May 24, 2023 • 31 mins
Through expert interviews, we explore some history of the island of Koh Tao, dating back to the 1940s, which provides context to where we are now. Forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan also joins us to discuss some newly-procured autopsy reports.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
On September fourteenth, twenty fourteen, twenty three year old Hannah
Witherich and twenty four year old David Miller, who'd only
just met by chance on Catau, were talking at the
ac Bar. The pair, both from the UK, left the
bar together around one am. It was the last time
either of them was seen alive. Early the next morning,
(00:25):
on September fifteenth, a beach cleaner found their partially clad bodies.
David was floating in the water, Hannah was found on
the sand, the waves lapping over her. Detectives discovered a
garden hoe covered in blood near their bodies, and autopsy
(00:47):
revealed that David had scratches on his back and water
in his lungs, indicating he'd drowned. Hannah's body was covered
in wounds, bruising, and scratches. Their deaths sparked international outrage
and questions about a lack of justice on Katau. Welcome
to Death Island a production of Kat's Studios and iHeartRadio
(01:11):
episode ten The Case against Waypo and Zouln.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm Connor Powell, an investigative journalist at KAT Studios, with
Stephanie Leidecker, Courtney Armstrong, Andrew Arnow and Jeff Shane. We'll
pick up on the conclusion of the last episode shortly
and find out what happened with the information author Sue
Buchanan obtained. As a reminder, Sue received the prosecution files
in the case against Zouln and Waypo, as well as
(01:40):
the autopsies of David Miller and Hannah Witheridge and the
DNA analysis done by Thai authorities. But for the moment,
we wanted to take a look at the history of
the island of Kotao and how that's shaped where we
are now. From nineteen forty three to nineteen forty four,
Kotau had a prison on the island with political prisoners
from the Boro Waddish Upright. In nineteen forty seven, two
(02:02):
twin brothers from the region came to Kotoo. They brought
their families to Kotau and soon other ties from Copayang
and neighboring islands came to Kotau to start new lives.
In nineteen seventy seven, the first scuba divers came from
other countries to Kotao to explore the surrounding waters. I
reached out to the Australian lawyer and activist Ian Yarwood
(02:23):
for a bit more of the context about Kotoo.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
It had been the penal colony for quite some time.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
There were a lot of political prisoners who were kept
on the island, and then when the political prisoners left,
some of the people from the neighboring islands, oh, well,
we'll move in. And then some foreigners, some expats and
so forth would rock up and they would start doing
things like scuba diving, and then they'd teach some of
the locals how to scuba dive and show them how
to run businesses. And it kept growing, and then boats
(02:51):
and ferries started arriving at the island.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
It just kept expanding.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Here Sam Kruber, a journalist who lives on the neighboring
island of kop and Yang, and.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
This is how Kutau was being built up since the
diving industry had took over in the late seventies early eighties.
It started, and then it became really prosperous business at
the beginning of the nineties. And then diving schools they
just came up like mushrooms in the forest, and this
was big money beachfront. And then big hotels came up
(03:22):
hostels for the young people, and I think Kutao had
in the early days it had maybe ten, twelve, fifteen
diving schools and at the end it had almost one hundred.
So you can see how much money day is involved.
Millions and millions.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Connor spoke with author and journalist Soup Buchanan, who lived
on Katao in the late nineteen nineties. She was part
of the diving culture.
Speaker 6 (03:47):
What year is this, That would have been nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
I mean Kotao is barely on the map at this.
Speaker 6 (03:52):
Point, right, yeah, on many people there were divers. There
was no one If you were diving, why would you
go there? It was nothing else?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Did What was the security situation like there when you
get there in ninety nine, two thousand, two thousand and one,
what's it like?
Speaker 6 (04:03):
There was one tiny police station on top of the
hill between Mayhat and Syre Beach. There's two tiny little
cells in there, but it was pretty much unmanned. There
was no more than two policemen and they were hardly
ever on the island. Everyone had their own security.
Speaker 7 (04:16):
And was it safe.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
I don't know if you'd call it safe. I mean,
whichever dive school you're at that dive school's got its
own security, and the dive schools didn't really mix that much.
So if you're diving with Big Blue, you don't really
go hanging out with Scuba Junction, And if you're at
Scuba Junction, you don't go hanging out with Asia divers,
and Asia divers don't hang out with Easy divers. So
not only were you on this island, you had your
own little clip from the divers that were at your
(04:38):
dive school. And every dive school had its own security.
Speaker 7 (04:42):
And what's the tie presence Like in the diving.
Speaker 6 (04:44):
Community, they have to have the majority share that that's
one tie, three ties, five ties, whatever you want. So
there's always got to be ties involved with with whichever
business that you've got, and those ties would be the
ones that would protect you. You know that they would
police the island themselves. But back in those days, it
didn't come across as mafia. It came across as very tribal,
we know, very very tribal. So every part of the
(05:06):
beach had its own village head and that's the person
you go to if you had a problem, and that
would get sorted out. But you know, when I was there,
in the early days. Apart from a couple of incidents,
I didn't see a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Of trouble again Ian Yarwood.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Well, as far as the police presence is concerned. I
remember being told that when people arrived on the island,
and we're only sort of probably going back to the
nineteen nineties, people would arrive on the island and there
would be a sign to greet you and it.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Would have something like welcome to Kotau.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Population two hundred and fifty and police officers zero.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
So it was really just an island that leased itself.
Speaker 7 (05:41):
It sounds like the Taire Wild Wild Worst but on
the world.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Yes, it's very much like the wild West, you know,
it's very all us.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Not only did families on Katao control the security of
the island, they also controlled the growing tourism industry. The
first resort opened on Katao in the four Soon more
resorts followed and a few families came to control most
of the land and wealth on the island. Sam Gruber
(06:11):
followed by Sue Puquanan.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
The whole structure in Thailand is that these local guys,
they run the business, they run the show.
Speaker 7 (06:18):
Tell me about the families that run the island that
own the island.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
The families on Kotao and their ancestors. They were there
before the police. There was nothing going on there apart
from these families, and they ran the island. I mean that,
you know, there weren't police there. I don't think they
meant to be corrupt. I think they just thought these
are our islands. We're running them the way we want
to run them. There's no administration offices, there's no nothing,
so it's like no one knew what was going on
on the islands, and at that time, I don't think
(06:42):
anybody really cared. I think it's just like a tribal
mentality where you've got the village chiefs running it. And
you know, any police that did turn up on the
island were very quickly made to realize that they worked
for the people who believe they owned the island. I
think you've got to remember that the North of Thailand
and the South of Thailand is completely differ. For it
like southern Thailand, the police are not paid enough. Right
(07:03):
so the police are on a very very very low salary.
They have to ei their own weapons, they have to
buy their own ammunition. So the only way they can
make enough money is to take tea money and take
bribes because they can't easibly live on their salaries.
