British citizen Shane Looker convicted of 2014 murder of Thai woman whose body was found in suitcase

A Thai courtroom on Tuesday convicted a British man of the 2014 homicide of a girl whose dismembered physique was present in a suitcase dumped in a river.

Shane Kenneth Looker was given an eight-year jail sentence for killing 27-year-old intercourse employee Laxami Manochat in a lodge room and disposing of her physique.

Police stated the 51-year-old had been photographed with Laxami — nicknamed “Pook” — leaving a Bangkok go-go bar on November 1, 2014 earlier than the pair have been seen coming into a lodge collectively.

Solely Looker was seen leaving the premises, with a bellboy reporting his giant bag was so heavy it took two individuals to hold it, and a lodge cleaner saying the room’s bedsheets have been bloodstained.

“The defendant is discovered responsible of costs and sentenced to 16 years in jail however as a consequence of his confession, the courtroom lowered his sentence by half to eight years with out suspended jail time period,” an official on the courtroom within the western city of Kanchanaburi stated.

Looker was ordered to pay compensation of slightly below 10 million baht ($300,000) plus curiosity to Laxami’s mom, in addition to two million baht plus curiosity to the murdered girl’s daughter, one other courtroom official stated.

Laxami’s dismembered corpse was discovered on November 6, 2014, in a suitcase loaded with stones and tossed into the Mae Klong River.

Looker’s DNA was later found below her nails.

Kanchanaburi Provincial Court docket issued an arrest warrant on January 28 2015 for “murdering and hiding, transferring or destroying a physique in an effort to conceal the dying or reason for dying”.

However the Briton — who laid low at his vacation dwelling within the upmarket Thai seaside resort of Hua Hin for weeks earlier than taking a practice over the border to Malaysia — had already fled to Spain.

Looker was detained in June 2017 on the celebration island of Ibiza by Spanish authorities appearing on a world arrest warrant.

He spent years combating an exhaustive authorized battle in opposition to extradition, claiming he could be topic to inhuman therapy in Thailand.

Ultimately the European Court docket of Human Rights rejected his problem, after Thai authorities gave assurances he wouldn’t face the dying penalty, and he was despatched to the dominion to face trial in July.