Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The Last Executioner


Books are much better than DVDs. While used ones cost about 160 baht as opposed to 100 baht per DVD, movies rarely last longer than 2 hours, unless you hit the fast-forward button. The BLACK DAHLIA flashed before my eyes in less than 12 minutes. It sucked.

Reading a book is a journey of days unless the book was no good, however I was recently lucky enough to find THE LAST EXECUTIONER by Chavoret Jaruboon, the last prison executioner on Thailand

The writing is functional and recounts Mr. Jaruboon's life as a teenage rock musician, soldier, prison guard, executioner, and finally monk. Neither of the first three prepared him for the 55 executions performed at Bang Kwang prison.

To him the job of poo sam-ret toht or executioner meant more money.

More...

2000 baht.

He outlines the crimes that led the condemned to their fate. Their crimes were often heinous. On the day of execution they were tied to a crucifix and shot up to 15 times by a machine gun. This humble man respects the dead, for fear of their ghosts. In the end Khun Jaraboon is glad to see the deadly fusillade replaced by fatal injection.

His last job was on 12/8/2002.

8 bullets into the back of a murdering rapist.

After that Jaruboon became a monk.

His favorite band was the Beatles.

One more thing.

Paperbacks are better than hard-covers. You can swap mosquitoes with them.

For a related article click on this URL

http://www.mangozeen.com/death-song-thailand.htm

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