The details are in a report published just over two years ago by the now defunct Samui Gazette newspaper, and unearthed by a Phuket News reader.
David is currently locked up in Phuket on a charge of murdering another Hungarian, Peter Reisz, at the end of last year and then dumping his body in woodland on Phuket.
He is also suspected of murdering Mr Csapai.
Police are now waiting on the results of DNA tests, due in a week, to verify whether a skeleton disinterred from beneath the basement of David’s house in Samui is that of the missing millionaire.
In its 2011 report, the Samui Gazette detailed how David was questioned about Mr Csapai.
He was arrested on March 3, 2011, by immigration and police officers after Mr Csapai’s wife, Suthatta Rakasit, reported to police that she had not seen her husband since February 16, when David supposedly picked him up from Samui airport.
Ms Suthatta further told police that she had seen David driving around in her husband’s black Toyota Fortuner. She found that ownership of the car had been transferred to David, but told police that her husband’s signature on the transfer papers had been forged.
In a call to his wife on February 16, the last time she heard from him, Mr Csapai told her, “Don’t come back to Koh Samui, even if something happens to me.”
Plainly Mr Csapai – like Mr Reisz after him – was worried that something very sinister and dangerous was about to explode.
The newspaper reported, “Ms Suthatta believes her husband has been murdered.”
Police seemed at least half-convinced of this, too.
“Authorities who checked David’s house and the nearby area found the land … had been adjusted. They are … looking into the possibility that the missing Hungarian may have been murdered and the body hidden somewhere in the land.”
But they found no corpse and, lacking that, a murder investigation could not be launched. It apparently never was.
Police did, however, have cause to haul David into the police station for questioning, after finding that he had “spent up to B1 million on furniture and decoration for his house using a credit card belonging” to Mr Csapai, and after confirming Ms Suthatta’s allegations about the transfer of car ownership.
The paper reported, “Under questioning the suspect … at first stated he was not involved with the case of the missing Hungarian and did not even know [Mr Csapai].
“When asked, however, why he used [Mr Csapai’s] credit card if he did not know him, [David] kept silent and refused to give more information.”
The newspaper said police charged David with forgery, over the car papers, and with fraud, for using another person’s credit card without permission.
Then, the Gazette reported, they released him on bail.
Twenty-two months later Moshe David was arrested for the murder in Phuket of Peter Reisz.
On April 21, the Samui skeleton was dug up after Mata Isawan, interviewed in Hungary by private investigator Ferenc Chilko, admitted to helping David bury the body of Mr Csapai, and told Mr Chilko where it could be found.
Surat Thani Provincial Police Commander Maj Gen Kiattipong Khaosum told The Phuket News that preliminary examination of the skeleton revealed that the bones at the back of the neck had been severely damaged, probably by a heavy blow.
The original theory advanced by police was that a hoe – a farming implement with a heavy blade – had been used.
There were no clothes buried with the body, nor any rings or other personal possessions, which accorded with Isawan’s account that the body had been stripped before being buried.
Attempts to identify the body from the teeth had got nowhere, Gen Kiattipong said, because Mr Csapai travelled a lot, using dentists wherever he happened to be, so no dentist could be found who had complete dental records for him.
Instead, the identity of the skeleton will, it is hoped, be identified by DNA matching.
Hungarian police have extracted a DNA profile from samples provided by Mr Csapai’s mother, and this has been sent to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Bangkok, where DNA is being extracted from the skeleton.
The two profiles – from Hungary and from Thailand – will be compared to see whether there is a close enough match to state definitively that the skeleton is that of Mr Csapai. This should take another week or so.
The investigation continues.