Just Seventeen

Dear Ones:

She was just seventeen.

Early this month, one of our high school students was murdered, along with her mother, father, and younger brother, a student in the RIS Middle School. Their deaths were not discovered until the school had closed for the Easter-Songkran holiday last week. All her teachers remember her for an irrepressible giddiness and her joy in life. Her friends, and even those who did not know her well, remember her loyalty, friendship, and her bubbly personality.

Since the funerals, the police have floated the theory that the father was a loan shark, implying that he was killed by a client who did not want to repay a large debt. According to law, such a debt is not cancelled by his death. His survivors, meaning his wife and children, would inherit the debt, and that is why they were also killed. That theory is beguiling for we would all like to think that there is always a motive for unspeakable crimes, that there is a logic operating in a killer's head.

In fact, we have no definitive answers and I doubt we will ever find out the truth about what happened. It's true that two taxi drivers have confessed to the crime. Nevertheless, there remain many unanswered questions; chiefly, why? In Thailand, truth is never absolute (not when witnesses are vulnerable to bribes and disappearances) nor can it be independently verified (evidence can be lost or tampered with). Justice and science have their limitations here. We can only mourn what we have lost.

Walk good,
Jo Anne