The Poisoned Prince, His Wife and Her Lover

Thailand's soap opera writers are in something of bind. Their tacky and melodramatic storylines suddenly seem rather bland when compared with the real-life drama that has the nation spellbound.

After all, how can fiction compete with the story of Chalasai Khwanthiti, the sexually abused Cinderella who married her sugar-daddy prince and then poisoned him so that she could spend more time with her chestnut-seller lover - only to be caught, (allegedly) psychologically tormented by the police and sentenced to six years in prison for the prince's manslaughter.

This extraordinary story is given added spice by Thailand's undiluted reverence for its royal family. This prohibits any criticism of the family's exploits, let alone alleged crimes, and has allowed the late Prince Thitiphan Yugala to escape with his reputation untarnished, much to the anger of a handful of activists for children's and women's rights, who claim that Thailand's upper-crust males can get away with virtually anything.

Abandoned shortly after her birth in 1972, the young Chalasai was adopted into the household of Prince Thitiphan, a cousin of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

"This is quite normal for members of the royal family," says Chalidaporn Songsampan, a professor in women's studies at Thammasap University in Bangkok. "It's normal for children to come and stay in their palaces. The girls could get trained to do homecrafts or domestic work and the boys could learn to read and write. They could then work as servants and some become mistresses."

Chalasai became Prince Thitiphan's sex slave in her early teens, according to Sanitsuda Ekachai of the Bangkok Post. He has described how the prince, known as "Than Kob" - Frog - boasted of using Chalasai, nicknamed "Luk Pla" - Baby Fish - on account of her relatively stocky and plain features, as his "sex machine".

Chalidaporn says the prince's actions were neither out of the ordinary nor frowned upon when made public. "The monogamy rules just apply to women and not men," she says. "And Thai society cannot recognise this double standard."

What is unusual about this story is that the prince became so infatuated with Chalasai that he divorced his then wife, Mom Wasana Faikrua (who had, several years previously, persuaded the prince to divorce his first wife, Mom Oonruen Thammaset, and marry her), and married his Baby Fish.

When they tied the knot in August 1994, Prince Thitiphan was 59, 37 years older than Chalasai. She was granted the honorific title Mom Chalasai Yugala Na Ayudhaya.

But it was no fairytale. "I don't think she was accepted by the prince's circle," says Chalidaporn. "She became a victim of high-society gossip.

"She was very young and it was not easy to live in that environment, so it was understandable that she wanted to have a relationship with a man of her own age."

Within months of the nuptials, Mom Chalasai was committing adultery. But what set the wagging tongues into overdrive was not so much her philandering but her choice of paramour. Mom Chalasai began a liaison with Uthet Choopwa, an 18-year-old roast-chestnut seller in Siam Square, near Prince Thitiphan's Asawin Palace.

She initially tried to meet him in secret (by persuading the prince to take lots of sleeping pills, Mom Oonruen revealed later in a court case) but eventually took to disappearing for days on end.

Prince Thitiphan initially responded by placing advertisements in national newspapers appealing to her to return, but then he simply forbade her to see Uthet and tried to restrict her to the palace. It is not clear whether he had also strayed from the marital bed by this stage.

In February 1995, the prince was devastated by the death of his father, Prince Bhanubhandh Yugala, who died aged 85 from blood poisoning. Foul play was not suspected but investigators later speculated that the death might have provoked Mom Chalasai into taking the desperate measure of which she was accused, to escape the palace confines.

Seven months later, on Au gust 21, after taking the first few sips of his morning coffee in the couple's private quarters on the first floor of the palace, Prince Thitiphan suddenly started retching violently. He collapsed and Mom Chalasai, who claimed she could do little to help him, called relatives and an ambulance for help. The ailing prince was rushed to hospital, where he fell into a coma and, eight days later, died.

An autopsy revealed that there was nothing in the prince's stomach except caffeine and a carbonate poison. Detectives later said that they had found carbonate compounds in vomit stains on the palace breakfast room's carpet, and so concluded that the poison was in the coffee.

Within weeks the grieving widow had fled, and within a year she had married her chestnut seller and settled in the north of the country. It seemed that she was not too bothered about whether she would benefit financially from the death of her husband, whose estate has been valued at about £350,000.

Peace did not reign for long in Mom Chalasai's life, however. In mid-1997 the police concluded their investigations and arrested her for the murder of her late husband. They admitted that they had no smoking gun linking her to the death, but they did have plenty of circumstantial evidence and dozens of witnesses who could attest to motive. When officers took Mom Chalasai, who by then had a son from her new husband, to the Asawin Palace to re-enact the death, she reportedly burst into tears when she saw a portrait of her late husband.

Under interrogation, Chalasai confessed to poisoning her husband by putting flea killer in his coffee. But during a lie-detector test administered by US police experts, she said she had merely wanted to have Prince Thitiphan taken to hospital so she would be at liberty to spend time with her lover.

In court she retracted the confession, saying it was made under great stress and intimidation by the police.

The trial, which began in late 1997, has gripped a nation that rarely hears such details about the lives of the rich and famous. Mom Chalasai did not garner that much sympathy, though, according to Santsasit Koompraphant of the Centre for Child Rights Protection, even when the sordid details of her childhood were revealed.

"It is too sensitive a subject for people to have any sympathy for someone who commits a crime against the royal family," he says. "The media supported the prosecution because they're in the mainstream and they're loyal to all members of the royal family."

Usa Lerdsrisuntad of the Foundation for Women in Bangkok says there was great resentment against Mom Chalasai for exposing the decadent practices of the upper class. "It was and still is a very sensitive case because this happened a lot with old men, rich men and influential men."

Santsasit adds: "Anyone with high-class or high-economic status can do what they want in situations like this case. They can buy evidence or buy off witnesses and so always win."

Last week the court found Mom Chalasai guilty of manslaughter and sentenced her to nine years in prison, but immediately reduced it to six because it accepted her claim that she did not want to kill her husband. The judges also took into account the assistance she gave in getting Prince Thitiphan to hospital and her confession, which expedited the case.

Mom Chalasai's lawyers said they would appeal immediately and their client was released on bail. Santsasit contends that she should never go anywhere near a prison cell.

"If she is sent anywhere she should be at a hospital rather than in the prison," he says. "The problem is that in Thailand our lawyers don't have any ideas about children's rights, women's rights or social factors that might provoke a woman into doing this.

"[Mom Chalasai] had a very bad childhood history that caused something to go wrong with her emotions and brain function. But our criminal law is too narrow and strict so there are few options for the offender."