Speaker 7 (07:14):
Two things, when you say tea money, essentially mean likees bribes.
Yeah yeah, And just want to be clear, I mean
the police work for the families, right, yeah.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
Well their role is to do whatever the family has
tell them to do.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Sam Gruber doesn't believe that all police on Katao are
controlled by the families.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
It depends which police office is in charge. You have
excellent police broken Thailand whenever they want to, but then
you have the guys behind, and you have a lot
of money involved that everybody knows that money is the
lubricant in Thailand, whether it's a government or the police
forces or whatever. The money is the religion.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
The police on Katao can at times appear blinded by money,
but according to Ian Yarwood, they're not the only ones
being seduced by the charms of the island.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
So you've got the criminal elements who are very well
entrenched there, and then you've got a lot of expats
who are living there and they may be having a
great life as running a bar or running a scuba
diving school and a murder happens here or there, or
someone gets drugged and raped, but many of them are
just happy enough to turn a blind eye to it,
(08:20):
and they just become complicit in all of the crime there.
We tend to find that the smart people, the decent people, leave,
and people who are prepared to turn a blind eye
to things they hang around.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
The beauty of Cato Mede. It a tourism hotspot. Westerners
began to settle on the island seeking an escape from reality,
but more strange incidents were occurring on the island.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
Something really wrong is happening here. You're so overwhelmed. You're
living on the beach, you're among the palm trees, you're
diving every day. I think you literally just shut your
eyes to the fact that anything dodgy could be going on,
because I remember thinking about my friends back at home
in the UK and the cold and the rain, working
nine to five, but thinking, there's no way I ever
want to go back to that rat race, and as
(09:03):
long as you live by their rules, you're going to
be all right. So I just put it to the
back of my mind. I mean, I was just a
naive girl living in paradise. There was always an undercurrent
of you know, the certain people you don't upset, there's
certain people you avoid, there's certain things you don't talk about,
And I think you just shut it out because we
didn't want to think there was anything sinister going on
in Kotao, because we wanted to live in Kotao, and
(09:26):
if we left Kotaa, where did we go? So I
often wonder like, what at that point, why didn't I
just pack.
Speaker 8 (09:31):
Up and leave?
Speaker 7 (09:32):
Why didn't you?
Speaker 6 (09:33):
I think because you're living such a different lifestyle than
the one you have brought up with. It's almost like
you're not really living it. It's almost like playing a
video game. It's like it's not real, do you know
what I mean? I think I was just so blinded
by my lifestyle. I wasn't prepared to let anything filter
through that would tell me that I shouldn't be there
because I'd found the place to me, where I belonged,
where I loved it, where I was happy. I didn't
(09:54):
want anything tainting that. And I think a lot of
people are guilty of that, because not just a good lifestyle,
you live in the the best, most incredible life that
you could ever live. I mean, every day is Saturday.
Every day is just from the minute you wake up
to the minute you seek you're doing what you want
to do. Every moment is just the hairs are standing
up on your arms, in your back of your neck
because you know you've got to a concert and there's
(10:16):
a really big drop and you're like, wow, you've felt
like that all the time, constantly.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So you're now on the island for a couple of
years and you've seen a man covered in brain and
you've only been there for a couple of years. I mean,
what's going through your mind about this place at this point?
Speaker 6 (10:30):
Nothing, because predominantly, like every day was brilliant. You're in
the middle of nowhere. I mean, it's it's bloody quiet,
you know. So when there's gunshots, you hear them and
you're like, well, you know, ties are fallen out with
each other again. But we didn't really like, we didn't
question it too much. We just wanted to keep diving
and partying and we didn't really worry about that.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Connor spoke with Ian yer Word about why he thinks
this is the case.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Most of their focus tends to be on covering up
crimes against tourists because if they actually investigate a crime
and they wind up charging let's say a local type person,
and if that person is ultimately convicted, then that reflects
very badly on Thailand.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
It's all about.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Saving face, and they're very much focused on saving face,
protecting the tourism industry, so that the police either dismiss
any reports about criminal activity or they go out and
they find escapegoat.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
a moment. This brings us back to the prosecutors files
and DNA results sou Buchanan obtained in the case against
(11:53):
Wapo and zou Lamb. The pair were both charged and
convicted of the murderers of Hannah Withtheridge and David mill
Connor shared these files with forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan
to get his view on the latest developments.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Nothing makes sense the DNA if you redetort transcripts and
see the coverage. The judges say that the two boys
were convicted solely on DNA evidence and not on anything
else because they don't have motive, they don't have the ability,
they don't have a weapon that ties them. They have
no DNA evidence on the weapon, even though it's a bloody,
gruesome scene and stuff like that. There was no blood
on their clothes, but they were convicted solely on the
(12:31):
evidence of DNA, which ties one of them in theory
to it.
Speaker 9 (12:35):
I think the big question is can you track the
provenance of the sample? How well was it protected? And
how would you get an evidence rich or DNA rich sample.
It's one thing to find, you know, what we refer
to as touch DNA, you know, on an external surface,
that's whetre of thing with you know, shedding death skin self.
But when you talk about an evidence rich sample that
(12:58):
arises from semen, you know you're in a different strata
at that point in time.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It's harder, is that what you're saying?
Speaker 9 (13:04):
Yeah, it would be harder to mask. I would think,
you know, I don't know how you would go about
sourcing that. You know, if it is arising from sperm essentially,
how are you going to kind of trick individuals into this?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Zalin's DNA had one extra marker eighteen, but that it
didn't match the sample taken from Hannah. Is that unusual?
Is that normal? It would DNA be one hundred percent
I mean, I know, not one hundred percent match. But like,
if one of the markers doesn't match, is that somebody
that sends out to you.
Speaker 9 (13:36):
No, not particularly. Again, you don't know what the status
of the sample was when they took it. The marker
itself might be something that is an outlier relative to
the testing that they used. But if you have enough
markers to tie back to him specifically, it's it's pretty solid.
It's certainly more solid than any other kind of forensic science.
(13:56):
It's out there just because of the size of numbers
that you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
But there were questions about the chain of custody of
the DNA sample.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
If you have a chain of evidence that is by
all accounts, really chaotic and problematic, is it difficult to
just simply relabel somebody's DNA sample as somebody else's just
just change the name. Is that possible?
Speaker 9 (14:17):
Yeah, if you don't have controls over the samples. Again,
I'm bringing an American mindset to it. These are something
that at a very baseline, particularly through QC and labs
quality control, It's something that is one oh one level
stuff because if you cannot guarantee that chain has been
(14:40):
remained is intact, everything else is worthless. It's not worth
a gunpowder to blow it a Hell, so your client,
who is the state, and the courts, the judicial system,
they have to be reassured of the veracity of what's
coming out of there. I can't speak to that. Relative
to this locale. I'd come closer to you know, obviously
the US, Canadian, certainly the Brits, the links that we
(15:03):
go to to ensure provenance of everything. Could somebody get
in there and switch labels? Hell, yeah they could.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
There was one other potentially disturbing insight from the DNA analysis.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I think the TIE report says there was DNA taken
from Hanna's vagina and her anus m but it says
there were different DNA. Is that the way you read it?
