Welcome to Hell (9 page)

My only hope was that justice would prevail in the courtroom. In this regard, I decided to focus on preparing a solid defence for my trial.

* * *

I was brought to court 12 days later. In the first few days inside that squalid jail, I had hoped and prayed that the Thai courts would somehow become my salvation. But even the experience of going to court was shrouded in brutality and indignity.

When the day came, I was forced to wear the prison-issue brown clothes – brown shirt and brown shorts, no underwear and, of course, no socks or shoes.

I was loaded onto a bus with dozens of men and driven to a courthouse. I half expected them to remove the chains before we entered the court; I thought they would prejudice my trial. But I was wrong.

We were marched into the court only to find that once again there was no judge, no prosecutor and no lawyer. There was only a court clerk and the police. There was no hearing.

The clerk called out all 20 names, and said, ‘12 days.’

And that was it. The whole process didn’t take more than five minutes.

Once again, we were squeezed like sardines onto the bus; we were strip-searched by the sadistic guards; we watched the new prisoners get humiliated; we rushed through into the sleeping section for a very quick shower; and we hurried up to the room to be counted and locked up for the night.

I would go through exactly the same procedure seven times before I was even formally charged.

The police had 84 days to complete their investigations. After that they had to charge you or let you go. I eventually found out that no judge or prosecutor bothered to go to the court before the 84 days had expired.

I convinced myself that I would be released after I had spent 84 days in jail because I had not received any legal papers or been served with any charge sheets.

I talked to my new friends about what I was going to do when I was released. No one contradicted me because I seemed to be in better spirits. The notion of freedom lifted me out of my despair.

I had been taken to court every 12 days and nothing had happened. I interpreted this as a good sign.

When the 84-day period had expired, I was taken to court as usual with everyone else. I was sure this was the day they were going to release me. My mental health had improved noticeably. I was in good form.

After I complied with the various security procedures at the court, I was brought before another court clerk.

He told me to sign for another 12 days. I couldn’t believe it; I felt like a fool. I fought back the tears and promised myself I would never be so self-deluding again.

There was nothing I could do. I kept asking myself what was happening. Just as I was being put onto the bus to go back to the prison, a court police guard came up to me.

‘You Colin Martin?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I’m Colin Martin.’

‘This is for you,’ he said.

He handed me three pages of paper, and simply walked away. At first I thought he had given me release papers or some court order. But the commandos insisted that I step on the bus and return to the prison. I held on to the papers for my dear life.

During the strip-search at the prison gate, one commando saw the papers lying on the ground at my feet while I stood naked.

He asked me what they were.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘They’re in Thai.’

He held out his hand, so I picked them up and gave the papers to him. He told me that they were my charge papers. I’d just been charged with first degree murder.

10

By the time I was charged with murder, I’d come to terms with the situation that I found myself in. I had pulled myself together as best I could. I suppose I knew all along in my heart that I was trapped and wouldn’t be freed any time soon. In this regard, the most important lesson that I learned was that I couldn’t survive without money.

Nothing was provided in prison, and nothing was free. The food they gave the prisoners was inedible. To stay alive, I had to buy my own food from the guards along with everything else. So I never knew whether I’d eat tomorrow if I bought food today.

The prison authorities didn’t even give me a blanket, razors, soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste, or any of the other necessities I needed to stay clean and healthy. Everything came down to money. I realised that fighting my way through the legal system, too, would take cash.

At that time my older brother and sister sent money when they could afford it, but it wasn’t a weekly or monthly amount. If they didn’t have money to spare, I didn’t eat. I continued to lose weight.

I didn’t really worry about my health in the beginning because I didn’t think that I’d be in jail very long. When I say long, I mean years. I lived in the hope that I would be freed in the coming months.

Whatever money I had of my own when I was arrested, I’d left with my wife Nanglung. I’d given everything to her and told her to take care of herself and our 18-month-old son Brendan. My older brother Tommy also sent her some money when he could.

Nanglung used to visit me regularly, but I wouldn’t let her buy me anything because she had no income. This left me in a horrific position.

But there was worse to come.

Some months after my arrest, my brother Tommy arrived in Thailand with money and medicines. His visit was a relief. He was a lifeline. When he arrived, he immediately began to look for ways to secure my release.

Legally, I was entitled to bail for the duration of my trial. I discussed it with Tommy and he offered to put up the money.

We decided that it would be best to rent the land papers or deeds of a Thai person willing to help. One of the lawyers I had hired had told me that I would be required to pay 20 per cent of the bail bond.

I was told that bail isn’t set in Thailand; instead, defendants and their lawyer simply take a guess at what the court will accept. In my case, we thought that one million baht (about $40,000) would be enough, which required a payment of 200,000 baht to rent the land papers.

