A Thai woman believed to be among the worst serial killers in the kingdom’s history was convicted and sentenced to death Wednesday for poisoning a friend with cyanide, in the first of her 14 murder trials.

Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, 36, an online gambling addict, is accused of swindling thousands of dollars from her victims before killing them with the chemical.

A court in Bangkok convicted her Wednesday for fatally poisoning her friend Siriporn Kanwong.

HOW IT HAPPENED

The two met up near Bangkok in April last year to release fish into the Mae Klong river as part of a Buddhist ritual.

Siriporn collapsed and died shortly afterwards and investigators found traces of cyanide in her body.

Police were then able to link Sararat to previously unsolved cyanide poisonings going back as far as 2015, officers said.

‘The court’s decision is just,’ Siriporn’s mother, Tongpin Kiatchanasiri, told reporters following the verdict.

‘I want to tell my daughter that I miss her deeply, and justice has been done for her today.’

In 2023, the country was rocked by reports of a serial killer who had poisoned 15 people with cyanide. 

WHAT POLICE SAID

Sararat, or ‘Am Cyanide’ as she would later be called, poisoned 15 people who she owed money to and became the country’s first female serial killer.

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Police said Sararat funded her gambling addiction by borrowing money from her victims – in one case as much as 300,000 baht (nearly $9,000) – before killing them and stealing their jewellery and mobile phones.

She lured her victims – one of whom survived – to take poisoned ‘herb capsules’, they said.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NOW?

Sararat faces 13 more separate murder trials, and has been charged with around 80 offences in total.

Her ex-husband – a police lieutenant-colonel – was given 16 months in prison and her former lawyer two years for complicity in Siriporn’s killing, the lawyer for the victim’s family said.