Mysterious Deaths on Koh Tao Island

in #life5 years ago (edited)

The popular Thai dive island Ko Tao has dark secrets. Mysterious deaths and inconsistencies are piling up. In the case of the dead Elise from Belgium countless questions are open. The investigators have no answers.

A small paradise island in the Gulf of Thailand shaped like a turtle in the turquoise waters, powdery beaches, coconut palms and colorful fish, this is Ko Tao. But the holiday idyll has a dark side. Tourists were killed, the circumstances questionable, sometimes mysterious.

"Ko Tao again!" Wrote a Thai newspaper after eight foreigners have died in the past three years. Too many to talk about chance or unfortunate circumstances, my observer. The youngest victim is a young woman from Belgium. Her body was found hanging from a tree in the jungle. The authorities speak of suicide, but the family of the 30-year-old does not want to believe that.

The case of Elise D. is indeed contradictory: there was no farewell letter, instead a flight ticket home. There was a nylon rope, fuzzy surveillance videos, but no usable traces of their last days.

It is only known that she had registered under a false name in her resort. Why, is not known yet. Was she possibly fleeing from someone? To this horrible reports made the rounds: A large monitor should have annihilated the human remains.

The police are trying - as before - desperate to calm the minds on the island. In the case of Elise D., there has never been a gluttonous reptile, an autopsy report allegedly proving the suicide: death by suffocation, no traces of violence. To this end, the police provided investigation results on a mental preload and a previous attempted suicide of the woman in the capital Bangkok.

Elise Dallemagne 30

In addition, a spectacular police operation did not yield any results, but was apparently intended to demonstrate the commitment of the authorities.

Everything just show, the critics say, to save face and disguise unpleasant truths. With hands and feet, the authorities defend themselves against the blemish of the "death island". Thailand needs the tourists. An "island curse", criminal machinations in paradise or even a mafia network on the 2000-soul island would be inconvenient.

The police recently went to press in Surat Thani Province's headquarters to declare all deaths on Ko Tao harmless and to portray their own work as blameless. "Our policies," a senior official said, "are the same as those of the American FBI."

The first victim was Briton Nick P., 25, who drifted dead in January 2014 in the sea below a hotel. He fell from the balcony of his bungalow drunk and drowned, says the police. His father had accepted that and waived an autopsy.

23-year-old Christina A., also from the UK, was discovered dead in her hotel room a year later. Here the investigation result was just as clear: circulatory failure after drug and alcohol abuse. No traces of violence and no foreign DNA - that's what the autopsy showed. However, no toxicological report was made. The family of the victim complains that the police work was therefore more than deficient.

Christina Annesley

Frenchman Dimitri P., 28, was found hanged in his bungalow the same month. Because both hands were tied together on his back, suicide theory was not convincing.

Dimitri Povse

For police, however, he was undisputed: It had found a farewell letter, he had previously expressed suicidal intentions. The Frenchman had fixed his hands in a kind of sling on his back in order to rob himself of the possibility of salvage.
The fourth case was much harder to downplay: the two British backpackers David M., 25, and Hannah W., 24, were murdered on the beach in September 2014. At that time, the investigators had found the alleged perpetrators and sentenced to death: two guest workers from Myanmar.

David M 25 und Hannah W 24

International forensic scientists spoke of an "unprofessional and unexplained investigative reality". The alleged DNA samples on cigarette butts were inconclusive. Human rights organizations consider the two defendants scapegoats. They themselves assert their innocence to this day.

Briton Luke M., 26, was found dead in the pool of a bar. He is said to have jumped in drunk and fatally injured himself. "No sign of violence" was the autopsy result. His relatives and his girlfriend continue to stir up murder theory in all networks and warn against visiting Thailand.

Luke Miller 26

The 24-year-old Russian Valentina N. disappeared without a trace. Recent shots of surveillance cameras showed how they went diving. The police, according to the newspaper "Farang", combined two theses: an alleged psychological lability of the disappeared and their dangerous urge to free diving. The police claim that they have attempted a record attempt with a depth of 24 meters without oxygen. Her corpse has not been found to this day - although even fortune-tellers have been called in.

Valentina Novozhenova 24

Fearing the tourists' lost favor, Thailand has now identified a culprit in all these cases: the press. The Provincial Administration of Surat Thani filed a criminal complaint against the online newspaper "Samui Times" for using the term "death island". "The distorted reports have given the tourism sector in the region a negative image," ranted Governor Uaychai Innak.

In the case of the dead Elise from Belgium, however, countless questions are still open. For example, why her luggage was found on the mainland. Or: Why was a gas bottle at her place of death? And why is not her mobile phone searchable?

Elise Dallemagne 30

The investigators have no answers. The mother of the dead holds all the evidence for constructed. The woman on the rickety video running in the woods with her backpack and sarong is not her daughter: her hair is too short, her hips too wide, the gait unfamiliar. And the backpack is not even the one that the police later handed to the relatives.

Maybe she's a grieving mother clinging to a straw. Maybe not.

Sources: welt.de, Samui Times, der Farang, Thailand Tip

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