A 43-year-old American man found murdered last week in Phnom Penh was the subject of a criminal investigation by U.S. authorities before his death, a local police official said Sunday.
Mississippi native William Glenn came to Cambodia two months ago from Bangkok and worked at several English language schools in the city, but was discovered on Wednesday morning strangled to death on a dirt road in Prek Pnov district’s Kok Roka commune.
Suon Samoeun, chief of Kok Roka commune police, said Sunday that though the murder investigation has yet to establish a motive or identify a suspect in the crime, U.S. officials informed him that they had been seeking William Glenn’s arrest prior to his death.
“Embassy officials confirmed that the victim was wanted by the U.S. authorities, which were trying to find him to send him back to the U.S. because he is a criminal,” Mr. Samoeun said.
Officials from the U.S. Embassy on Thursday accompanied Cambodian police to two Phnom Penh guesthouses where William Glenn stayed and removed his belongings from the Tattoo Guesthouse in Prampi Makara district, where he last stayed.
Asked Sunday whether CCTV footage from the guesthouses had revealed any clues, municipal penal police chief Eng Sorphea said that U.S. authorities had taken the evidence for examination.
“We don’t know anything because we sent it to the embassy,” he said.
U.S. Embassy spokesman John Simmons said that due to privacy laws, he could not discuss the case, but he denied the U.S. Embassy was involved in the investigation.
“We are doing what we can to assist Cambodian authorities, but it is the Cambodian police’s investigation,” he said.
The victim’s wife of five years, 44-year-old Nittaya Glenn, said on Friday that her husband, from whom she separated two months ago, had repeatedly told her that he could not return to the U.S. but had never disclosed the reason.
She said the FBI came to her house in Bangkok last week.
“They called me and had a meeting in my home and I gave them lots of information,” she said.
Ms. Glenn said her husband went to the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh on July 7 to get additional pages put in his passport because he wanted to leave Cambodia immediately for China.
“He texted me to say he was worried because the embassy took his passport from him and he didn’t know why,” she said.
