The arrest of Chow Hok Kuen, 28, a Hong Kong-born British citizen of Taiwanese extraction - who was nabbed in his Bangkok hotel room last month with urned, tattooed and embroidered foetuses wrapped in gold leaf in his suitcase - sent ripples of revulsion and disbelief around the world.
The case is, however, merely the latest in a series of grisly revelations involving sayasut, or black magic, and a belief in the magical powers of grilled babies - a practice, police say, that has spread beyond Southeast Asia.
Chow told police he had bought the foetuses for 200,000 baht (HK$49,000) and that he made regular trips to Thailand to procure khumon tong, or 'golden children', to sell for up to six times as much once he had smuggled them into Taiwan. In some Chinese communities, preserved foetuses are believed to bring good luck and are kept in shrines within homes or businesses.
Chow faces up to a year in jail and a fine of 2,000 baht for possession of the foetuses, which, police say, showed development of between two and eight months. That's hardly a deterrent to other baby 'body snatchers', given that Chow boasts he sold one well-preserved foetus to a Chinese businessman for 30 million baht.
Wiwat Kamchamnan, an inspector with the Royal Thai Police, said Chow was the self-professed 'leading master of witchcraft' in East Asia, with a website advertising his services.
Baby grilling has its origins in 19th-century poet Sunthon Phu's quasi-historical epic Khun Chang, Khun Phaen. The eponymous Phaen, a soldier during the reign of King Ramathibodi II (1491-1529), grills the foetus of his own stillborn son. It becomes his talisman, protecting and advising him as his fortunes wax.