SOME deep riddles remain about American Ron Fanelli, the former Naval officer and long-stay tourist who confessed to stabbing Sweethearts Bar hostess Wanpen Pianchai, stuffing her naked body into a suitcase and dumping it beside an isolated Phuket roadway.
At the Phuket City police station media presentation on Monday, Fanelli still seemed disoriented and shocked about his capacity to kill. Phuketwan asked him how he was being treated, then followed up: ''Mr Fanelli, have you admitted your guilt in this case?''
He replied: ''I have made a full statement of what happened. I don't want to go into it. I killed her. To gain the full context, you would have to read the full story. It was wrong. It was a horrible, horrible accident, in my opinion. I never intended to do any harm to this person.''
Fanelli said he came for a long holiday after quitting the Navy. ''I intended to stay for a couple of months and fell in love with the area,'' he told Phuketwan, adding that he was originally from New York.
Fanelli is said to have a Thai wife and a child, and part of his brutal treatment of Wanpen, police say, was because he was distraught. They had gone back to Isarn in eastern Thailand, leaving him.
Why did he go to Sweethearts Bar in Kata-Karon at 7am on June 18? Did he really first ask for the company of a katoey ladyboy?
Police were reticent to reveal details of Mr Fanelli's account because, as part of a deal to protect his Thai wife, the young child, and other family, he admitted his guilt, as long as the full circumstances of the killing were not revealed.
However, there's a gap of almost a week between Wanpen's disappearance on June 18 and the discovery of her body on June 24. Police say she was not killed until June 19. That's what Fanelli told them.
What happened in those 24 hours? What led to her death? A naked woman is hardly a threat to a grown man, even one who had been drinking. Only Fanelli's version can ever be told.
Now a columnist in the British newspaper, The Observer, has revealed Fanelli's past as ''Mad Yank,'' at one time a poker player of international standing.
''My old poker friend Ron Fanelli never seemed 'pretty quiet,' writes Victoria Coren. ''He was a noisy guy, opinionated. He broke all the rules of London poker etiquette by turning up at the casino, six or seven years ago, and sounding off right from the start. But I forgave him all the noise, because he was American. He was funny. I liked him.
''When I hosted a series on the Poker Channel, a niche chatshow with poker players as guests, I invited Ron to take part in several episodes because he was entertaining and outspoken. One episode had the theme of 'table manners': what is and is not acceptable behavior in a poker game. My opening question was: 'Ron, what is the worst thing you've ever done?'
''Ron replied: 'Me? I'm an angel. I've never done anything bad. Well, I guess I've made a few people cry. I don't like getting unlucky. There was that time I told everyone at the table I hoped they'd die of cancer. Other than that, I've never done anything bad.
''And he laughed. The other guests laughed.''
Mr Fanelli told Phuketwan on Monday that he was being fairly treated by police. This was no frame-up. Yet Ms Cohen shared our puzzlement at how the crime could have been committed.
''When I heard he had confessed, I thought he must have been coerced into it,'' Ms Cohen wrote.
''But then the police found the knife in Ron's house. He gave them the shorts he was wearing at the time of the murder. They took away his mattress. He pleaded that he had been drunk at the time. He said it was an accident.''
She explains his poker nickname.
''We called him 'the Mad Yank'. He was temperamental, but you don't give someone a 'mad' nickname if you mean it. It was just a joke. He loved it. I think the name might actually have been his own idea to begin with.
''I had an argument with him once, when he first started dating Thai girls. He told me that western women were 'strident feminists. Bossy and demanding. Asian women are docile, they understand what men want.'
''I told him not to be so bloody silly. I told him that women are the same the world over, and not to be fooled by the clever tricks of one who might be angling for marriage. (He did end up marrying a Thai woman. They had a child, in Thailand, and a few months later she left him.)
'Most poker players are lovable old sexists. Ron was a rightwing American who had served in the navy. I didn't take the argument seriously. Looking back now, it takes on a sinister tone.
''I have a photo of myself with the Mad Yank, from 2004. He was having a great time then: winning at poker, popular on internet forums, appearing on chatshows. He played it up, growing an exaggerated moustache and wearing sunglasses. I thought he looked funny in the picture. Staring back at it now, he looks like a killer.''
