Police have arrested an 11th person in relation to the kidnapping and death of Thai woman Jindarat Prutsiriporn in South Auckland.
Prutsiriporn, 50, died in hospital after escaping from the boot of a moving car in Papatoetoe on March 1. She suffered head injuries and never regained consciousness.
A 29-year-old male was arrested this morning and has been charged with kidnapping.
He was to appear in the Manukau District Court today.
The case made national headlines after it emerged she had been bound, gagged and imprisoned in the boot of a car and made a desperate bid for freedom by throwing herself on to a street.
Struggling to breathe with a man's tie wound tightly around her neck and suffering major head injuries, she was rushed to nearby Middlemore Hospital.
Police began to investigate what appeared to be a botched kidnap.
In 2011, Prutsiriporn was jailed for 2? years for her role as part of a syndicate importing precursor drugs from Thailand for manufacturing pseudoephedrine.
But court documents show she did not receive substantial financial benefits, which was a means to support a drug addiction that spanned more than two decades.
Prutsiriporn was sentenced twice in 2011 on importing and possession charges after police and Customs intercepted packages from Thailand containing drugs, some of which were sent to her address in Hastings.
Court documents show that, at the first sentencing, in the Auckland District Court, Judge Roy Wade described Prutsiriporn as having "a very limited grasp of English" and requiring an interpreter in court.
According to the judge's sentencing notes, Prutsiriporn's then boyfriend came to New Zealand in 1988 and she followed him here a year later. The couple stayed together until 2002.
When police arrested Prutsiriporn as part of Operation Sisal, she was living in a shed where utensils for methamphetamine and cannabis use were found.