The Brussels Assize Court will draw lots on Monday at 2:00 p.m. for the jurors for the trial of Khoun Souralaysak. This 72-year-old man is accused of intentionally killing his wife a little over 26 years ago, in Laeken. He has since fled abroad and has never been found. The trial will begin at 9 a.m. Thursday.
On December 18, 1997, the Brussels police discovered the lifeless body of a woman in a freezer, inside a snack bar located on Avenue Prudent Bols in Laeken. Her husband and manager of the business, Khoun Souralaysak, was immediately suspected of being the author of the murder, but it turned out that this Belgian from Laos had fled to Bangkok in Thailand, probably under false identify. He was never found.
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The victim’s name was Ni Con Ping. She was 45 years old and of Chinese nationality. She died after receiving multiple blows to the neck from a sharp object. Several choppers were seized from the snack bar and could be the murder weapons, according to medical reports.
It appears from various testimonies that the accused and his wife were in the process of divorce and that they argued frequently and violently. Furthermore, the accused’s accountant told investigators that he considered it an injustice that his wife would be entitled to half of his property once the divorce was finalized while he was the only one to have run the shop. According to this witness, the business worked well, but the accused kept his accounts poorly and was not in order administratively and fiscally.
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Other witnesses also said that the man had a gambling addiction and that he had lost a lot. His own children, born from a previous union, told the police that their father regularly demanded money from them and could be aggressive and violent if he did not get what he wanted.
A colleague of the accused also claimed that he had, on several occasions, claimed that he would kill his wife. He added that the individual could be short-tempered and impulsive.
According to information collected by investigators, Khoun Souralaysak is originally from Laos. In 1975, he and his parents, brothers and sisters fled their war-torn country and lived in Thailand for five years. They then arrived in Belgium as political refugees, before obtaining Belgian nationality. The accused worked as a cook in the municipality of Ixelles and, at the same time, opened a snack bar and then a second.
