Acute suppurative thyroiditis and thyroid abscess are extremely rare disorders. The most common pathogens causing acute suppurative thyroiditis are Gram-positive bacteria, including staphylococcal and streptococcal species. Thyroid abscess is mostly located in the left thyroid lobe. We report the case of a 75-year-old female patient with acute suppurative thyroiditis and right lobe thyroid abscess caused by Klebsiella spp. The patient had a firm, livid, hardly mobile cervical swelling. Axial computed tomography image showed soft-tissue swelling, an abscess in the right thyroid lobe and swelling of the thyroid gland. The diagnosis was established on a smear culture result. The patient was diabetic and had been operated on for goitre fifty years before. On indirect laryngoscopic examination, the patient was found to have right vocal cord paralysis. Infection and abscess resolved following surgical drainage and treatment with intravenous antibiotics, while the vocal cord paralysis persisted. Diabetes mellitus and previous thyroid surgery, in which sutures were used with unresorptive material, might have been the precipitating factors for the patient to acquire this unusual infection.