Swede convicted of manslaughter of a Kiwi in Thailand has sentence overturned

Kiwi Robert Hollick, 43 was stabbed to death in a bar in Pattaya in 2012. The frenzied attack that ended up in his death was reportedly the result of an altercation about his dog with Swede Andreas Ringvall.

Two months after his arrest Ringvall left the country in rather unusual circumstances and a 500,000 baht bail payment. Later investigations revealed Ringvall changed his name to Andreas Karlsson before starting a new life in Sweden working as a laborer.

Following a request by the Thai authorities, Stockholm police arrested Ringval in July last year and charged him with murder. Due to lack of witnesses Ringvall received a conviction of manslaughter rather than murder and was sentenced to 18 months in jail, he was released soon after. However now the Swedish national has been sentenced to 10 years in jail after the Court of Appeal in his own country overturned the earlier decision after Detective Inspector Lars Broms of the Stockholm Serious Crime unit traveled to Thailand several times in an attempt to piece the evidence together. Detective Inspector Lars Broms said that investigating the case two years on proved to be problematic especially as he was unable to locate the murder weapon, however he did acquire a photograph of the knife taken just after the crime was discovered, Ringvall had admitted it was his. The murder prosecution was an “historic case”, he said, as it was the first time Thailand had ever asked another country to press charges for a crime committed on Thai soil. Hollick’s mother had struggled to deal with the lack of justice for her son’s death, the news for her has come as a great relief.

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