kamrieng district, Battambang province – Early on the morning of April 7, 12-year-old Mao Sinath left her house in Ta Krei commune, where she was looking after her younger siblings, to collect vegetables.
She returned at around 10 am and ate lunch quietly before leaving suddenly, running out of the house without any shoes on.
“Her little sister called after her. Where are you going? Who will look after us?” their 46-year-old father Vey Mao recalled in an interview earlier this month.
It was the last time Mao Sinath’s family was to see her alive.
Storm clouds gathered on April 20 as Ta Krei commune deputy police chief Sin Bun pointed to the small hole in the ground where Mao Sinath’s body was found two days after she disappeared. It was here, 2 kilometers off a dirt road leading from Kompong Chamlongkrom village through land-mined scrubland along the bed of a dried out stream, that police were led to her small corpse half covered by earth. Sin Bun recalled that the girl’s body was lying in a crouched position, arms covering her face as though in a vain effort to protect herself.
Her killer had sliced her open twice, once from her chest downwards and once horizontally across the length of her stomach, to disembowel her.
Commune police chief Chhun Chhang said he was alerted to the case when an unnamed adult male relative of the victim who had been collecting vegetables with her before her disappearance arrived at the station with another villager to report finding a dead body.
Chhun Chhang said that of the five murders he has investigated in as many years in the commune, this was by far the most brutal.
But although the victim had been disemboweled, Chhun Chhang said there had been no medical examination conducted to confirm that organs were missing, as villagers claim.
Police suspect the victim’s male relative, who has since fled the area, was involved, though Chhun Chhang declined to name him.
“Our belief is that he raped the girl,” Chhun Chhang said, adding that an old machete, owned by the suspect who reported the murder, had been voluntarily given to police by the suspect’s father in the wake of the killing. The suspect has been missing since the day after the body was discovered.
Local villagers quickly jumped to conclusions about what had happened to Mao Sinath. Several fled in panic believing that the pramatt pramong, still feared in this remote area, had stolen the little girl’s organs, villagers said.
The myth of the pramatt pramong, or gallbladder hunters, appears to originate from an amalgamation of two stories. One relates to tales of children in remote areas being abducted by the Vietnamese in the 1950s, believed by some to have been taken for communist reeducation.
The other is from the well-known story of a noodle house in Phnom Penh’s Tonle Bassac commune in the early 1970s. There, the story goes, it was discovered that missing children had been butchered for their internal organs, which had been traded in China to make medicines, while their flesh was served up as pork to unassuming customers.
Thorn Chrib, a 19-year-old neighbor, said he believed Mao Sinath was killed by someone hoping to gain strength by eating her organs.
Tum Moeun, 56, said the 12-year-old’s death was the work of the pramatt pramong. “They came to our area, killed the little girl and escaped into the forest. I will not let my family go far,” he said.
Mao Sinath’s parents Vey Mao, 46, and Chim Oeun, 43, gave their version of how events unfolded. Both had been working the rice-field they lease leaving Mao Sinath, then on school vacation, to look after her younger siblings.
“The little ones told us she had left the house when we came home that afternoon,” Vey Mao said.
Villagers searched for the next two days before discovering the body. “My heart hurt so much,” Vey Mao said. Asked who might have killed his daughter—whom he described as a “smart and gentle girl”—Vey Mao was hesitant.
“I can’t speculate. Just thinking about this makes me weak,” he said, adding that he has faith in the police but is too poor to pay them for their services. He also said that he wants to speak to the missing relative about what might have happened to his daughter.
After a cursory police examination, Mao Sinath’s remains were brought to her home. She was cremated immediately in the field across from her house.
Lon Srey, a 40-year-old neighbor of the victim, says she is very afraid in the wake of the murder.
“I can’t sleep thinking about it,” Lon Srey said. “Some have run away since and the village is very quiet. Daytime here is like nighttime at the moment.”
Many Ta Krei residents now fear pramatt pramong, but for some, such as 24-year-old Hat Sinvan, the explanation of the crime may be more prosaic.
“The old people speak of the pramatt pramong. But me, I’m not afraid of ghosts,” she said. “I’m afraid of human beings.”
