Chilling CCTV shows final moments of tourists before they’re poisoned with ‘cyanide-laced tea’ by US woman in Thai hotel
HAUNTING CCTV footage shows the last moments of five people’s lives before they were allegedly poisoned with cyanide-spiked tea.
An American-Vietnamese woman is believed to have dosed the drinks of her five relatives in a luxury Thailand hotel before they were found dead by a maid.
Sherine Chong, 56, allegedly killed the two women and three men over a row about debts worth more than £200,000.
She then took her own life by also drinking the poisoned tea, Khaoso reports.
A hotel worker made the grim discovery on Tuesday in a room which had been locked from the inside.
Now CCTV footage shows some of the five victims arriving at the hotel, towing their suitcases as they made their way to the room.
The clip, shared in Vietnamese media, shows the men and women heading through a garden at the hotel.
Another CCTV image shared in local media purports to show Sherine in the hotel before the murders.
Chilling pictures of the murder scene showed a table covered in teacups and thermos bottles which cops later found cyanide residue inside.
Nearby lay a selection of untouched room service food that was delivered on Monday afternoon before the tourists were found dead.
There were no other visitors, no one was seen leaving and the door was locked from the inside.
Post-mortem results confirmed cyanide was present in the cups and bodies of the victims.
Sherine waited in a hotel room on the fifth floor for her alleged victims and ordered tea and food from room service before they arrived.
She reportedly refused an offer from staff to make the tea for her, the Bangkok post reports.
The others arrived around 2pm on Monday and on Tuesday a maid found their bodies in the room.
They were staying at the luxury Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok.
The three dead women were named as 46-year-old Nguyen Thi Phuong, Sherine Chong, 56, and Nguyen Thi Phuong Lan, also 46.
The male victims are Tran Dinh Phu, 37, Dang Hung Van, 55, and 49-year-old Hong Thanh Pham.
Four of the bodies were found in the living room and two in the bedroom.
Two appeared to have reached for the door but collapsed before they could make it, cops revealed.
A seventh person outside of the group of victims booked the hotel room where the tragedy unfolded.
After speaking to her cops determined she is the sister of the one of the victims.
But she flew back to her home country on July 10 – meaning investigators have ruled her out of their enquiries.
The victims included four Vietnamese nationals and two Vietnamese- Americans.
Suspected killer Chong had both a Vietnamese and US passport and had visited Thailand five times before.
She had reportedly persuaded a married couple and two others in the group to invest in a hospital build in Japan.
They apparently lost £215,000 in the project.
The group might have been meeting to settle the row over their debts.
Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said the FBI are heading over to investigate.
Police said a mass suicide was unlikely because some of them had arranged future parts of their trip, such as guides or drivers.
On top of that the bodies were in different parts of the hotel room, suggesting they did not knowingly consume poison and wait for their deaths together.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller offered condolences to the families of the dead.
