PHUKET police are still pursuing clues they hope will lead them to the killers who savagely bludgeoned an attractive karaoke hostess and mother-to-be to death in the hills above Patong.

Slowly but surely, details are emerging of the young woman's complicated life, brutal yet puzzling death . . . and the bizarre nature of the discovery of her body.

What police can say is that the battered face uncovered beneath a mound of rocks in the hills belonged to Anicha ''Nan'' Khaigunha, 21. She was a wild-child, who left home in Khon Kaen at the age of 15.

The bright bud-lights of Patong beckoned Khun Nan, as they do for so many young women who abandon rural poverty for the bitter-sweet existence on the fringes of Phuket's tourism industry.

By the time she was murdered - probably smashed in the face and head repeatedly with a rock - she had a three-year-old child, a boy, and she was four months pregnant.

Phuket police have interviewed a succession of boyfriends. The two most recent, who were both still seeing Khun Nan at the time of her murder, even underwent the ''Cinderella test.'' Police found one set of female slip-on flip-flops at the death site, along with one male slip-on.

Both boyfriends, Kip, 19, and Maew, about the same age, were asked to try to put on the slip-on flip-flop. It failed to fit either of them.

The two men both underwent extensive interviews. Both were able to persuade police that their alibis were genuine. In the case of Khun Kip, he admitted to having had sex with the beautiful Khun Nan about 8pm on September 9.

He may have been the last person, apart from the killers, to see her alive. Whether he was the last person to make love to her, however, is not clear.

Khun Kip's alibi for the rest of the evening is that he went home to his wife. Khun Maew's explanation of his whereabouts at the time the murder was being committed have also withstood intense investigation.

A Patong retailer also remembers Khun Nan. The red woman's top, found near the body in the hills, has been used to rekindle memories of Khun Nan among people in the karaoke and bar industry of Patong, where Khun Nan operated as a freelance.

Earlier that evening, before she met her lover, Khun Nan bought a pack of nuts from the retailer. The vendor remembers: she did not have money to pay for the nuts, so he gave her credit.

Phuket police now reckon that Khun Nan was battered to death either late on September 9 or early on September 10, dying a horrible death at a quiet, romantic spot in the hills, near a rippling waterfall. It was accessible by a 30-minute trek up a walking track from Patong or a steeper climb from the Karon side of the hills.

Her body was found on September 12 by a man who was working in the hills, tapping a spring near the waterfall. That day, Ong-Art Korngkeaw, 30, heard a rock fall unexpectedly down the hillside.

He turned and saw a human hand sticking up from among the rocks, having apparently dislodged the rock above it. That was enough for Khun Ong-Art. He took off down the hill, and alerted police.

Since then, police have concluded that Khun Nan was probably taken to the spot and killed by two, or possibly three or even four people. They say this because it took two Burmese laborers to lift some of the larger rocks that had been used to cover Khun Nan's scantily-clad body.

She was wearing only a tight pair of shorts. Her panties, a bra, and the red top were nearby. So was a mobile telephone that had been smashed. Police are not able to say whether Khun Nan had sex, forcibly or voluntarily, with her killer or killers.

Later, after monks performed the equivalent of an exorcism at the scene, Khun Ong-Art returned to work, if a little nervously. Khun Nan's parents came from Khon Kaen, attended her cremation at Chalong temple, and carried her ashes home.

The investigation continues. It's such a brutal crime that police interest remains intense. One of Khun Nan's female friends was interviewed over the space of four hours on Friday.

Having discounted love-interest as a motive for the murder, police now believe that the presence of two candles at the death scene - one half-burned and the other unlit - probably indicates a connection with drugs, and probably an unpaid debt.

Somewhere in Nakhon Si Thammarat, where Khun Nan's boy now lives, a father may one day be faced with the dilemma of whether he tells his son about the fate of his estranged mother.