Suspect Krissada Jai-euy, who was detained on Thursday night after the body was discovered earlier that day, re-enacted the crime at the Pu Sua Shrine while a large group of bystanders watched and cursed him.

Police said Krissada confessed to the killing. He told police he had invited the victim – a pretty Nakhon Pathom-based university student whom he befriended via Facebook and reportedly had a crush on – for a ritual and then he asked to have sex with her.

The young woman refused and said she had stomach pain, police say, so he gave her water laced with pesticide and, as she was in no position to fight, he raped her.

The accused man claimed the woman had a seizure and died so he dumped her body in a rice field about a kilometre from the shrine to conceal the crime.