RUNNING FOR HIS LIFE: Scholar: My Thai wife is a murderer
Andrew Drummond
The Nation
Buri Ram
Published on Sep 18, 2002
An American academic who fled Thailand for Japan alleges that he was tricked into covering up the brutal torture and murder of a Thai bar girl, who he claims was killed by his ex-wife.
Police said they were investigating claims by Professor Jack Clontz, 63, a university lecturer with three degrees in philosophy, before deciding whether to reopen the case of the girl’s grisly death.
Clontz claimed the murder took place at the house he had bought for his Thai wife - who he had since divorced - in the Northeastern province of Buri Ram.
The 23-year-old bar girl, who worked in Bangkok, was allegedly beaten for four hours before having a wok of boiling oil poured over her. She died later in hospital.
Clontz said he fled Thailand after discovering that he was going to be the next victim. He said he had invested more than US$100,000 (Bt4.3 million) in land, a home and car for himself and his wife, whom he had met in a Patpong bar.
A spokesman for Buri Ram Hospital confirmed that the girl, Natsaporn Yongyingpoon, also called Sorn, died in the intensive care unit on August 2 of burns covering a third of her body.
Two witnesses, who were in the house at the time, have named Clontz’s wife as the murder.
The parents of the dead girl, Jum and Von Yongyingpoon, said from their home in Tambon Sadao, Amphur Praprachai, Buri Ram that they had accepted Bt100,000 compensation.
“At first we were offered just Bt20,000 [by Clontz's ex-wife], but when we said we would cover her with boiling oil for Bt30,000 [to cover up Sorn's cause of death], she increased the offer,” said Jum.
Buri Ram Police Captain Borit Phromyotan said he would investigate the new claims.
“At the time all the witnesses said they knew nothing, or that the girl had done this to herself,” he said.
The Nation has handed Clontz’s statement and the names of the witnesses. The alleged murder took place his Buri Ram home, the “House that Jack Built” in Baan Sarapee, Amphur Muang.
“I am not going to be a party to this murder. I realise it was my money that was used to keep this murder silent.” said Clontz. “A vicious criminal act of great moral turpitude has been committed without any response. It’s as if this girl did not exist,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Nation.
“I fled Buri Ram after I was told by my wife’s family they had heard my wife planning to kill me near the Cambodian border and dump my body,” he wrote in the e-mail.
“I had built a home for my wife and bought her a Honda Civic. I realise now I had outlived my usefulness. I paid for and was provided with a police bodyguard of seven officers to go back and collect my belongings. They did not seem too interested in the murder.”
Clontz, a lecturer at the Maebashi Kyoai Gakuen College in Guma Prefecture near Tokyo, married the woman in Bangkok two years ago.
They were an unlikely couple. Clontz, an intellectual from a well-connected family, is the author of a paper entitled “Heidegger’s Interpretation of the Role of the Transcendental Imagination in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason”.
His ex-wife, 24, an ex-Patpong bar girl, is one of several children born to a family of rice farmers.
Clontz admitted he had lost all reason when he fell head over heels for the woman. He showered her with gifts and planned to retire with her to the home he built in Buri Ram.
Unknown to him however his wife had also used his cash to buy a separate plot of land and pick-up truck for her Thai lover.
In July he received a call in Japan from his wife, who was hiding in Surin, after the alleged incident at his house. “She said she had been in a fight and needed Bt210,000 because she had injured someone while trying to defend herself, Clontz said.
“As her husband it was my duty to support her, but when I came back to Thailand it became clear quite quickly that the other girl was not merely injured, she had been murdered.
“Before she died she was tortured for four hours. Her head was repeatedly bashed against a wall, her hair was cut off with scissors and finally she was dragged outside and boiling oil was poured over her.
“It transpired that my wife had a Thai ‘husband’ that I did not know about. She even had a child by him while I was in Japan. She told me the child was as a result of an indiscretion with a man who worked in a gay bar and I believed her,” he said.
“Sorn was killed because she had apparently slept with my wife’s Thai lover. I knew her. She was a sweet jovial girl, quite plain, but perhaps not very smart.”
Clontz comes from a well to do family in North Carolina. His brother was an aide to former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright.
He is an expert linguist and speaks Japanese, Spanish, Tagalog, Mandarin, French, German and all the Scandinavian languages, but not Thai.
When The Nation visited his Buri Ram home yesterday it was deserted. His ex-wife’s father and brother have fled to relatives near the Cambodian border.
Clontz said he said he hoped to convert his home into a “Sorn Memorial” and study centre for academics visiting the local Khmer ruins.