Aldhouse was sentenced on November 28 to 25 years in prison for the murder.
An official of Phuket Provincial Court, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Phuket News, “The court has no record of an appeal. His deadline for appeal should have been December 28, but that was a Saturday, and after that there were [New Year] public holidays, so yesterday was the first working day.”
The Phuket News has also learned that Aldhouse, sentenced on November 28, was moved two weeks ago to the “Big House” – a larger prison in Nakhon Sri Thammarat.
It is normal practice for convicts sentenced to long periods of incarceration for serious crimes to be moved out of Phuket to larger, more secure prisons.
Aldhouse had by all accounts been keeping his nose clean in the Phuket Provincial Prison. But that prison, though badly overcrowded, has gained a reputation for being “white” – in recent searches neither drugs nor mobile phones have been found.
Not so Nakhon Sri Thammarat, where searches regularly turn up large amounts of drugs and dozens of phones, and where guards have often been found to have become unusually rich – one was discovered recently to have bought 200 rai of rubber plantation, and another to have bought a new Toyota Fortuner.
There is also violence. In May this year, the Bangkok Post reported, there was a riot when five inmates tried to break out.
Drugs are big. Arrests of small drug dealers in Phuket have sometimes pointed to a shadowy figure at the top of the drug dealing network in Southern Thailand who runs things from inside Nakhon Sri Thammarat Prison.
Manoon Chanachai, a registrar of the Nakhon Si Thammarat prison told The Phuket News today that Aldhouse was likely to remain there unless a court orders his transfer or the Department of Corrections decides to move him to another prison.
In the past, many foreigners convicted of murder in Phuket have ended up in the notorious “Bangkok Hilton” – Bang Kwang Prison in Nonthaburi on the outskirts of Bangkok – designed in the 1930s to hold 3,500 inmates, but now holding more than 8,000 prisoners.