April 5, 2023 • 33 mins
Ian Jacobs traveled to Koh Tao for a diving vacation, but his trip ended in tragedy when his body was discovered in a well on the island. Despite the investigation into his death, his friends from the UK remain unsatisfied with the official story and embark on their own journey to uncover the truth. Around the same time, Mr. Ban, a well-known local businessman some people called “King of Koh Tao," is gunned down in broad daylight. The deaths are shrouded in mystery, and the deeper our team delves, the more complicated things become.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
In January of two thousand, Ian Jacobs traveled alone from
the UK to Catao for a diving vacation. On January fifteenth,
the thirty five year old's body was discovered in an
above ground well situated off a dirt road. His neck
was broken. The police's theory was that a drunken Ian
(00:23):
had been attempting to walk back to his bungalow when
he stumbled into the well and died. However, as Ian's
friends continued to look into his death, they discovered that
Ian had recently loaned money to local ti men. Local
police allegedly told those friends to leave the island as
soon as possible. Was this cryptic warning a sign that
(00:46):
something nefarious had happened to Ian? Two years later, a
man named mister Bann founded one of the most popular
diving schools in the world. In early February of two
thousand and two, mister Bann was speaking with three friends
on the popular Sarre Beach. A lone man approached, wearing
a balaclava which covered everything but his eyes. Mister Band
(01:10):
was shot to death six times at close range. His
friends were left stunned covered in mister Band's blood. Some
say it was over a gambling debt. Some say it
was an assassination ordered by a local businessman. Welcome to
Death Island a production of Katie Studios and iHeartRadio, Episode three,
(01:33):
The Cases of Ian Jacob and Mister Bann. I'm Connor Powell,
an investigative journalist at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker, Courtney Armstrong,
Andrew Arnow and Jeff Shane. Tell me about mister b
Who was he, when was he killed? What did he operate?
(01:55):
He had a thig dive school in the middle of
Sire Beach and at the time he had dives were
the only ones that had an IDC and Instructor development course,
so you could do all of your courses with the
other dive schools, but to become a scuba dive instructor
you had to go through Bans. Yeah, they're one of
the biggest dive schools in the world. But he was
an inveterate gambler and he used to gamble with Mon
(02:15):
from Good of You, which is the other side of
the island, and then him and Mon fell out and
the next thing I was I was at home and
my friend came to my house like covered in brain
and blood and he's like Jesus Christ, like mister Bann
has just been assassinated in broad daylight by someone wearing
a balaclava. Varat a shan vin nonn Katao as mister
(02:36):
Ban was forty two years old when he was gunned
down in broad daylight. He was shot while speaking with
three friends near Surrey Beach. A lone gunman walked right
up to mister Ban and shot him six times. And
in a lot of ways, mister Ban's death was the
beginning of a new era in Katao. While working on
(02:56):
this podcast, our investigation into the island has uncovered dozens
of mysterious deaths, but mister banns appeared more straightforward than
most of the other cases. We will explore. He was
murdered in broad daylight? And was this a business dispute?
Was this a gambling dispute? Gambling? Soup Buchanan lived in
(03:17):
Thailand when mister Ban was murdered. She wrote the book
The Curse of the Turtle, The True story of Thailand's
backpacker murders. She says that there was a local man
known as Quote the Butcher on the island who was
convicted for the murder of mister Bann, but many people
believe that the butcher was ordered to kill mister Ban
by a powerful katab businessman. So the butcher went to
(03:44):
prison and he's still being paid, like he's been paid
to go at prison, but it was organized it but
left the island and he's never returned to the island.
He's never been allowed back to the island after that.
The words you know, I have no idea, but he's
still maintains I mean it sounds like you can be
sort of a sent away but you still control your
business empire. Yeah, but I mean that happens at the
(04:04):
businessman allegedly ordered the murder of mister Ban over a
gambling dispute, yet still maintained his business interests on the island.
Who was this other businessman and why was he not
investigated further by the local police. I want to go
back to the Serry Beach. This isn't some remote island
beach on Kotau, right, I mean, Sorry Beach is the
(04:25):
main spot, right, main spot. You couldn't do anything on
Sorry Beach without being seen. So it's very possible that
there are multiple people who see this murder. It's impossible
for them not to have done. That's like murdering someone
in Piccadinny Circus or Time Square and saying there's no witnesses.
We connected with a former employee of mister Bann for
their protection. They've asked that we not reveal their identity,
(04:48):
and we've altered their voice. Will refer to them as
Bill going forward. Bill lived on Katao in the late
nineteen nineties. He explained that there were a few main
families on the island that essentially ran all the businesses,
and mister Bann was head of one of those families.
The people I've talked to who were there in their
early days talk about mister Bann as the guy who
(05:09):
kind of created kataw as we knew it is that
fairy Yeah, you could say that for sure. I mean,
he definitely helped to mold things a certain way on Kotow.