Speaker 9 (15:25):
Yeah, there was more than one source essentially. You know,
when you're working a case and you have what's referred
to as comingling of biological evidence like this, one of
the first things that you think about is that this
is going to be a multiple sexual assault, almost like
a game rate where you're going to have deposition. It's
(15:45):
one thing to have deposition externally, okay, but when you
have commingling of DNA within an individual, that puts the
dynamic of the event into a completely different realm at
that point in time, and it's just like you have
deposition vaginal deposition now, now you've got atal rectal deposition
(16:06):
as well. So that's that is a significant finding.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
In addition to potential questions about the DNA's chain of command,
there were also some unusual encounters that happened during z
LN and wapo's trial. Veteran journalist Sarah Yun, who was
on the island at the time, shares an experience she
had with the person at court.
Speaker 10 (16:29):
This was a tai police officer sitting in the court who,
as I went to go out of the court, had
to step over him, and as I went to step
over him, he said to me go out, don't come back,
or will kill you. And I didn't really catch what
he said until I was halfway out the door and
thought he did say that. And then I went back
into court from my next relay tag and he was
sitting next to me and he said, did you not
(16:50):
hear me? And I said, yes, I heard you. And
then when we went out of the court that day,
he said, if you don't stop reporting on this trial,
will kill you. And then I simply turned to him
and said, that's fine. What time would you like to
meet me? I don't mind at all. I can meet
you outside at any time you like, and you can
do what you want. And he looked quite surprised and
he didn't answer. So then I said, well, what time
(17:12):
did you like? Five o'clock? So ill meet you outside
at five o'clock, because I'd seen that they tended to
gather outside the court of five o'clock, lazing all over
their wagons. And I went outside at five o'clock and
there were about eight nine policemen sitting by their wagons
in their vests, and I went to walk towards the car,
and they got in the car and drove away. And
then they didn't threaten me after that. But that is
(17:32):
quite normal in Entilen. They don't like women, especially white women,
to confront them. And I was not going to be
stopped from covering this trial. And I didn't think that
they were serious. I mean, if I had vanished, it
might have been really quite obvious.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
The trial also brought to light another detail of the
crime related to the alleged murder weapon.
Speaker 10 (17:53):
And then there was a man and who came to
court who admitted the hoe was his, and it had
been found police in his vegetable patch, buried among black
plastic bags. And this man worked for the owner of
the ac bar. He said that they police had come
to him and had searched his allotment as it were,
and had found the hoe blood stained amongst these black
(18:16):
plastic bags, and had asked him why he put it there,
and he said, I told them because it was mine.
And then they gave me rubber gloves and they told
me to take this hoe back and put it under
a tree down by the beach, near where the murders
had taken place. There was blood on the hoe, apparently
according to the police, but police at one point said
there were two murder weapons, a hoe and a wooden club,
(18:37):
but then when they got to court there was no
mention of the wooden club and the hoe. They said
there was blood stained. But the man who came to
court and claimed it was his said he'd wiped it
clean because he didn't know what it was. He said
he found it on the beach, picked it up and
though that's my hoe, and had wiped it clean, and
then taken it back and put it amongst the black
plastic bags and at no point did anybody say, well,
(18:57):
is this man a suspect? And there were very few
funny moments in that court, but there was a funny
moment when when he'd finished giving his evidence and he
said to the judge, can I have my hoe back? Said?
He said no, and he said, well, I want it mine,
I want it back. And I think everybody at the
back was like, is anyone going to ask him if
he did it? Because he's quite obviously quite open in
(19:18):
what he was saying, and there seemed to think there
was nothing wrong with being in position of the murder
weapon and then just being asked to go and put
it back on the beach where he found it.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Who was the man who owned the blood covered hoe
and who told him to return that hoe back to
the crime scene. There's still more questions about the weapons
used in the murders of Hannah and David. Again, Connor
speaks with forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
One of the things that I've heard is that nobody
thinks the hoe was the only weapon, that there were
likely other weapons.
Speaker 9 (19:50):
Yeah, I think so too, including a.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Punch knife, maybe rock or something like that. I mean,
there's just there were other things. Yeah, what they did
to Hannah may have been different with than what they
did to David. And again, one of the many reasons
that Zalin and Wapo, the two Burmese boys that were convicted,
are unlikely as actual suspects, is that they're both tiny
little people. I think one of them is even smaller
than Hannah. And David was a gigantic guy. I mean,
(20:15):
was well over six foot two hundred pounds, big, strong,
young guy and is likely not going to be overpowered
by these two Burmese guys. So I think most people
tend to think that they were larger men, multiple people
carrying multiple weapons.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
Yeah, and I got to tell you what I'm seeing here,
you know, reoccurring in I don't know if you can
see that. This is his autopsy report. They're using this
term torn. He's been beaten with something, So there might
be these punk Tate injuries that you're referring to. There's
a lot of abraided injuries that he's got. And what
I mean by that, when you get blunt for strikes,
(20:51):
you'll get it. Not only do you get contusions, but
you'll also get these abrasions because there's a lot of
friction that goes on when they think strike the skin.
So you'll you'll get, yeah, you'll get like a big
confused area brus and you'll also get this friction almost
like sandpaper over the skin. And that's part of the
ripping and tearing that you get with the laceration. He's
(21:13):
got multiple of these, Connor suffice to say, he's have
the hell beat out of him. What you're looking at
here are probably multiple assailants and maybe multiple multiple weapons
that are being brought to It just sounds like a
I don't want to use the word mob. It sounds
like a group of people descended upon them, you know.
And I'm sure that other people have postulated that as well.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, and that's that's the theory that was painted on
day one that was later thrown away in for these
two Burmese boys.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Potential multiple assailants and weapons, faulty DNA evidence. There were
also some questions about bloody clothes found in David Miller's bungalow.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And there was clothes that were covered in blood found
in David's bungalow.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Yeah, we've got photographs like a very light hand sort
of color pair of trousers that had blood over the
bottom of them, and they found some like bloody bandages
in the bin there as well. I mean, no one
ever gave any account as to where that came from.
David certainly wasn't wearing long pants the night he was
murder but they were long pants, you know, they were
not short they were long pants. Yeah, they did find
(22:18):
bloodied clothing at David's bungalow, which is interesting because they
never found any bloodied clothing at white yours or in
bungalow as Ever, why were those trousers never tested? Hannah's
clothes were never tested for DNA.
Speaker 9 (22:30):
You know why.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Hannah's clothes were never tested? Was ever an official reason?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
No?
