felt an enormous sense of relief, but also dread. I wasn’t sure if they were going to attack me again.
I was temporarily blinded by the sudden rush of light, but I was soon able to make out what was around me. I couldn’t believe what I saw.
O’Connor was in the room. He had watched the police torturing me. He was sitting there, smiling at me.
At that point I wanted to die. I had always believed that I was right to have pursued O’Connor. Now I questioned myself and every decision I had made in the past few years. What had I done?
This feeling of utter desolation got even worse when I noticed a video camera mounted on a tripod in the corner of the room. The bastards had filmed the whole thing with O’Connor.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I asked the guy behind the camera.
He smiled and said, ‘Training. We use this film for training.’
They planned to use the footage of me being tortured to teach other cops how to inflict similar pain.
As I said, everyone has their breaking point and this was mine. At that point, I gave up hope.
The police eyed me cautiously. One of them told me they would give me a statement and I must sign it. I said I would do whatever they said. They looked at each other in surprise.
I was next taken over to sit at a table. The cop who’d been behind me during the torture session was now behind me again.
He started massaging my shoulders. I’d still know his touch even to this day.
I was very strong, he told me. Normally 20 minutes is enough. Five hours was the new record.
I felt sick. It was all a game to them. This man was a sadistic bastard.
Next, the confession was brought in. It consisted of a few pages, and was written out entirely in Thai.
I was told where to sign and I signed. Once I had scribbled down my name, my world totally collapsed.
I knew that I had just signed my life away but I didn’t care. I was a broken man.
As soon as I signed, I was taken out of the room into a large open area. I was put behind a table with O’Connor and several police officers. We all stood there for only a moment. Then TV crews rushed in with reporters, who screamed questions at me.
I didn’t know what was happening. I was in a daze, not having got over the trauma of being tortured. I was confused.
I don’t remember what questions they asked or who answered. I only remember one reporter asking, ‘Did you kill him?’
I didn’t answer. I pointed at O’Connor and said, ‘He stole my money. That’s all I can remember.’
The press conference only lasted a few minutes but had the desired effect. They allowed photographers to take some shots before whisking me away.
I noticed that my wrists were cut where the handcuffs had bit into the flesh. It had probably happened during the electric shock torture, but I hadn’t felt it before.
Now my whole body was in agony. My hands were shaking and every muscle and nerve in my body was on fire.
I couldn’t feel anything in my right hand; it was completely numb. I guessed that where the handcuffs pierced my flesh, they must have damaged a nerve. It was three weeks before the feeling came back.
Next, I was put into a room by myself.
A few hours later, at about 11 p.m., the police from Chonburi came to see me. They said they were going to take me to Chonburi, and that tomorrow they’d take me to where the fight with Holdsworth had taken place.
I was manhandled into the front seat of their car and driven to Chonburi town that same night.
It was some time after midnight when we arrived and I was taken to the police superintendent’s office.
The superintendent ordered some sandwiches, and gave me a tin of beer. He apologised that it was only a local beer, and asked if the police in Bangkok had tortured me. I didn’t trust him, but I was desperate.
I showed him my wrists and my chest, and explained what they’d done to me for five hours.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The tourist police in Bangkok are very, very bad. But don’t worry. I do not use those methods.’
Then he smiled.
He introduced himself as Aneke. He spoke good English. He then brought me to a holding cell which housed about 60 Thai and Burmese prisoners. I was the only European among them.
In pain and exhausted, I found a place on the floor and tried to get some sleep. It wasn’t easy, but I was exhausted, and I finally fell into a deep sleep. I prayed silently to myself as I lay on the floor. I would have done anything to be at home with my wife and child but it was too late for that now. My life was to change forever.
In the morning I was taken back to Aneke’s office. I was given coffee and some biscuits. About half an hour later two men arrived.
Aneke said that these men had something to discuss with me. Holdsworth, he told me, was dead.
7
I was taken to a room to meet the two men. I thought they had come from the Irish embassy but I was wrong. They were dressed formally and introduced themselves as officials from the New Zealand embassy.
I wouldn’t have believed anything the police said, but these officials confirmed that they’d just finished identifying the body. Holdsworth really was dead – and I was accused of his murder.
I was astounded. I had signed a confession admitting the murder. Now they had the body. I went into shock.