She writes that Ron had run out of money by 2006. ''His hot poker streak had fizzled out; he was kipping on friends' floors and borrowing money. His pride was dented. He was no longer the big success story. He looked for occasional work as a croupier, dealing cards to people whose money he had once won.
''When he met a 'docile' Thai girl, her deference boosted his damaged ego. The obvious move was to follow her to Thailand, living in 'paradise' (as he described it on his blog) where everything was cheap and he felt important again.
''But she left him. He married a different Thai girl, had a child, then she left him too. Ron was broke but still gambling. He was short-tempered. He demanded obedience. These women had no need of a difficult, impoverished husband in their own homeland.
''That wasn't the deal. They grew tired of deferring, with only that in return. If he couldn't be an old-fashioned provider, why be an old-fashioned housewife?
''When his wife left, Ron felt fooled and betrayed. The women who were supposed to make him feel important had made him feel stupid. It had all been a con. The anger and shame ran deep. He still had little money and no job. At this point, Ron started to use prostitutes. It was a power thing. He used more and more of them. After a while, hiring them for sex was not enough to make Ron feel powerful. He made them do sicker and kinkier things.
''He didn't know what had gone wrong. He was a clever, articulate, former military man. He used to win money in glamorous poker tournaments. He had been an alpha male. Now, here he was, stuck in a foreign country where he had chased a woman who left him; another had taken his child away; he was unemployed, skint and using prostitutes. Ron knew he was a man to be reckoned with, even if nobody else could see it. Even if his wife couldn't see it.
''No amount of hookers, no manner of kinky activity, could fill the hole where Ron's self-esteem used to be. He knew, now, that the women's obliging, flattering manners were just a pretence. That's just what women do to get what they want. He despised them for it. What he didn't understand was that the more he degraded and punished the girls, the worse he felt about himself. And the further he had to go to feel masterful again. It was a dark, twisted cycle.''
Ms Cohen offers some more thoughts on what she thinks made Fanelli a killer, a man capable of stabbing a harmless, naked woman to death. Only ''Mad Yank'' Fanelli knows for sure. And he is not saying.
The photograph of Victoria Cohen and Ron Fanelli and her column can be found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/ron-fanelli-wanphen-pienjai-poker
Phuket Bar Hostess Killing a 'Horrible Accident'At the Phuket City police station media presentation on Monday, Fanelli still seemed disoriented and shocked about his capacity to kill. Phuketwan asked him how he was being treated, then followed up: ''Mr Fanelli, have you admitted your guilt in this case?''
He replied: ''I have made a full statement of what happened. I don't want to go into it. I killed her. To gain the full context, you would have to read the full story. It was wrong. It was a horrible, horrible accident, in my opinion. I never intended to do any harm to this person.''
Fanelli said he came for a long holiday after quitting the Navy. ''I intended to stay for a couple of months and fell in love with the area,'' he told Phuketwan, adding that he was originally from New York.
Fanelli is said to have a Thai wife and a child, and part of his brutal treatment of Wanpen, police say, was because he was distraught. They had gone back to Isarn in eastern Thailand, leaving him.
Why did he go to Sweethearts Bar in Kata-Karon at 7am on June 18? Did he really first ask for the company of a katoey ladyboy?
Police were reticent to reveal details of Mr Fanelli's account because, as part of a deal to protect his Thai wife, the young child, and other family, he admitted his guilt, as long as the full circumstances of the killing were not revealed.
However, there's a gap of almost a week between Wanpen's disappearance on June 18 and the discovery of her body on June 24. Police say she was not killed until June 19. That's what Fanelli told them.
What happened in those 24 hours? What led to her death? A naked woman is hardly a threat to a grown man, even one who had been drinking. Only Fanelli's version can ever be told.
Now a columnist in the British newspaper, The Observer, has revealed Fanelli's past as ''Mad Yank,'' at one time a poker player of international standing.
''My old poker friend Ron Fanelli never seemed 'pretty quiet,' writes Victoria Coren. ''He was a noisy guy, opinionated. He broke all the rules of London poker etiquette by turning up at the casino, six or seven years ago, and sounding off right from the start. But I forgave him all the noise, because he was American. He was funny. I liked him.
''When I hosted a series on the Poker Channel, a niche chatshow with poker players as guests, I invited Ron to take part in several episodes because he was entertaining and outspoken. One episode had the theme of 'table manners': what is and is not acceptable behavior in a poker game. My opening question was: 'Ron, what is the worst thing you've ever done?'