Speaker 6 (22:34):
No, there was never an official reason, no official reason whatsoever.
I mean, they just didn't test them. And you know
the bite mark on her breast, I mean, was that tested?
Where's DNA from that?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Let's stop here for another break. Here again, Connor speaking
with Joseph Scott Morgan about the DNA results of the
bite mark on Annah Withridge's breast.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
One of the other things that stuck out was that
the bite DNA did not match either of the two
boys who are convicted. What do you make of that.
Speaker 9 (23:16):
Well, you know that they would have gotten salivary DNA
sourcing from that, which is a pretty good source. They
obviously did swabs of the areola and I read that
you know in there. If that is the case, you know,
and again we're you know, kind of postulating, could what
could have happened in an event like this. If you're
(23:39):
trying to restrain someone and someone is participating in a
gang rape, you might have someone holding down holding down
this individual, and a bite could take place by somebody
that's not involved in the actual penetrative event. Now to
the point of where she's bitten on her breast, they
would have because that's a non protected area. You know,
(24:01):
she's got some type of clothing on. They talk about
a pink garment that she's wearing in the autopsy report
that's kind of pushed down her body. Her remains would
have had to have been protected pretty well in order
to acquire that sample, that sal very you know, DNA sample.
It's not beyond reason to think that you could have
(24:22):
a group of people that would participate in a horrific
event like this and then suddenly, you know, after they're
stated in some way, they lose taste for completing the event.
The other individuals may back off at that point in time,
but they've still left a trace, a trace of themselves behind.
That might be the case here.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Does it suggest that there is a third person, at
least a third person involved in this rape murder?
Speaker 9 (24:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, you're you know, because naturally, you know,
people are very protective of their bodies. You would not expect,
you know, to take a random person off of the
street and swab their breast area and find foreign DNA there,
particularly if it's salivary deposition, which is what they specifically
talked about in the sport. That's an odd thing. So
(25:11):
it leads us logically to conclude that there would have
to be an additional person involved, and maybe more than that.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
As more evidence comes to light, the last moments of
Hannah and David seem even more horrifying, and the people
who may have more information are not speaking.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
They completely went off the radar. They're either scared or
you know, they've been just completely frightened off, or they
know more. Eight years later, people in Jersey, people in England,
people in Milan are afraid to speak. Eight years down
the line, they are not talking.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
In twenty fifteen, there was a development in Thailand that
made it even more difficult to find answers about the
suspicious deaths on Katau Again. Journalist Sarah Yun.
Speaker 10 (25:58):
In the February after the trials of the government announced
that freelance journalism was to be banned in Thailand. And
I was working as a freelance journalist, and they said
all freelanch jundes banned under threat going to prison and
to be sent out of the country to be deported.
And I thought that was a very strange thing to
announce just then.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
As a reminder, Soup Buchanan's reporting on the crimes and
Katao eventually led to a search weren't being issued for
her arrest.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
So I wrote this story about a girl who was raped.
They said I made the story up, so they tried
and do me for computer crimes, fake news, bringing Thailand
into disrepute and inciting national panic. Bearing in mind, when
I wrote this story, I was in the UK, my
server was in Singapore, and my companies registered in the Philippines.
So have I committed a crime in Thailand? The trial
(26:51):
finished and in twenty fifteen. I left. In twenty sixteen
and then I can't go back now because the stupid
Parseholds are putting a restaurant out for me. I mean,
I've got a bloody foray and I'm gonna all my
stuff in it. I can't go ahead.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
It's important to note that both wave Po and ze
Lyn have been found guilty. Here again Connor and forensic
expert Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
The belief is that the murderer's DNA is the correct
DNA that was taken from Hannah's body, but it's attributed
to the wrong person because of the haphazard nature of
the evidence collection.
Speaker 9 (27:33):
How do you suss that out? Though? I mean, I
know you're the one asking the questions. I'm curious. Do
they have a suspect somebody within this mob that they
believe You know, you talked about the Grand Pooba, but
I mean, is there a henchman or something.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yeah, there's a couple of people that are believed to
have been there as well.
Speaker 9 (27:53):
Yeah. No matter what you present to them, you might
as well spit in the ocean. It's not going too
much to raise the water level.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
We're not trying to exonerate them, We're just trying to
get them out of the prison. I think that's sound
of like the best case scenario because the king apparently
has the ability to send them home.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Well, we weigh on updates from Subi Cannon's plan to
appeal to the king. More mysterious deaths continue to occur
on Katao. Here's Sarah Yun.
Speaker 10 (28:22):
I don't think justice is a thing that is a
greatest importance in Thailand. Loss of face is the biggest importance.
Unless the police investigate these situations, there is no way
of finding out what actually caused the death. But I
fear that we're talking about an island that is not
ruled from Bangkok. It's ruled by a family on the
(28:45):
island who've probably been there since this island used to
be a prison, and they run this island and they
are the ones who decide what happens on that island.
But I know that this whole podcast is looking at
all the events on Kotaus. All these things are as
important as the trial for Hannah and David. But I
think what the trial for Hannah and David proved was
(29:06):
that an unreliable police investigation will be overlooked, And that
to me, is the link between all these different deaths
on the island that at no point has there been
a reliable police investigation. And maybe the government's hands were
tied as much as the police hands were tied. Maybe
you know, it's the duel in the crown of the
(29:26):
tie tourism industry and they just wanted it all to
go away.
Speaker 11 (29:33):
My heart goes out to Hannah and David's parents and
all the parents who've lost kids on that island, because
you want the best for your children. You want them
to see the world, you want them to explore and
spread their wings, and for them to come home in
a coffin is well, it's the worst thing.
Speaker 12 (29:53):
Can you imagine what it must be like to get
that phone call as a parent. It's the staff of nightmares.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
It's horrific. It's absolutely horrific.
Speaker 12 (30:01):
The number of people who died going to Kotau, and
you know, in lots of instances, the circumces in which
they've died is just not in any way satisfactory to
the families finding out what truly happens, whether it's somebody
jumping off the roof of a building into a swimming
pool and then dying as a result, or somebody dying well,
scuba diving, or somebody dying with their hands tied behind
(30:22):
their back, but they're supposed to have hanged themselves. You know,
all of those deaths are absolutely tragic, and it must
be awful because if you're those.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
Families, then the questions just keep coming. You know about
your son or daughter and the circumstances in which they died,
and you just want to know the truth, and the
questions won't ever stop unless you've got confidence in the
authorities to get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
If you have any information about any of the cases
discussed in this series, please contact us at producers at
KTESH studios dot com. For more information and relevant photo
follow us on Instagram at KT Underscore Studios. Death Island
is produced by Stephanie Leidecker, Connor Powell, Andrew Arnow, Jeff Shane,
(31:11):
Chris Cacaro, Gabriel Castillo, and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
sound designed by Jeff Tis. Music by Vancor Music. Death
Island is a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
On September fourteenth, twenty fourteen, twenty three year old Hannah
Witherich and twenty four year old David Miller, who'd only
just met by chance on Catau, were talking at the
ac Bar. The pair, both from the UK, left the
bar together around one am. It was the last time
either of them was seen alive. Early the next morning,
(00:25):
on September fifteenth, a beach cleaner found their partially clad bodies.
