The death of a British diver at an idyllic Thai holiday hotspot has revived memories of a similar tragedy more than 20 years ago.
“Fit and healthy” instructor Neil Giblin, from Selly Oak, was discovered lifeless on a sofa in a rented bungalow in Koh Tao – dubbed “Death Island” after a string of foreigners died – on January 18.
Medics declared there was “nothing suspicious” but the 48-year-old’s friends claimed his death “did not add up” with no investigation reportedly launched and no post-mortem examination carried out. Police said he died from natural causes and there was no sign of a struggle.
The tragedy – said to have been the fifth to befall a dive instructor on the island in recent years – was not the first to befall a Birmingham dive enthusiast.
Ian Jacobs, from Sutton Coldfield, travelled to Koh Tao, located in Chumphon Archipelago on the western shore of the Gulf of Thailand, for a diving holiday 23 years ago. But within two weeks the 35-year-old was found dead in a man-made concrete well.
Mystery as British diver found dead on Thailand’s ‘Death Island’
Ian’s best friend Mick Lock previously spoke of losing his pal following his death on or about January 15, 2000. An autopsy carried out in Ko Pha-Ngan at the time stated he drowned and had a broken neck – “probably as a result from hitting the well.”
But Mr Lock said that was different to another examination carried out later in Bangkok “which makes no mention of water in anyway shape or form.” The second post-mortem report was said to have determined that Ian’s cause of death was “bleeding in the brain due to severe impact at the head”.
Mr Lock, from Bristol, spoke about the tragedy with Ian Yarwood, a solicitor based in Perth, Western Australia. In the interview, posted on YouTube, he said: “For 20 years I believed Ian was found in the bottom of a well with water in it. In the space of the past year I have spoken to someone, a witness on the island, who saw his body the day it was found and said he was found in a disused concrete well, located near the water well.
“The witness said there was no water in the well he was found in. In fact it was full of mud and litter almost up to ground level.”
Mr Lock said he visited Koh Tao about two weeks after the death of his friend and was shown a well on the island. He said: “I decided it was pretty much impossible to either walk into it because the well had a lip and you would not be able to walk into it nor if you stumbled over it would you fall in it – you would fall across it.
“The aperture wasn’t big enough for someone to trip and fall down the well. Any remaining suspicion that it may have been an accident was expelled from my mind. There was no doubt you either jumped in the well or someone put you in it.”
He said he reported his findings to police on the island at the time and was told to return to a police station in 48 hours later. But he said he then discovered the landscape had been filled in with no well to be seen, “destroying the scene of the crime.”
Any motive for killing Ian was not immediately clear. Mr Lock said he thought he could have died as a result of a mugging in which he would have fought back.
Asked why he had only just raised his concerns about the death two decades on, he said: “The consensus was his parents didn’t want people to interfere or make a fuss. They believed it was an accident therefore we (his friends) decided out of respect for them we would not take it any further.”
Mr Lock said he held a conversation with Ian’s mum years later and she agreed her son may have been killed unlawfully. He said: “I have now received all the police reports, which I haven’t seen before, autopsy reports, witness statements. I’ve looked at them closely and it only increases my feeling that he was murdered.
He said the witness statements all repeated the same pattern – that Ian was drunk, had gone to urinate and fell into the well and died.
“These were witnesses,” he said. “One was the owner of the bungalow he was staying in, one was a taxi driver, one was the guy who found the body, one was the police chief – and yet they all seemed to come out in their independent ways by saying sentences that were almost identical – that he was drunk and went to urinate. How anyone can know that when they weren’t even there is suspicious.”
British backpackers Hannah Witheridge, 23, and David Miller, 24, were murdered on Koh Tao’s Sairee beach in September 2014. Two Burmese workers Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, who maintained their innocence throughout the murder trial and conviction, were initially sentenced to death, but later jailed for life.