''Ron replied: 'Me? I'm an angel. I've never done anything bad. Well, I guess I've made a few people cry. I don't like getting unlucky. There was that time I told everyone at the table I hoped they'd die of cancer. Other than that, I've never done anything bad.
''And he laughed. The other guests laughed.''
Mr Fanelli told Phuketwan on Monday that he was being fairly treated by police. This was no frame-up. Yet Ms Cohen shared our puzzlement at how the crime could have been committed.
''When I heard he had confessed, I thought he must have been coerced into it,'' Ms Cohen wrote.
''But then the police found the knife in Ron's house. He gave them the shorts he was wearing at the time of the murder. They took away his mattress. He pleaded that he had been drunk at the time. He said it was an accident.''
She explains his poker nickname.
''We called him 'the Mad Yank'. He was temperamental, but you don't give someone a 'mad' nickname if you mean it. It was just a joke. He loved it. I think the name might actually have been his own idea to begin with.
''I had an argument with him once, when he first started dating Thai girls. He told me that western women were 'strident feminists. Bossy and demanding. Asian women are docile, they understand what men want.'
''I told him not to be so bloody silly. I told him that women are the same the world over, and not to be fooled by the clever tricks of one who might be angling for marriage. (He did end up marrying a Thai woman. They had a child, in Thailand, and a few months later she left him.)
'Most poker players are lovable old sexists. Ron was a rightwing American who had served in the navy. I didn't take the argument seriously. Looking back now, it takes on a sinister tone.
''I have a photo of myself with the Mad Yank, from 2004. He was having a great time then: winning at poker, popular on internet forums, appearing on chatshows. He played it up, growing an exaggerated moustache and wearing sunglasses. I thought he looked funny in the picture. Staring back at it now, he looks like a killer.''
She writes that Ron had run out of money by 2006. ''His hot poker streak had fizzled out; he was kipping on friends' floors and borrowing money. His pride was dented. He was no longer the big success story. He looked for occasional work as a croupier, dealing cards to people whose money he had once won.
''When he met a 'docile' Thai girl, her deference boosted his damaged ego. The obvious move was to follow her to Thailand, living in 'paradise' (as he described it on his blog) where everything was cheap and he felt important again.
''But she left him. He married a different Thai girl, had a child, then she left him too. Ron was broke but still gambling. He was short-tempered. He demanded obedience. These women had no need of a difficult, impoverished husband in their own homeland.
''That wasn't the deal. They grew tired of deferring, with only that in return. If he couldn't be an old-fashioned provider, why be an old-fashioned housewife?
''When his wife left, Ron felt fooled and betrayed. The women who were supposed to make him feel important had made him feel stupid. It had all been a con. The anger and shame ran deep. He still had little money and no job. At this point, Ron started to use prostitutes. It was a power thing. He used more and more of them. After a while, hiring them for sex was not enough to make Ron feel powerful. He made them do sicker and kinkier things.
''He didn't know what had gone wrong. He was a clever, articulate, former military man. He used to win money in glamorous poker tournaments. He had been an alpha male. Now, here he was, stuck in a foreign country where he had chased a woman who left him; another had taken his child away; he was unemployed, skint and using prostitutes. Ron knew he was a man to be reckoned with, even if nobody else could see it. Even if his wife couldn't see it.
''No amount of hookers, no manner of kinky activity, could fill the hole where Ron's self-esteem used to be. He knew, now, that the women's obliging, flattering manners were just a pretence. That's just what women do to get what they want. He despised them for it. What he didn't understand was that the more he degraded and punished the girls, the worse he felt about himself. And the further he had to go to feel masterful again. It was a dark, twisted cycle.''
Ms Cohen offers some more thoughts on what she thinks made Fanelli a killer, a man capable of stabbing a harmless, naked woman to death. Only ''Mad Yank'' Fanelli knows for sure. And he is not saying.
The photograph of Victoria Cohen and Ron Fanelli and her column can be found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/ron-fanelli-wanphen-pienjai-poker
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I agree Thailand is certainly a magnet for sexist, foreign men. I often wonder if the Thai women are aware of the dregs they are settling for.
Posted by Horse Doctor on July 25, 2010 11:52