David was floating in the water, Hannah was found on
the sand, the waves lapping over her. Detectives discovered a
garden hoe covered in blood near their bodies, and autopsy
(00:47):
revealed that David had scratches on his back and water
in his lungs, indicating he'd drowned. Hannah's body was covered
in wounds, bruising, and scratches. Their deaths sparked international outrage
and questions about a lack of justice on Katau. Welcome
to Death Island a production of Kat's Studios and iHeartRadio
(01:11):
episode ten The Case against Waypo and Zouln.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm Connor Powell, an investigative journalist at KAT Studios, with
Stephanie Leidecker, Courtney Armstrong, Andrew Arnow and Jeff Shane. We'll
pick up on the conclusion of the last episode shortly
and find out what happened with the information author Sue
Buchanan obtained. As a reminder, Sue received the prosecution files
in the case against Zouln and Waypo, as well as
(01:40):
the autopsies of David Miller and Hannah Witheridge and the
DNA analysis done by Thai authorities. But for the moment,
we wanted to take a look at the history of
the island of Kotao and how that's shaped where we
are now. From nineteen forty three to nineteen forty four,
Kotau had a prison on the island with political prisoners
from the Boro Waddish Upright. In nineteen forty seven, two
(02:02):
twin brothers from the region came to Kotoo. They brought
their families to Kotau and soon other ties from Copayang
and neighboring islands came to Kotau to start new lives.
In nineteen seventy seven, the first scuba divers came from
other countries to Kotao to explore the surrounding waters. I
reached out to the Australian lawyer and activist Ian Yarwood
(02:23):
for a bit more of the context about Kotoo.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
It had been the penal colony for quite some time.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
There were a lot of political prisoners who were kept
on the island, and then when the political prisoners left,
some of the people from the neighboring islands, oh, well,
we'll move in. And then some foreigners, some expats and
so forth would rock up and they would start doing
things like scuba diving, and then they'd teach some of
the locals how to scuba dive and show them how
to run businesses. And it kept growing, and then boats
(02:51):
and ferries started arriving at the island.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
It just kept expanding.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Here Sam Kruber, a journalist who lives on the neighboring
island of kop and Yang, and.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
This is how Kutau was being built up since the
diving industry had took over in the late seventies early eighties.
It started, and then it became really prosperous business at
the beginning of the nineties. And then diving schools they
just came up like mushrooms in the forest, and this
was big money beachfront. And then big hotels came up
(03:22):
hostels for the young people, and I think Kutao had
in the early days it had maybe ten, twelve, fifteen
diving schools and at the end it had almost one hundred.
So you can see how much money day is involved.
Millions and millions.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Connor spoke with author and journalist Soup Buchanan, who lived
on Katao in the late nineteen nineties. She was part
of the diving culture.
Speaker 6 (03:47):
What year is this, That would have been nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
I mean Kotao is barely on the map at this.
Speaker 6 (03:52):
Point, right, yeah, on many people there were divers. There
was no one If you were diving, why would you
go there? It was nothing else?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Did What was the security situation like there when you
get there in ninety nine, two thousand, two thousand and one,
what's it like?
Speaker 6 (04:03):
There was one tiny police station on top of the
hill between Mayhat and Syre Beach. There's two tiny little
cells in there, but it was pretty much unmanned. There
was no more than two policemen and they were hardly
ever on the island. Everyone had their own security.
Speaker 7 (04:16):
And was it safe.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
I don't know if you'd call it safe. I mean,
whichever dive school you're at that dive school's got its
own security, and the dive schools didn't really mix that much.
So if you're diving with Big Blue, you don't really
go hanging out with Scuba Junction, And if you're at
Scuba Junction, you don't go hanging out with Asia divers,
and Asia divers don't hang out with Easy divers. So
not only were you on this island, you had your
own little clip from the divers that were at your
(04:38):
dive school. And every dive school had its own security.
Speaker 7 (04:42):
And what's the tie presence Like in the diving.
Speaker 6 (04:44):
Community, they have to have the majority share that that's
one tie, three ties, five ties, whatever you want. So
there's always got to be ties involved with with whichever
business that you've got, and those ties would be the
ones that would protect you. You know that they would
police the island themselves. But back in those days, it
didn't come across as mafia. It came across as very tribal,
we know, very very tribal. So every part of the
(05:06):
beach had its own village head and that's the person
you go to if you had a problem, and that
would get sorted out. But you know, when I was there,
in the early days. Apart from a couple of incidents,
I didn't see a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Of trouble again Ian Yarwood.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Well, as far as the police presence is concerned. I
remember being told that when people arrived on the island,
and we're only sort of probably going back to the
nineteen nineties, people would arrive on the island and there
would be a sign to greet you and it.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Would have something like welcome to Kotau.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Population two hundred and fifty and police officers zero.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
So it was really just an island that leased itself.
Speaker 7 (05:41):
It sounds like the Taire Wild Wild Worst but on
the world.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Yes, it's very much like the wild West, you know,
it's very all us.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Not only did families on Katao control the security of
the island, they also controlled the growing tourism industry. The
first resort opened on Katao in the four Soon more
resorts followed and a few families came to control most
of the land and wealth on the island. Sam Gruber
(06:11):
followed by Sue Puquanan.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
The whole structure in Thailand is that these local guys,
they run the business, they run the show.
Speaker 7 (06:18):
Tell me about the families that run the island that
own the island.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
The families on Kotao and their ancestors. They were there
before the police. There was nothing going on there apart
from these families, and they ran the island. I mean that,
you know, there weren't police there. I don't think they
meant to be corrupt. I think they just thought these
are our islands. We're running them the way we want
to run them. There's no administration offices, there's no nothing,
so it's like no one knew what was going on
on the islands, and at that time, I don't think
(06:42):
anybody really cared. I think it's just like a tribal
mentality where you've got the village chiefs running it. And
you know, any police that did turn up on the
island were very quickly made to realize that they worked
for the people who believe they owned the island. I
think you've got to remember that the North of Thailand
and the South of Thailand is completely differ. For it
like southern Thailand, the police are not paid enough. Right
(07:03):
so the police are on a very very very low salary.
They have to ei their own weapons, they have to
buy their own ammunition. So the only way they can
make enough money is to take tea money and take
bribes because they can't easibly live on their salaries.
Speaker 7 (07:14):
Two things, when you say tea money, essentially mean likees bribes.