The officials asked me if I was all right and whether they could do anything to help. The only thing I could think of was to ask them to call my embassy. The situation was now spiralling out of control. I knew I needed help.
I asked the two officials how Holdsworth had died. They looked at me for a moment, then said, ‘We’ll have to wait for the doctor’s report before we’ll know the cause of death, but it’s clear that Mr Holdsworth had been in a fight.’
‘You really didn’t know he was dead?’ asked Superintendent Aneke.
‘How would I know?’ I answered. ‘I’ve told you I had a fight with him, but I certainly didn’t kill him!’
‘Maybe you hit him too hard,’ said Aneke.
He could see that I was stunned. I had really thought it was only a game O’Connor was playing to put me in prison with him. Now I had to believe that Holdsworth really had been killed. But still, I couldn’t believe that I’d been responsible for his death.
Nothing made sense. After the fight, O’Connor had used the spotlight in his car to try and find Holdsworth, but we couldn’t find him.
I thought that he’d run away.
I went through the entire thing in my head over and over again.
Could someone else have killed him? Could he have been dazed or disorientated and run out in front of a car?
Could he have died later from concussion or something? Could I have hit him too hard, like Aneke said?
It didn’t help that nobody could tell me how or where he’d died. But if the police didn’t know how he’d died, how could they accuse me of his murder?
But I was trapped in Bangkok, where anything was possible.
Strangely, all I could think of was O’Connor and how our situations had changed. He had been the one under arrest; I hadn’t. I hadn’t even been handcuffed. I’d just had him arrested for fraud and theft. He was supposed to be the one facing 15 to 20 years.
I went through every possible scenario.
I thought that someone must have told him that Holdsworth was dead after he had been arrested. Either that or O’Connor lied about not being able to see the bodyguard with the spotlight, and for some bizarre reason kept it to himself.
The truth was that nothing made sense.
I was confused and frightened for the first time in my adult life. I knew I was in serious trouble.
The police chief Aneke sensed this. When the embassy officials left, he took me into his office, sat me down and told me to relax.
He said he had also interviewed O’Connor but thought he was a real criminal and lying through his teeth. He then made me an offer.
He said that if I had 300,000 baht, he would give me bail. In reality, he was saying that he wanted me to pay him in return for letting me go. If I skipped bail, he’d be able to keep the cash.
He was speaking with a forked tongue.
I told him I didn’t have that much money. He said I should try to find it. I still to this day don’t know whether he was taking advantage of the situation or actually trying to help me.
But as he showed me the door, he told me to get the money from somewhere. He said that most probably, my life depended on it.
I was taken to the cells, where I was held for the next two days with the 60 other prisoners. There were only two cells – one male, one female – and both were packed full.
I was allowed to receive a phonecall from my sister in Ireland.
She noticed almost straight away that I wasn’t able to talk properly; I’d had my lip split during the fight with Holdsworth and bitten the inside of my own mouth during the five hours of torture.
She was very distraught and kept asking me if I was really okay. It was obvious that I’d been beaten.
My younger brother also called me. He couldn’t believe that I’d been accused of murder.
The Irish embassy came on the scene at this point. They rang to say they had called a lawyer in Bangkok on my behalf. I was told to hang on until the lawyer could meet me.
That afternoon the tourist police from Bangkok arrived once more. I was now terrified of them.
‘We go to make a movie,’ one of them said. They all seemed to find this very funny, but I knew they weren’t joking. They actually wanted to take me to the scene of the fight. They said they wanted me to show them what had happened.
* * *
I had started to cling to the hope that a lawyer would completely destroy any case levied against me, but I quickly began to realise that Thai law is unlike any other. There are plenty of rules and legal safeguards, but nobody follows them. In effect, it’s the law of the jungle.
I called the lawyer appointed by the Irish embassy and he said I should do what the police said as it might help prove my innocence. I had never heard of anything like this but I reluctantly agreed. I continually expected the police to free me at any moment. I suppose I convinced myself that everything would be okay, because I couldn’t cope if I started to think about what might happen.
Some hours later, I was driven to where they said the fight had taken place. O’Connor was already there waiting with the tourist police when I arrived. He looked fine and unperturbed.
Among the police and detectives gathered at the scene were several camera crews and photographers. This was all bizarre.
O’Connor had taken them precisely to the location where the fight had taken place.
When I looked closely, I could see where Holdsworth and I had slid down the embankment from the road while fighting.
