Lady of the hills: British man arrested for 20 year old death of Thai wife
Police arrested a British man in the central province of Kanchanaburi for allegedly killing his Thai wife 20 years ago. The case is known among people in the UK as the Lady of the Hills case.
A group of tourists discovered the lifeless body of an Asian woman in a stream near Pen-y-ghent Mountain in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, UK, on September 20, 2004. Police were initially unable to identify her and buried her in a local graveyard. She became known to locals and visitors as “the Lady of the Hills”.
Fifteen years later, the woman was identified as a Thai national, Lamduan Armitage (formerly Seekanya), after her parents in Udon Thani province, Thailand, called for further investigation. They suspected the body might belong to their missing daughter, and DNA testing confirmed their suspicions.
The BBC reported that Lamduan married her British husband, David Armitage, and moved to the UK in 1991. She lost contact with her family in Thailand in 2004, the same year her body was discovered.
Following Lamduan’s death, the now 62 year old David relocated to Thailand and worked as a professor at a university in Kanchanaburi province. He has been suspected of involvement in Lamduan’s death but has consistently denied the allegations.
In an interview with The Sun in 2020, David claimed that the police treated him as a suspect rather than as someone affected by the tragedy. He was not invited to his wife’s funeral and expressed his desire to move on, refusing to discuss his marriage or Lamduan’s death further.
Thai PBS reported that David and Lamduan faced financial difficulties while living in the UK, compounded by Lamduan’s health issues, which forced her to stop working. Before her disappearance, she had written letters to her family in Thailand, expressing a desire to return home with her two children.
Recently, the UK’s National Crime Agency sought cooperation from Thailand’s Immigration Bureau to revoke David’s visa, as he remains the prime suspect in Lamduan’s death. Thai police acted on this request, revoking his visa and arresting him at his home in Kanchanaburi on Thursday, January 23.
David is entitled to appeal to the Immigration Bureau against his visa revocation within 48 hours. If he fails to do so, he will be deported to the UK to face further legal proceedings.
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