The owner of a 5 star hotel in Phuket and his wife were found dead at the bottom of their hotel swimming pool on the island of Koh Tao on Friday afternoon. Police received the initial report at 4.45pm on Friday. The island off the Surat Thani province coast has gained notoriety after a string of suspicious and sensationalised deaths over the years.
34 year old Ratich Sachathamakul left his parents lounging by the pool at the Jamahkiri Resort & Spa and went for a stroll on the beach at the area known as Shark Bay. When he returned to the resort he found his 59 year old father Rakeshwar and 55 year old mother Anshoo laying at the bottom of the pool. He called for hotel staff to help and dove into the pool to drag their bodies to the surface.
Hotel staff called police and rescue workers, and when Koh Tao police arrived with rescue workers in tow, they found the bodies of the couple laying by the side of the pool, unresponsive. They administered CPR but were unable to resuscitate the pair. Police say, that, at the scene of their death, there were no apparent signs of any struggle. Medical professionals at Koh Tao hospital declared the cause of their deaths to be “drowning”.
“Police found no traces of a struggle or any other signs of foul play.”
Rakeshwar was the CEO and co-owner of the Novotel Phuket Kamala Beach, owned the Bangkapi Mansion apartments on Bangkok’s Sukhumvit 12, as well as the owner of plastics factories in Rayong and Prachinburi provinces. The couple had been married 37 years since 1984.
The investigation into their deaths is hampered by a lack of evidence as the Koh Tao resort’s CCTV cameras by the pool area are broken, so there is no video footage of what happened. As of now, police officers don’t have any ideas about foul play and suspect that possibly one person was swimming and had some sort of trouble prompting their spouse to dive in and attempt to rescue them but fail,ed resulting in both of them drowning.
Wherever the investigation and details lead, the case is sure to attract a lot of media attention. Koh Tao has had a gruesome string of mysterious deaths over the years, leading some British tabloids to label it “Murder Island” and “Death Island”, and left the small scuba-diving haven with a tarnished reputation.
The high profile deaths of British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller in 2014 garnered global coverage and outrage when 2 young Burmese men were charged over the murders despite allegations of a cover-up and botched DNA evidence presented at their trials.
SOURCE: The Phuket News
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Recent comments:
Donald duck story! Again…! The son is probably the upcoming suspect in this case. Corona depression???? Tragic story
Every “legit” government is backed by nothing more than a squad of kangaroo courts that cover up crimes of buddies. Such as murder, pedophilia, theft. If its you or I who get caught, justice is always served brutally. If its one of them, eh, the camera was broken. Must have been an accident. By no means am I trying to single out Thailand. You should see what goes on in USA. They all do it.
@Prison planet – Didn’t a Hungarian diplomat die there just two weeks ago In a hotel room under mysterious circumstances?
Check insurance policies.
Or wills.
Did the pool have a light? Check the breakers and the wiring. Electrocuted people take water into their lungs.
May well be the hotel is bankrupt.
The two actions are often related.
@Christy Sweet – That was my immediate intuition when I read about this tragic incident.
CCTV camera not working, of course, what a coincidence. Call Lt Colombo…
@Stefan Svensson – and you don’t think he should be looked at? sounds like a contract killing, follow the money
In such cases, the last person to see them alive automatically becomes a suspect. That would be the 34-year-old son. The theory the investigators (clowns) came up with was one of the parents may have been in trouble in the swimming pool and the other jumped in and they both drowned. This is absurd. They were not in the sea. They were in a pool. They were in their 50s, not their 80s. That the CCTV cameras were broken is a concern but there may have also been electrical issues – another avenue for investigators. As other writers have said – look at insurance policies, wills, and life insurance, etc, which may open up a motive on how the son may benefit from their deaths. An autopsy may find traces of drugs in their systems also. Certainly a sad affair. The absence of a plausible theory for their deaths certainly makes the case intriguing.
My first thought is stop, don’t dive in, make sure there are no electrical power sources that could have killed them, lights, pump….
Hmmmmm, I smell a rat, that went for a walk on the beach.
Suggestion to the Police: fine the hotel for allowing the use of swimming pool and archive as a covid case.
Knowing the very poor electrical installations all over Thailand it seems to be a very serious option!
Western analysis:
Electricity
Faulty drainage suction
Murder
Thai analyis:
Coincidence
@steve geier – Definitely, something is not right. It looks like a planned and timed electrocution. I hope I’m wrong and I also hope the police investigate this further, including doing a proper autopsy to see if the couple has any traces of anything abnormal. Tragic incident.
Did the parents know how to swim?
How deep was the pool?
Looking at the pool, it is not large.
It doesn’t seem that difficult even, for a beginner swimmer to reach the sides.
Son next in line to in line to inherit the vast fortune of his parents. Odd that billionaire owners cctv cameras are all “broken”.
I doubt that the son, who briefly and “conveniently” went for a walk on the beach will ever be classified as a “suspect” to Thai police. Three guesses why, and the first 2 don’t count.
I have since my initial posting found this story at another site that states the recently deceased couple were billionaires,if that’s correct another factor to consider.
Probably the same Burmese did it as those who killed Hannah Witheridge and David Miller.
what a shame the CCTV wasnt working for a change
@Toby Andrews – for what ? Insurance or bequests ? Or would you not expect to find family in family wills – Jesus !
@Christy Sweet – lights in pools don’t have enough voltage to kill a mosquito !! My pool man changes bulbs in mine under the water !
An anti Thai conspiracists dream !!!
You can all rule out electrocution – electrical fittings in pools don’t have enough voltage to kill a mosquito !
The son, heir apparant of his parents fortune, returns from a walk to find his parents mysteriously dead. I smell a rat…