No, he won't get 10 years. I just read on the Bangkok Post site that he committed suicide. He stuffed a sock down his throat, then tried to slash both wrists on the edge of his toilet before he died of suffocation. Very strange. I wonder how he did that. Also kind of sad, because it appears that the rule of law was bypassed.
The story from the Post:
http://www.bangkokpost.net/breaking_new ... ?id=116818
Paedophile suspect dead in suicide
(dpa) - A German national charged with raping a minor in Thailand was found dead in his prison cell in what was believed to be a suicide, police said Thursday.
The body of Helmut Nehls, 64, was found Wednesday at a prison in the northeastern city of Udon Thani with his wrists slashed and a sock stuffed down his throat, police Captain Jirapong Singhasuriya said.
He was believed to have died from suffocation, rather than loss of blood because the slashes to his wrists, inflicted with the jagged edge of a toilet bowl, were not deep, police said.
"We are sure this was a suicide because no one could get in to his cell, and the key to his cell was with the supervisor, not the lower officers," Jirapong said.
"Nehls had requested a solitary cell because he was suffering stress and was being bothered by the other prisoners," Jirapong added in a telephone interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Thai police arrested Nehls, who is from Zeppernick in the eastern German state of Sachsen-Anhalt, on Feby 10 on charges of raping and abducting a minor. He was arrested in a rented house in Udon Thani, 450 kilometres north-east of Bangkok, with a 12-year-old girl.
Police found pornographic videos and a digital movie camera containing a clip of the young girl doing a strip tease.
If he had been found guilty of raping a minor, Nehls faced 10 to 20 years in prison.
Nehls, a former computer technician, had been visiting Thailand on a regular basis for the past 15 years and was fluent in the language, police said.
