Thai police make arrest in 2003 murder of Dutch man

After 17 years the convicted murderer of Dutch businessman Jules Odekerken was arrested in Thailand on Tuesday evening. Anuphong S. was arrested in a house in the northern province of Phrae, where he was in hiding, the Thai Crime Suppression Division announced in a press conference on Wednesday, the Telegraaf reports.

Odekerken was brutally killed in front of the gate of his home in the Thai town of Pattaya in November 2003. He was stabbed and his mutilated body was dumped on a garbage dump. The Thai police almost immediately arrested Odekerken's Thai wife Marisa P., her brother and her lover Anuphong S., a local politician.

When S. was released on bail, he disappeared. He was tried in absentia and in 2007 he was sentenced to death. The court convicted S. and the Marisa P.'s brother of murder. The brother confessed and his death sentence was converted to life imprisonment. Marisa P. was also sentenced to life in prison and is currently behind bars.

"It was a complex case," police major general Jirabhop Bhuridej said at the press conference in Bangkok, responding to questions of why it took so long to arrest S.