Yeah yeah, And just want to be clear, I mean
the police work for the families, right, yeah.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
Well their role is to do whatever the family has
tell them to do.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Sam Gruber doesn't believe that all police on Katao are
controlled by the families.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
It depends which police office is in charge. You have
excellent police broken Thailand whenever they want to, but then
you have the guys behind, and you have a lot
of money involved that everybody knows that money is the
lubricant in Thailand, whether it's a government or the police
forces or whatever. The money is the religion.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
The police on Katao can at times appear blinded by money,
but according to Ian Yarwood, they're not the only ones
being seduced by the charms of the island.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
So you've got the criminal elements who are very well
entrenched there, and then you've got a lot of expats
who are living there and they may be having a
great life as running a bar or running a scuba
diving school and a murder happens here or there, or
someone gets drugged and raped, but many of them are
just happy enough to turn a blind eye to it,
(08:20):
and they just become complicit in all of the crime there.
We tend to find that the smart people, the decent people, leave,
and people who are prepared to turn a blind eye
to things they hang around.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
The beauty of Cato Mede. It a tourism hotspot. Westerners
began to settle on the island seeking an escape from reality,
but more strange incidents were occurring on the island.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
Something really wrong is happening here. You're so overwhelmed. You're
living on the beach, you're among the palm trees, you're
diving every day. I think you literally just shut your
eyes to the fact that anything dodgy could be going on,
because I remember thinking about my friends back at home
in the UK and the cold and the rain, working
nine to five, but thinking, there's no way I ever
want to go back to that rat race, and as
(09:03):
long as you live by their rules, you're going to
be all right. So I just put it to the
back of my mind. I mean, I was just a
naive girl living in paradise. There was always an undercurrent
of you know, the certain people you don't upset, there's
certain people you avoid, there's certain things you don't talk about,
And I think you just shut it out because we
didn't want to think there was anything sinister going on
in Kotao, because we wanted to live in Kotao, and
(09:26):
if we left Kotaa, where did we go? So I
often wonder like, what at that point, why didn't I
just pack.
Speaker 8 (09:31):
Up and leave?
Speaker 7 (09:32):
Why didn't you?
Speaker 6 (09:33):
I think because you're living such a different lifestyle than
the one you have brought up with. It's almost like
you're not really living it. It's almost like playing a
video game. It's like it's not real, do you know
what I mean? I think I was just so blinded
by my lifestyle. I wasn't prepared to let anything filter
through that would tell me that I shouldn't be there
because I'd found the place to me, where I belonged,
where I loved it, where I was happy. I didn't
(09:54):
want anything tainting that. And I think a lot of
people are guilty of that, because not just a good lifestyle,
you live in the the best, most incredible life that
you could ever live. I mean, every day is Saturday.
Every day is just from the minute you wake up
to the minute you seek you're doing what you want
to do. Every moment is just the hairs are standing
up on your arms, in your back of your neck
because you know you've got to a concert and there's
(10:16):
a really big drop and you're like, wow, you've felt
like that all the time, constantly.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So you're now on the island for a couple of
years and you've seen a man covered in brain and
you've only been there for a couple of years. I mean,
what's going through your mind about this place at this point?
Speaker 6 (10:30):
Nothing, because predominantly, like every day was brilliant. You're in
the middle of nowhere. I mean, it's it's bloody quiet,
you know. So when there's gunshots, you hear them and
you're like, well, you know, ties are fallen out with
each other again. But we didn't really like, we didn't
question it too much. We just wanted to keep diving
and partying and we didn't really worry about that.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Connor spoke with Ian yer Word about why he thinks
this is the case.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Most of their focus tends to be on covering up
crimes against tourists because if they actually investigate a crime
and they wind up charging let's say a local type person,
and if that person is ultimately convicted, then that reflects
very badly on Thailand.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
It's all about.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Saving face, and they're very much focused on saving face,
protecting the tourism industry, so that the police either dismiss
any reports about criminal activity or they go out and
they find escapegoat.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
a moment. This brings us back to the prosecutors files
and DNA results sou Buchanan obtained in the case against
(11:53):
Wapo and zou Lamb. The pair were both charged and
convicted of the murderers of Hannah Withtheridge and David mill
Connor shared these files with forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan
to get his view on the latest developments.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Nothing makes sense the DNA if you redetort transcripts and
see the coverage. The judges say that the two boys
were convicted solely on DNA evidence and not on anything
else because they don't have motive, they don't have the ability,
they don't have a weapon that ties them. They have
no DNA evidence on the weapon, even though it's a bloody,
gruesome scene and stuff like that. There was no blood
on their clothes, but they were convicted solely on the
(12:31):
evidence of DNA, which ties one of them in theory
to it.
Speaker 9 (12:35):
I think the big question is can you track the
provenance of the sample? How well was it protected? And
how would you get an evidence rich or DNA rich sample.
It's one thing to find, you know, what we refer
to as touch DNA, you know, on an external surface,
that's whetre of thing with you know, shedding death skin self.
But when you talk about an evidence rich sample that
(12:58):
arises from semen, you know you're in a different strata
at that point in time.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It's harder, is that what you're saying?
Speaker 9 (13:04):
Yeah, it would be harder to mask. I would think,
you know, I don't know how you would go about
sourcing that. You know, if it is arising from sperm essentially,
how are you going to kind of trick individuals into this?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Zalin's DNA had one extra marker eighteen, but that it
didn't match the sample taken from Hannah. Is that unusual?
Is that normal? It would DNA be one hundred percent
I mean, I know, not one hundred percent match. But like,
if one of the markers doesn't match, is that somebody
that sends out to you.
Speaker 9 (13:36):
No, not particularly. Again, you don't know what the status
of the sample was when they took it. The marker
itself might be something that is an outlier relative to
the testing that they used. But if you have enough
markers to tie back to him specifically, it's it's pretty solid.
It's certainly more solid than any other kind of forensic science.
(13:56):
It's out there just because of the size of numbers
that you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
But there were questions about the chain of custody of
the DNA sample.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
If you have a chain of evidence that is by
all accounts, really chaotic and problematic, is it difficult to
just simply relabel somebody's DNA sample as somebody else's just
just change the name. Is that possible?
Speaker 9 (14:17):
Yeah, if you don't have controls over the samples. Again,
I'm bringing an American mindset to it. These are something
that at a very baseline, particularly through QC and labs
quality control, It's something that is one oh one level
stuff because if you cannot guarantee that chain has been
(14:40):
remained is intact, everything else is worthless. It's not worth
a gunpowder to blow it a Hell, so your client,
who is the state, and the courts, the judicial system,
they have to be reassured of the veracity of what's
coming out of there. I can't speak to that. Relative
to this locale. I'd come closer to you know, obviously
the US, Canadian, certainly the Brits, the links that we
(15:03):
go to to ensure provenance of everything. Could somebody get
in there and switch labels? Hell, yeah they could.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
There was one other potentially disturbing insight from the DNA analysis.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I think the TIE report says there was DNA taken
from Hanna's vagina and her anus m but it says
there were different DNA. Is that the way you read it?