The embankment itself was higher than I’d remembered it, about two or three metres deep. At the bottom of the bank, I saw a six-metre area of grass that was flattened where we’d fought and rolled around.
The signs of a struggle were all there, and a few blades of grass had spots of blood on them, but no more than you’d get if you cut yourself shaving. There was certainly nothing that might indicate someone had been killed.
The police captain from Bangkok who’d supervised my torture session was in charge.
He told me where and how to stand. Then he shouted, ‘Action!’ and they all started taking photographs and filming.
Mentally broken, I decided to comply with their instructions. I was still afraid. More than anything, I feared that I could be tortured again, or even murdered. The threat was very real.
Standing at the scene of the fight, I watched the police put the finishing touches to their conspiracy.
I knew from the way they conducted themselves that they had told the local press that I had already confessed and was voluntarily showing them how I’d actually murdered Brett Holdsworth.
When I didn’t move or do as I was told, the chief would say, ‘You remember the plastic bag? Do everything just as you’re told – or I’ll take you back to Bangkok!’
I could remember bits and pieces of the fight – a punch here, a headbutt there, but there was a lot that I just couldn’t recall. I suppose I had blanked it out.
Because of this, I did as I was told and posed here and there as instructed. I did not want to be subjected to more torture.
At one point, I did ask where the bodyguard was supposed to have been killed. There was no cordoned-off area or police tape anywhere. I was told to shut up.
Once the police had taken their photographs and finished filming the scene, I was returned to the holding cells in Chonburi police station.
But just when I thought that my situation couldn’t get any worse, I was taken from the cell and directed to an empty meeting room.
I was left sitting there alone and handcuffed for a few minutes when I was joined by the police chief Aneke, and another man and a woman. They were Westerners.
The woman looked at me and started screaming.
‘Is that him?’
‘Yes,’ said Aneke.
At that, the woman physically attacked me.
‘You bastard! You killed my brother! I hope you rot in hell, you piece of shit!’
She was hysterical. I thought she was going to try and rip my face apart. Her husband tried to calm her down to no avail.
The man was clearly upset and didn’t look like he was in control of his emotions either. He didn’t say a word, but glared at me.
I remember thinking that he was built like a rugby player – and I was handcuffed and sitting right beside a second-floor window. I realised I could be thrown through the window to my death at any minute. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that the police wouldn’t try to stop him. If I was lucky and the glass didn’t kill me, the fall would.
Eventually the woman calmed down, and said, ‘I want to know why!’
She was now weeping uncontrollably.
I knew there was no point in trying to explain everything from the beginning, so I just told her the truth.
/>
First, I hadn’t killed her brother or anyone else. Second, her brother had tried to kill me. I told her that I did have a fight with her brother, but I hadn’t seen him since.
I told her that I’d been tortured and I’d now been told he was dead.
Finally I told her that I was deeply sorry for her loss – but I hadn’t killed Holdsworth.
The woman looked at Superintendent Aneke and asked, ‘I thought you said that he’d confessed?’
Superintendent Aneke just smiled.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what the tourist police tell me.’
I found the entire situation very uncomfortable. It was also dangerous and humiliating. I asked to be taken back to the cell.
Superintendent Aneke told an officer to take me back to the room where the tourist police were waiting. They gave me some documents to sign – O’Connor’s charge sheet etc.
As it happened, O’Connor’s passport was sitting on the table, so I reached over and picked it up. This wasn’t the passport O’Connor had shown me. And the number was different.
I asked the police if they’d checked to see if it was a fake.
My wife Nanglung came to visit me around this time. She told me she had moved out of the house we’d been renting, and was staying with her mother.
She asked me if I’d told the police about her brothers’ involvement. I said that I hadn’t and she begged me not to.
She said that if I even mentioned their names to the police, then they’d be arrested too. I promised I wouldn’t mention them.
It wasn’t as if they’d actually done anything anyway. It wouldn’t really serve any purpose to bring them into it.
Looking back now, it was clear that Nanglung wasn’t concerned about me. She didn’t love me; our marriage was one of convenience for her. I knew this, but she was my only lifeline to the outside world; she was someone who could communicate with the outside world on my behalf.
At that moment in time, this was all that mattered to me.
I stayed at the police station for three more days. There was no more questioning and, thankfully, no more torture.