CHON BURI: Police found the body of a missing German property broker hidden in a freezer at a house in tambon Nong Prue of Bang Lamung district on Monday night.
Detectives found the body of Hans Peter Ralter Mack, 62, as they were conducting a search based on surveillance camera footage. Police were trying to find the whereabouts of the German who went missing from his family on July 4.
Forensic officers were examining the scene to determine the cause of death.
Before finding the body, a Thai couple told police that they had been hired by a German woman to deliver the freezer to House No. 59/49 in Nong Prue.
Police then reviewed surveillance camera footage and identified a German man, a close friend of the German woman, driving a pickup truck, which transported the freezer. The truck was seen travelling on roads in Chon Buri, covering a total distance of about 160 kilometres.
The truck was eventually parked at a one-storey house number 22/96 in Chokchai Garden Home 1 housing estate in Nong Prue.
There police found the freezer containing the body, along with an electric saw, ropes, food seals and bottles of drinking water, soda and beer.
The victim's body was dismembered, with the head, body and limbs separated and put in bags that were found in the 1.50-metre-long freezer, which was being powered within the house.
Pol Maj Gen Theerachai Chamnanmor, investigative chief of the Provincial Police Region 2, said there was evidence pointing to the offenders. He attributed the death to extortion, adding that about 2 million baht had been transferred from the man's bank account.
On July 5 Mack's 24-year-old Thai wife, whose name was not released, told investigators that he had left their house in Swiss Paradise housing estate in Pattaya, Chon Buri, on July 4 to meet a foreign property broker. The meeting was to discuss property sales in Pattaya and Koh Samui of Surat Thani province.
Mack's silver Mercedes-Benz E350 coupe was found in the CC Condominium parking lot on Khao Noi Road in tambon Nong Prue on Sunday morning.
Inside the car police found stains of a chemical cleanser apparently used in an attempt to destroy evidence.
According to his wife, she had been living with the German for about five years. The man had two sons from a previous marriage.