Speaker 9 (15:25):
Yeah, there was more than one source essentially. You know,
when you're working a case and you have what's referred
to as comingling of biological evidence like this, one of
the first things that you think about is that this
is going to be a multiple sexual assault, almost like
a game rate where you're going to have deposition. It's
(15:45):
one thing to have deposition externally, okay, but when you
have commingling of DNA within an individual, that puts the
dynamic of the event into a completely different realm at
that point in time, and it's just like you have
deposition vaginal deposition now, now you've got atal rectal deposition
(16:06):
as well. So that's that is a significant finding.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
In addition to potential questions about the DNA's chain of command,
there were also some unusual encounters that happened during z
LN and wapo's trial. Veteran journalist Sarah Yun, who was
on the island at the time, shares an experience she
had with the person at court.
Speaker 10 (16:29):
This was a tai police officer sitting in the court who,
as I went to go out of the court, had
to step over him, and as I went to step
over him, he said to me go out, don't come back,
or will kill you. And I didn't really catch what
he said until I was halfway out the door and
thought he did say that. And then I went back
into court from my next relay tag and he was
sitting next to me and he said, did you not
(16:50):
hear me? And I said, yes, I heard you. And
then when we went out of the court that day,
he said, if you don't stop reporting on this trial,
will kill you. And then I simply turned to him
and said, that's fine. What time would you like to
meet me? I don't mind at all. I can meet
you outside at any time you like, and you can
do what you want. And he looked quite surprised and
he didn't answer. So then I said, well, what time
(17:12):
did you like? Five o'clock? So ill meet you outside
at five o'clock, because I'd seen that they tended to
gather outside the court of five o'clock, lazing all over
their wagons. And I went outside at five o'clock and
there were about eight nine policemen sitting by their wagons
in their vests, and I went to walk towards the car,
and they got in the car and drove away. And
then they didn't threaten me after that. But that is
(17:32):
quite normal in Entilen. They don't like women, especially white women,
to confront them. And I was not going to be
stopped from covering this trial. And I didn't think that
they were serious. I mean, if I had vanished, it
might have been really quite obvious.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
The trial also brought to light another detail of the
crime related to the alleged murder weapon.
Speaker 10 (17:53):
And then there was a man and who came to
court who admitted the hoe was his, and it had
been found police in his vegetable patch, buried among black
plastic bags. And this man worked for the owner of
the ac bar. He said that they police had come
to him and had searched his allotment as it were,
and had found the hoe blood stained amongst these black
(18:16):
plastic bags, and had asked him why he put it there,
and he said, I told them because it was mine.
And then they gave me rubber gloves and they told
me to take this hoe back and put it under
a tree down by the beach, near where the murders
had taken place. There was blood on the hoe, apparently
according to the police, but police at one point said
there were two murder weapons, a hoe and a wooden club,
(18:37):
but then when they got to court there was no
mention of the wooden club and the hoe. They said
there was blood stained. But the man who came to
court and claimed it was his said he'd wiped it
clean because he didn't know what it was. He said
he found it on the beach, picked it up and
though that's my hoe, and had wiped it clean, and
then taken it back and put it amongst the black
plastic bags and at no point did anybody say, well,
(18:57):
is this man a suspect? And there were very few
funny moments in that court, but there was a funny
moment when when he'd finished giving his evidence and he
said to the judge, can I have my hoe back? Said?
He said no, and he said, well, I want it mine,
I want it back. And I think everybody at the
back was like, is anyone going to ask him if
he did it? Because he's quite obviously quite open in
(19:18):
what he was saying, and there seemed to think there
was nothing wrong with being in position of the murder
weapon and then just being asked to go and put
it back on the beach where he found it.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Who was the man who owned the blood covered hoe
and who told him to return that hoe back to
the crime scene. There's still more questions about the weapons
used in the murders of Hannah and David. Again, Connor
speaks with forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
One of the things that I've heard is that nobody
thinks the hoe was the only weapon, that there were
likely other weapons.
Speaker 9 (19:50):
Yeah, I think so too, including a.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Punch knife, maybe rock or something like that. I mean,
there's just there were other things. Yeah, what they did
to Hannah may have been different with than what they
did to David. And again, one of the many reasons
that Zalin and Wapo, the two Burmese boys that were convicted,
are unlikely as actual suspects, is that they're both tiny
little people. I think one of them is even smaller
than Hannah. And David was a gigantic guy. I mean,
(20:15):
was well over six foot two hundred pounds, big, strong,
young guy and is likely not going to be overpowered
by these two Burmese guys. So I think most people
tend to think that they were larger men, multiple people
carrying multiple weapons.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
Yeah, and I got to tell you what I'm seeing here,
you know, reoccurring in I don't know if you can
see that. This is his autopsy report. They're using this
term torn. He's been beaten with something, So there might
be these punk Tate injuries that you're referring to. There's
a lot of abraided injuries that he's got. And what
I mean by that, when you get blunt for strikes,
(20:51):
you'll get it. Not only do you get contusions, but
you'll also get these abrasions because there's a lot of
friction that goes on when they think strike the skin.
So you'll you'll get, yeah, you'll get like a big
confused area brus and you'll also get this friction almost
like sandpaper over the skin. And that's part of the
ripping and tearing that you get with the laceration. He's
(21:13):
got multiple of these, Connor suffice to say, he's have
the hell beat out of him. What you're looking at
here are probably multiple assailants and maybe multiple multiple weapons
that are being brought to It just sounds like a
I don't want to use the word mob. It sounds
like a group of people descended upon them, you know.
And I'm sure that other people have postulated that as well.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, and that's that's the theory that was painted on
day one that was later thrown away in for these
two Burmese boys.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Potential multiple assailants and weapons, faulty DNA evidence. There were
also some questions about bloody clothes found in David Miller's bungalow.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And there was clothes that were covered in blood found
in David's bungalow.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Yeah, we've got photographs like a very light hand sort
of color pair of trousers that had blood over the
bottom of them, and they found some like bloody bandages
in the bin there as well. I mean, no one
ever gave any account as to where that came from.
David certainly wasn't wearing long pants the night he was
murder but they were long pants, you know, they were
not short they were long pants. Yeah, they did find
(22:18):
bloodied clothing at David's bungalow, which is interesting because they
never found any bloodied clothing at white yours or in
bungalow as Ever, why were those trousers never tested? Hannah's
clothes were never tested for DNA.
Speaker 9 (22:30):
You know why.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Hannah's clothes were never tested? Was ever an official reason?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
No?
Speaker 6 (22:34):
No, there was never an official reason, no official reason whatsoever.
