The Department of Special Investigation has offered a reward of 2 million baht to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest of the killer of a Japanese tourist 17 years ago.
The announcement was made today via the department’s Facebook page and is the latest effort by Thai law enforcement to find the killer of Tomoko Kawashita, whose body was found in a temple compound in Sukhothai province in 2007.
Her throat had been cut and her belongings were missing, leading police to suspect that she had been a victim of a robbery gone wrong.
The victim’s still grieving father, Yasuaki, is now in Thailand again to demand progress in the DSI’s investigation into the unsolved murder of his daughter.
Before the outbreak of COVID-19, he returned to Thailand almost every year in his quest to find his daughter’s killer. This year, he arrived last weekend and revisited the site where her body was found in Sukhothai.
He and his wife wept while laying flowers on the spot and spoke in loving memory of their daughter.
He also met with Justice Minister Tawee Sodsong yesterday at the ministry, but was not provided with any new information.
Yasuaki asked Tawee about the possibility of extending the statute of limitations on Tomoko’s case, which is due to be reached in three years. In Japan, there has been an amendment to related laws, allowing the extension of the statute of limitations, the father said. Tawee later told reporters that he would look into the request.
The DSI reopened the case in 2013, six years after the murder, as Sukhothai police had failed to make any progress.
DNA samples were collected from 379 Thai men, but no matches were found. A Japanese tourist, who was reportedly seen with Tomoko around the time of her death, refused to provide a DNA sample and left the country.
In 2020, Thai authorities applied a more advanced DNA testing method to the sample found on Tomoko. The result showed that the suspect was not genetically Thai.
Tomoko, then 27, was cheerful and in high spirits when she left Japan for Thailand, only to have her life tragically ended. After arriving in Bangkok on November 3, 2007, she visited many provinces in Thailand, including Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Lampang and Kanchanaburi.
She arrived in Sukhothai from Laos on November 24, for the Loy Krathong festival.
On November 25, at 10:30am, she bought an entrance ticket to Saphan Hin Temple and, at 1:10pm, her body was discovered in the temple compound.
To date, nobody knows what happened during those 2 hours and 40 minutes.
