Yesterday Beeston's wife and her Thai lover were arrested and charged with the murder as horrified onlookers, shocked at the callous killing, jeered and shouted 'hia' (lizard) - a strong Thai insult.

British Embassy official Neill James called on police in the north eastern Thai province of Roi-Et to carry out a full enquiry amid fears they have been bribed by the culprits.

Beeston had predicted his own death in writing.  He wrote a letter saying: "It is just a matter of time now. I am in real fear for my own life. I need things to proceed quickly". He left the letter with lawyers.

Trouble started just four months ago when Beeston, married nine years to his 42-year-old Thai wife Wacheerawan, nicknamed 'Wanna,' discovered that she had cashed in all the property he had bought in Thailand at a local bank.

He had invested all his life savings in over an acre of property and built his marital home, a guesthouse and a restaurant near a village called Suwannaphum, meaning 'Golden Land'.

Thai newspapers this week described him home as "palatial".  But under Thai law, as foreigners cannot own property he had put it in his wife's name.

"I thought she loved me but she just wanted my cash," penniless divorcee Beeston, who arrived in Thailand with £350,000 told friends at the time. He then asked his wife to leave the marital home and live in a shack with corrugated iron room nearby.

And he began selling all moveable objects in the house and restaurant piece by piece to survive until he could legally get the funds to return home.

"It was like he has signed his own death warrant," said neighbour Andrew Herrington, 51, a retired HGV driver from Sheldon, Birmingham.

"His wife lived behind the main house with her Thai boyfriend. Every time we went to visit she would come out and scream and order us away. 'This is my house. This is my land.'

"Ian knew that he was going to be murdered. He had already complained that while he was away she had put something inside a beer in his fridge.

"He had felt ill. So he sent the beer away for analysis to a local hospital. He was awaiting the results.

"But it was an open secret in the area that Ian was going to be murdered, but she had a secret police lover.

"When I recently went home to Birmingham a policeman told me: 'Perhaps your friend will not be alive when you come back'.

"So when I went to his house on Sunday and saw his car was there and the house locked up, I knew then his time had come. His wife came out shouting at me and my wife to go away. We decided to call the police.

"When they came they found his badly beaten body.

"Ian was a nice and charming man, always helping others.

"But secretly he was broke and he had nowhere to go once his home had been taken away from him."

Neighbour Bill Lamb, from Woolagong in Australia,  said: "He told us all he was going to be murdered, and quite frankly we believed him, and thought so too.

"Friends had brought him a stun gun, a tazer, to use to protect himself. We wanted him to go home to England but he was spending his last pennies trying to get his property back. He was due in court today."

Under Thai divorce law the couple would have had to share their assets 50-50. Police believe his wife wanted everything and way of getting that was to have him killed.

"For the last three months he had been a prisoner in his own house. We have been bringing him food, but he has been living on mashed potatoes."

Police Captain Patapong Patniboon of Suwannaphum Police said: "Ian Beeston's wife and a Thai friend from Petchabun Province, Somchit Janong, 48, have both been arrested for her murder. We have assured the British Embassy that the investigation will be thorough."

A British Embassy official said that attempts were being made to trace Beeston's grown up children, who had moved abroad, and his ex-wife.

    * Three years ago Briton Toby Charnaud, a gentleman farmer aged 42, was beaten to death, barbecued and his body fed to the tigers in Kaeng Krajan national park in Thailand after he divorced his Thai wife and removed her from his will. She was later charged and convicted with other relatives.