I mean, they just didn't test them. And you know
the bite mark on her breast, I mean, was that tested?
Where's DNA from that?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Let's stop here for another break. Here again, Connor speaking
with Joseph Scott Morgan about the DNA results of the
bite mark on Annah Withridge's breast.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
One of the other things that stuck out was that
the bite DNA did not match either of the two
boys who are convicted. What do you make of that.
Speaker 9 (23:16):
Well, you know that they would have gotten salivary DNA
sourcing from that, which is a pretty good source. They
obviously did swabs of the areola and I read that
you know in there. If that is the case, you know,
and again we're you know, kind of postulating, could what
could have happened in an event like this. If you're
(23:39):
trying to restrain someone and someone is participating in a
gang rape, you might have someone holding down holding down
this individual, and a bite could take place by somebody
that's not involved in the actual penetrative event. Now to
the point of where she's bitten on her breast, they
would have because that's a non protected area. You know,
(24:01):
she's got some type of clothing on. They talk about
a pink garment that she's wearing in the autopsy report
that's kind of pushed down her body. Her remains would
have had to have been protected pretty well in order
to acquire that sample, that sal very you know, DNA sample.
It's not beyond reason to think that you could have
(24:22):
a group of people that would participate in a horrific
event like this and then suddenly, you know, after they're
stated in some way, they lose taste for completing the event.
The other individuals may back off at that point in time,
but they've still left a trace, a trace of themselves behind.
That might be the case here.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Does it suggest that there is a third person, at
least a third person involved in this rape murder?
Speaker 9 (24:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, you're you know, because naturally, you know,
people are very protective of their bodies. You would not expect,
you know, to take a random person off of the
street and swab their breast area and find foreign DNA there,
particularly if it's salivary deposition, which is what they specifically
talked about in the sport. That's an odd thing. So
(25:11):
it leads us logically to conclude that there would have
to be an additional person involved, and maybe more than that.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
As more evidence comes to light, the last moments of
Hannah and David seem even more horrifying, and the people
who may have more information are not speaking.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
They completely went off the radar. They're either scared or
you know, they've been just completely frightened off, or they
know more. Eight years later, people in Jersey, people in England,
people in Milan are afraid to speak. Eight years down
the line, they are not talking.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
In twenty fifteen, there was a development in Thailand that
made it even more difficult to find answers about the
suspicious deaths on Katau Again. Journalist Sarah Yun.
Speaker 10 (25:58):
In the February after the trials of the government announced
that freelance journalism was to be banned in Thailand. And
I was working as a freelance journalist, and they said
all freelanch jundes banned under threat going to prison and
to be sent out of the country to be deported.
And I thought that was a very strange thing to
announce just then.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
As a reminder, Soup Buchanan's reporting on the crimes and
Katao eventually led to a search weren't being issued for
her arrest.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
So I wrote this story about a girl who was raped.
They said I made the story up, so they tried
and do me for computer crimes, fake news, bringing Thailand
into disrepute and inciting national panic. Bearing in mind, when
I wrote this story, I was in the UK, my
server was in Singapore, and my companies registered in the Philippines.
So have I committed a crime in Thailand? The trial
(26:51):
finished and in twenty fifteen. I left. In twenty sixteen
and then I can't go back now because the stupid
Parseholds are putting a restaurant out for me. I mean,
I've got a bloody foray and I'm gonna all my
stuff in it. I can't go ahead.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
It's important to note that both wave Po and ze
Lyn have been found guilty. Here again Connor and forensic
expert Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
The belief is that the murderer's DNA is the correct
DNA that was taken from Hannah's body, but it's attributed
to the wrong person because of the haphazard nature of
the evidence collection.
Speaker 9 (27:33):
How do you suss that out? Though? I mean, I
know you're the one asking the questions. I'm curious. Do
they have a suspect somebody within this mob that they
believe You know, you talked about the Grand Pooba, but
I mean, is there a henchman or something.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yeah, there's a couple of people that are believed to
have been there as well.
Speaker 9 (27:53):
Yeah. No matter what you present to them, you might
as well spit in the ocean. It's not going too
much to raise the water level.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
We're not trying to exonerate them, We're just trying to
get them out of the prison. I think that's sound
of like the best case scenario because the king apparently
has the ability to send them home.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Well, we weigh on updates from Subi Cannon's plan to
appeal to the king. More mysterious deaths continue to occur
on Katao. Here's Sarah Yun.
Speaker 10 (28:22):
I don't think justice is a thing that is a
greatest importance in Thailand. Loss of face is the biggest importance.
Unless the police investigate these situations, there is no way
of finding out what actually caused the death. But I
fear that we're talking about an island that is not
ruled from Bangkok. It's ruled by a family on the
(28:45):
island who've probably been there since this island used to
be a prison, and they run this island and they
are the ones who decide what happens on that island.
But I know that this whole podcast is looking at
all the events on Kotaus. All these things are as
important as the trial for Hannah and David. But I
think what the trial for Hannah and David proved was
(29:06):
that an unreliable police investigation will be overlooked, And that
to me, is the link between all these different deaths
on the island that at no point has there been
a reliable police investigation. And maybe the government's hands were
tied as much as the police hands were tied. Maybe
you know, it's the duel in the crown of the
(29:26):
tie tourism industry and they just wanted it all to
go away.
Speaker 11 (29:33):
My heart goes out to Hannah and David's parents and
all the parents who've lost kids on that island, because
you want the best for your children. You want them
to see the world, you want them to explore and
spread their wings, and for them to come home in
a coffin is well, it's the worst thing.
Speaker 12 (29:53):
Can you imagine what it must be like to get
that phone call as a parent. It's the staff of nightmares.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
It's horrific. It's absolutely horrific.
Speaker 12 (30:01):
The number of people who died going to Kotau, and
you know, in lots of instances, the circumces in which
they've died is just not in any way satisfactory to
the families finding out what truly happens, whether it's somebody
jumping off the roof of a building into a swimming
pool and then dying as a result, or somebody dying well,
scuba diving, or somebody dying with their hands tied behind
(30:22):
their back, but they're supposed to have hanged themselves. You know,
all of those deaths are absolutely tragic, and it must
be awful because if you're those.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
Families, then the questions just keep coming. You know about
your son or daughter and the circumstances in which they died,
and you just want to know the truth, and the
questions won't ever stop unless you've got confidence in the
authorities to get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
If you have any information about any of the cases
discussed in this series, please contact us at producers at
KTESH studios dot com. For more information and relevant photo
follow us on Instagram at KT Underscore Studios. Death Island
is produced by Stephanie Leidecker, Connor Powell, Andrew Arnow, Jeff Shane,
(31:11):
Chris Cacaro, Gabriel Castillo, and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
sound designed by Jeff Tis. Music by Vancor Music. Death
Island is a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Stephanie Lydecker
Courtney Armstrong
Jeff Shane
Conor Powell
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