My lawyer agreed to arrange everything and Tommy offered to pay the money. When Tommy arrived in Thailand, he naturally spent some time with my wife Nanglung. He discussed the bail application with her.

When Tommy said the lawyer would make the bail application, she told me and Tommy not to trust him – she said he’d probably steal the money.

I was paranoid and took her word. She was Thai, and probably more familiar with the system than I was. She said that if I gave her the money she would make the necessary arrangements with her family to rent suitable land papers. Her family were farmers and owned their own land.

I had no reason not to trust her. She was my wife and the mother of my child.

So Tommy arranged to raise the money for bail on his return to Ireland, and promptly sent it. I know that Nanglung went and collected it from the embassy.

That was the last I heard of her. She stole the money and vanished.

I have to admit that I blamed myself as much as anyone else. Our marriage was one of convenience. She was a young and attractive woman who married me simply to provide for her. I always knew this. Young Thai women don’t fall in love with older foreigners. They fall in love with the lifestyle we can give them.

She’d never had so much money in her hands in her life, and temptation – or greed – took over.

As a prisoner in Thailand you don’t have the right to file charges against anybody unless it’s related to your case.

Stealing is stealing, but since my wife wasn’t directly involved in my dealings with O’Connor and Holdsworth, there was nothing I could do about it.

At the time, I couldn’t comprehend what had happened. I asked myself again and again how on earth I had ended up in this situation. When I wrote to Tommy and told him what had happened, he simply couldn’t believe it either.

My family refused to send any more money for bail, and I couldn’t really blame them. But I was now completely stuck.

You have no idea how I felt. The anger nearly drove me crazy. I should have stayed in prison for only about five months, then made bail and fought my case from the outside, or better still, returned home.

As I soon found out, what made my situation even more serious was that I would have had a much better chance to beat the murder charge if I’d been out on bail. If a defendant is free it makes a big difference in the eyes of the court.

In practical terms, if a defendant arrives in court dressed smartly in a shirt and tie, the judge gets an opportunity to see him in a positive light. When defendants arrive in shackles and filthy prison uniforms, they are usually convicted. I didn’t know until two years later that I was entitled to wear a suit, because nobody told me.

Now I was forced to accept that I would have to stay in that stinking hell hole until my trial ended.

* * *

Looking back on that time, I find it hard to explain how complicated my predicament was. I might as well have had no legal representation.

My lawyer had only been to see me once during the 84 days I’d been in prison. And when we spoke, he expressed no interest in my case. The only thing he seemed interested in was his fee.

I remember him sitting with me and saying that he would charge $20,000, but his fee could double if my case turned out to be complicated. At the time, I didn’t have $20,000 or anywhere near it, but I said nothing. I knew he would abandon me if he knew the truth.

The legal consultation was farcical. The only truthful thing he said was that it would take months for my trial to start. And that he would, of course, need a down payment.

For the first time, I decided to start playing them all at their own game. I assured him there would be no trouble in paying his required fees, and promised him I’d try to work something out.

I was sent to court 12 days later.

I assumed that my ploy would work, but when I arrived in court, the lawyer was nowhere to be seen.

I waited and waited in the court holding cell. Eventually my name was called and I was taken upstairs to a courtroom, without a defending lawyer. Evidently, he had no interest in the case until he was paid.

I remember that day for all the wrong reasons. It should have been the beginning of the end of my troubles, but it was actually the day my life took another horrible turn for the worse.

A judge walked in and asked me in Thai how I pleaded. I said that I didn’t understand Thai, so the judge sent for a translator. I was taken back downstairs to wait.

The translator arrived two hours later. I still had no lawyer, but there was no prosecutor either. Through the translator, the judge explained that I had been charged with the first degree murder of Mr Brett Holdsworth. He asked me if I had a lawyer. I said I did, so he asked where my lawyer was.

I said I didn’t know.

The judge told me that murder was a very serious charge, and that I’d have to have a reliable lawyer. He decided that he would appoint one to defend me, and he set the next court appearance for a date six weeks away. That was it.

* * *

I kept myself together in anticipation of the trial date. I’d been disappointed so much at this stage that I never really allowed my hopes to build up, but I was quietly confident that the new court-appointed lawyer assigned to my case might be more effective than his predecessor.

Six weeks later I was transferred to court, where I met my new lawyer. He introduced himself, was accompanied by a translator, and seemed quite professional. Perhaps that was mainly because he had actually turned up. We had a brief discussion in court while I waited for the judge to arrive. At that point he explained that there would be no hearing.

‘You’ve only been brought to court to meet me,’ he said.

‘Why couldn’t you have come to the prison?’ I asked.

He looked at me blankly.

‘That’s not the way we do things in Thailand.’

