Thai police are investigating the death of 30-year-old Belgian tourist Eliza Dalman, whose body was found in the jungle on Koh Tao. This is not the first accident at the resort: earlier in the spring, a Russian woman disappeared in the same place under unknown circumstances; in past years, five other tourists died. About what is happening on the mysterious island - in the material of RIA Novosti.
Hasty conclusions and strange death
Small Ko Tao in the Gulf of Thailand, popular with divers because of the beauty of coral reefs, is called the "island of death" in the local press. Over the past three years, the resort with a population of only fifteen hundred people has seen a series of strange deaths of tourists from Europe. Almost all of the cases were classified by the local police as suicides.
Belgian Michelle van Egten was forced to challenge these findings. In April, her thirty-year-old daughter Eliza Dalman was found dead in the jungle of Ko Tao. According to police, the body of the deceased, half eaten by the lizards, was wrapped in a piece of old cloth, and next to it was a can of fuel.
Local police officially announced the suicide of the Belgian woman a few days before the body was found. But even after the tourist was discovered under strange circumstances, the case was never opened. Only the mother's statement gave impetus to the investigation.
Van Egten argued that her daughter had no suicidal tendencies. She spoke with Eliza on the eve of her disappearance. At that time, the daughter had traveled to Asia and Australia for two years and was going to visit Bangkok at the end of April to return home. In Koh Tao, which was supposed to be a transit point, she stayed at the inexpensive Poseidon Resort.
Promotional video:
“Eliza did not leave a farewell note. Her things had been collected - apparently she was about to leave. The police said there was a container of fuel next to the body in the jungle, and she herself was wrapped in cheap old T-shirts or some kind of cotton fabric. I don't understand why first book a ticket to Bangkok and then go to the jungle to hang yourself. I'm afraid that someone is involved in this, and I do not believe the police,”the girl's mother told the Daily Mail.
The autopsy was carried out in a hospital in the mainland city in southern Thailand - Surat Thani - and continued in the Bangkok Institute of Forensic Medical Examination of the Police Hospital. Eliza was cremated 14 days later. No documents about the results of the examination of her mother were provided.
Sectarian trail
One of the members of the rescue team that found the girl's body in the Ko Tao jungle, Stephen Dryley, told the Samui Times that the Belgian woman could have been killed on another island, Phangan.
According to police, it was there that Dalmagne was the last time before visiting the ill-fated island. On Phangan, the girl practiced yoga and other Eastern practices at the Tantric religious center of the neo-Hindu destructive sect of Satya Sai Baba. Her mentor was the guru Raaman Andreas. He told reporters that the Belgian woman looked happy when she left the island. But the guards did not manage to contact the member of the sect, now they are looking for him to testify.
The police also reported an incident with Dalman in early April: the girl allegedly tried to commit suicide at the Bangkok railway station, after which she was sent to a psychiatric clinic.
Dalman's mother did not comment on this information in any way. Be that as it may, if the police manage to find a connection between the strange death of a Belgian tourist and the Sathya Sai Baba sect, this will not be the first scandal in a neo-Hindu organization. In 2004, former followers of Sai Baba accused the guru of sexual harassment - an investigation was carried out by journalists from the BBC TV channel. It also mentioned the mysterious deaths that occurred in the organization in the 90s.
Island of Death
Eliza's death is the seventh in a string of strange foreign tourist deaths on the island in the past three years. Koh Tao gained fame as the "island of death" in 2014 after the murder of a young couple from Britain, when 23-year-old Hannah and 24-year-old David were killed from a blow to the head with a hoe. Only in this case did the authorities admit that it was a murder - then the court called three visitors from Myanmar guilty.
In the same year, 25-year-old Briton Nick Pearson, who had arrived with his parents in Thailand to celebrate the New Year, died on the island. His body was found by divers at sea the day after he disappeared. According to the police, he fell from a 15-meter cliff into the sea and drowned. However, his parents are sure that his son was killed: according to pathologist Michael Biggs, the young man's body had multiple injuries, including on the head. The expert suggested that the British might have been attacked.
In 2015, a Frenchman, Dimitri Povze, was found hanged in a house on the island. The death was also called suicide, despite the fact that the man's hands were tied behind his back, and lacerations were found on the body - around the neck, elbow and wrists.
In the same year, 23-year-old British tourist Christina Annesley was found dead in one of the bungalows on Sai Ri Beach, on the island of Ko Tao. The police assumed that the girl died of some kind of illness. This version is doubted by her parents and a number of experts familiar with the circumstances of the girl's death.
In January 2016, the body of Briton Luke Miller was found in the pool of a Ko Tao hotel. The deceased had wounds on his face, presumably from barbed wire. The police did not find any signs of violence and assumed that the man had harmed himself while under the influence of alcohol. The body was sent for forensic examination in Surat Thani, but the results were not reported.
Finally, in February, 23-year-old Russian woman Valentina Novozhenova disappeared under mysterious circumstances on Koh Tao. The girl was fond of freediving (scuba diving with breath holding). In the hotel room where the girl was staying, her passport, mobile phone, camera and ferry ticket to Koh Samui were found, and there was no freediving equipment. On the video surveillance footage, Novozhenova was heading towards the beach with flippers on the day of her disappearance. The hotel staff claim that the girl, returning from the beach, asked about the ferry schedule to Koh Samui. However, the police could not find confirmation that the girl left for Koh Samui on one of the ferries. Until now, nothing is known about the whereabouts of the Russian woman.
Personal page of Valentina Novozhenova “ VKontakte ”
Friends of Novozhenova reported on social networks that an appeal to the Moscow police on the fact of the girl's disappearance, on the recommendation of the Russian Embassy in Thailand, did not work: the police passed on to each other materials under investigation from Golyanovo (at the place of residence of the missing) to Domodedovo (the place of her departure abroad) and back. It is not known whether a criminal case has been opened into the disappearance of the girl.
Cooperation with Thai law enforcement agencies turned out to be no more fruitful: the Thai police handed over investigation materials to local journalists, including screenshots of Novozhenova's correspondence with a psychologist. The girl wrote that she had a phobia, but the Thai press translated it as "suicidal tendencies." As a result, the local police could again refer to the already canonical scenario of "tourist suicide" and stop the investigation.
According to press reports, Koh Tao is effectively controlled by a mafia "family." In Thailand, they are called Chao Po, which literally translates as "The Godfather." These criminal groups make money on everything - from drug trafficking and prostitution to a completely legal tourism business, and therefore the notoriety of Ko Tao is extremely unprofitable for them. Having great influence on local authorities and the police, criminals may well "hush up" a high-profile case so as not to frighten future tourists. True, when there are seven of these cases, it becomes more difficult to hide the truth.
Larisa Zhukova