"HarryKrause" wrote in message
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Trial of Princess Baby Fish transfixes Thai public

14.03.05
by Jan McGirk
NZ Herald

BANGKOK - This is a cautionary tale for commoners who become caught up
in the decadent whirl of high society. It is a story of lust, royals, a
poisoning with flea powder, and it all centres on a young woman called
Princess Baby Fish.

Life has not gone swimmingly for the ill-fated Chalasai Yugala, ever
since she confessed to poisoning her powerful husband in Bangkok nearly
a decade ago.

Acquitted this month of first-degree murder due to a lack of evidence,
the 33-year-old remarried widow wept with joy. But Thailand’s most
notorious woman must now brace herself for the verdict to be challenged
in the Supreme Court.

If found guilty of murdering Prince Thitipan Yugala, a distant cousin of
the revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Baby Fish faces the death penalty.
The Thai public is fixated by this rare look at the tangled private
lives of royalty. Commentators are shocked by the circumstances of Baby
Fish’s abusive upbringing in the palace, where she reportedly was raped
at the age of 14 and held as a sex slave.

The 60-year-old Prince Thitipan, whose pet name, Than Kob, translates as
Frog, collapsed into a coma after sipping breakfast coffee laced with
flea killer one August morning in 1995. He died a week later.

By all accounts, Baby Fish, his third wife, spent little time grieving.

After she rang an ambulance to whisk the Prince off to intensive care,
she left with her lover, Uthet Choopwa, a teenage chestnut vendor whose
stand was just around the corner from the palace.

A few Thai commentators pity Baby Fish because she forsook wealth and a
lofty position for romance in penury. But most Thais revile Baby Fish as
an opportunistic murderer.

Born in 1972, she was dumped by her middle-class Thai parents when she
was 4 because her skin was too swarthy, and placed in Asawin Palace to
be groomed as a royal servant. At 14, she was reportedly violated by her
royal guardian, who became besotted and married her in 1994, when he was
59.

Baby Fish’s lawyers argued that there was only circumstantial evidence
and no motive for committing murder. They pointed out that Prince
Thitipan openly tolerated visits by his wife’s lover, even to the palace
grounds.

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This is a great piece, worthy of a made-for-TV movie on Fox, at the very
least.

Great details. Really. Flea powder. A woman named Baby Fish
(boating-fishing connection). A chestnut vendor. A 59-year-old guy
marrying a girl he raped when she was a 14-year-old girl.

Tell me this doesn't have Fox written all over it.

Actually sounds more like the mouse network, ABC needs more like this to
stay on top. Along with Desperate Housewives, etc. Fox has a great hit
comedy in Arrested Development. Seems as if the mouse is in to more
salacious entertainment.