My illusions were shattered instantly. He snapped his briefcase shut and bid me a brief farewell before I was returned to jail.

The weeks and months passed without any news from the prosecution. I let matters run their course. I had no other option.

I was transported to court every 12 weeks or so, where I would meet my lawyer. He was no better than the others. After the second hearing, he started to ask for money, and he got very angry when I asked him how I was supposed to raise any cash from behind bars.

I now saw him for what he was. He had only turned up at the court in the hope of receiving an advance payment.

The judge never showed for the remand hearings either. It was all very coincidental. I suspected that since the judge had assigned the lawyer to my case, the two were in it together.

* * *

Later that same year, my wife Nanglung reappeared at one of my court appearances with news. She turned up unexpectedly at the court. To be honest, I didn’t know what to say to her when I saw her. I was stunned.

She eventually walked over to me. I engaged in some small talk. I asked about Brendan and how he was coping. She told me he was doing well and missed me very much.

Then she eventually told me the reason why she’d come.

She said she had heard that O’Connor had died three weeks previously in Lard Yao prison in Bangkok. I was doubly shocked.

I thought about this for a moment. I wasn’t sure if it was true. I wasn’t sure if I trusted Nanglung.

Even if she was telling the truth, I wouldn’t necessarily believe that O’Connor really was dead. Maybe he’d paid to fake his own death and disappeared. With enough money, anything is possible in Thailand, especially inside a prison. And O’Connor had plenty of money.

But if it was true, it was good news. Death inside a Thai prison was something I wouldn’t wish upon anybody, even O’Connor—but, on the other hand, O’Connor was the one man who had accused me of Holdsworth’s murder. If he really was dead, I figured the prosecution would have no case. With no witness, they would have to release me.

Minutes after Nanglung gave me the news, the prosecutor dealing with my case just happened to enter the court. I told my lawyer about O’Connor and asked him to ask his opposite if O’Connor was indeed dead.

He did as he was told, then came back and said the prosecutor didn’t know anything about it.

For some reason, my lawyer took it upon himself to find out exactly what had happened. In the space of a few hours, he managed to obtain copies of O’Connor’s death certificate. As it turned out, there were two certificates—one for Gerald Cathar O’Connor, an Irish national, and one for a Mitchel Joseph Laddie Heath, a New Zealand national. The dates of birth on each certificate were also different.

In fairness to him, by that afternoon my lawyer had confirmed that O’Connor’s true name was Mitchel Heath, and that he was dead.

I guessed that O’Connor had got sick and been unable to recover in the prison.

I thought that I would be free within weeks. My trial would almost certainly collapse.

But I was wrong.

Shortly after the prosecutor left the court, my lawyer went over to an official and collected some papers. I distinctly remember allowing myself to believe for a second that the documents were my release papers. But again, any illusion I had that I would soon be free was soon completely shattered. My lawyer returned to say that O’Connor was due to be the first witness at the next court date.

When I asked the obvious question, he told me the hearing was due to be held in Bangkok in two weeks time because that’s where O’Connor was. He then explained, in logic that made sense only to himself, that it would be too much trouble to transport me there and back for just one day, so I wouldn’t be allowed to go.

However, he said he would attend the hearing and secure my release. If O’Connor was really dead, he told me, then he would demand that my trial be stopped and the case closed.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of everything!’

Needless to say, when he said, ‘Don’t worry,’ I began to panic.

Six months passed before I was called to court again. Nobody told me what had happened at the hearing in Bangkok and I hadn’t heard anything from my own lawyer. The court process was a joke.

When I arrived in the courtroom, the judge sat down and read out what had happened in Bangkok.

My lawyer was present that day but made no eye contact with me. When I was brought into the court-room he had made a point of not looking at me. In fact, he ignored me completely.

The judge proclaimed that Mr O’Connor had failed to turn up to give evidence, before stating that the case would not proceed without this vital witness.

I listened to the speech in utter disbelief.

Next, the judge announced that he was adjourning the trial until 26 June 1998 to another court, where O’Connor would present himself.

My lawyer just sat there and said nothing.

As the hearing seemed to be over, and my lawyer hadn’t said anything about O’Connor’s death, I stuck my hand up and managed to get the judge’s attention. The lawyer looked at me in horror, as did the judge.

I ignored them both and started to explain to the judge that O’Connor was in fact dead.

The judge was astonished that I had spoken. Everybody in the court seemed to be too. The judge did his best to look solemn and asked my lawyer if this was indeed the case.

‘Is Mr O’Connor really dead?’

‘Yes, it’s true, Your Honour,’ he said, bowing at the judge. ‘Mr O’Connor is dead.’

The judge said nothing, then turned and left the courtroom without saying a word.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ I said. ‘My case should have been closed if there were no witnesses! Why did you just sit there?’