His dive school became, I think the biggest dive school
and the most influential. Mister band gave Bill an opportunity
to work at one of his many businesses and said
(05:30):
he would look out for him. Was it a pretty
well run organization? I mean, did he run a good business.
He was so sweet. He just said, yeah, just give
me a cut, you know, thirty percent or whatever. It
was that we made a deal with him for we
could do whatever we wanted. Basically, we were under his protection.
(05:51):
If you have a fallout with one of the main guys,
you know, you got to watch yourself. And so the
offer from mister Bann was a blessing because I mean
there was no one else who could have actually offered
that sort of protection to start something. So yeah, it
was it was a blessing. So there was one guy,
(06:12):
for example, that I can't remember his name. He was
kind of like one of the mafia guys that mister
Ban hired at some point to look over us. You know,
we called him the hit man. Was there sort of
a handful of people who ran the island at that time.
I mean they made the decisions about what's going on.
(06:32):
I mean, this is the thing that sort of blows
my mind about this little tiny island. The story that
we were told was that there was a guy that
was arrested for killing mister Ban, but that the person
behind it was this other chieftain type guy who ran
another dive company. Yeah, that's how the rooms went. Were
(06:54):
you there when that happened? Oh well, yeah, so when
mister Bean gets killed. But it described it to me
as sort of like an earthquake on coat out in
that little community because he had been so powerful. Yeah,
I mean it was a pretty shocking moment. I mean,
obviously some real kind of sadness that also, I guess
(07:17):
a realization of how fragile things were there on the island.
After that event, we had to keep our wits about
us a little more. We were being a bit more careful,
and we were we were having more troubles, more issues
with the mafia and whatnot coming into our bar. And
(07:38):
and I mean we even though we were paying our dues,
we were paying the local boys, paying the police as well.
You know, you have to pay everyone out bits and pieces.
But you know, at the end of the day, there
was less kickbacks when we were working with mister Van
because he kind of just had that you know, autonomy there.
(07:58):
So with him not there, it felt like, you know,
the wild was kipped in a bit. More people were
strutting their stuff a bit more than they could all
would beforehand. So we were starting to really fill the
pinch because then we'd had a really massive party and
it looked great from the outside. People were going, Wow,
what a great party. You must have made hicks of money.
(08:18):
And then we were counting our money and then we'd like, okay,
we got to pay this guy here, Pitt's play this
guy there. And by the time we paid all our dues,
it's like we've got enough to go out for dinner.
It sounds like Kotau when you were there, was rapidly
developing and went from just a sort of dive location
to a party scene. And at the same time there's
(08:41):
a ton of money, but nobody's actually making money. Who's
doing the business. It sounds like everybody's paying out. Yeah, absolutely,
So it just became this kind of vicious circle, and
you know, it was getting frustrating too. And then one
day one of the Matthew guys was being relentless at
our bark. He kept asking for more and more free drinks,
(09:03):
and at one point and he was just pissing. Thought.
We said, now, come on, man, that you've had enough,
and then he got his gun out and started shooting
his gun into the bar. And that at that stage
I just realized, hold on, I'd come to this island
and started here because it was an idealliic place to
be in and then now it's like, my life's in danger.
(09:24):
So that that was a pivotal point where we decided,
you know what, let's let's head to Australia and take
some time out and then rethink this through. And and
that was literally the end of our business time there,
because what year is this when you left two thousand
and four. It's not like it's a totally dangerous place
where you know, you're lucky to get out alive, as
(09:47):
they make it out in some reports. But definitely there's
this kind of, you know, this old school mafia kind
of vibe, this attitude of some of the locals of
just you know, this is our place, we run it,
and no one's going to tell us what to do. Well,
how are we going to do it? And if they
get in the way too much and anyway, and then
(10:07):
we'll do whatever we need to do to remove them. Yeah,
all the deaths on Kotao are sort of shocking for
different reasons, but mister Banns is particularly shocking because in
the late nineteen nineties early two thousand he was really
the king of Kotao and I think we have to
sort of put in perspective how important he was to
the island that is now Kotao. You know, for a
(10:29):
lot of years Kotao it was a prison, It was
sort of an empty island. There really wasn't anything, but
it has beautiful scubad iving, incredible reefs, very easy coastal
areas to scuba dive off of it. Mister Bannon is
really the guy who helped bring scuba diving to Kotao,
which transformed the island from really nothing, you know, just
(10:52):
a rock out in the middle of the ocean, to
what it is today, which is a massive tourist destination.
And he was really the k of Kotao in the
late nineties early two thousands. But he also apparently liked
to gamble, according to what people have told us, And
he was shockingly killed in the sort of middle paradise
in front of lots of witnesses. He was shot, and
(11:15):
no one seems to have Billington eye. With the exception
of the odd story here and there, it was kept
relatively quiet and the tourists just kept on coming. That's Andrew,
one of the producers on this podcast. I think one
of the things that's really interesting is that mister Band's
business didn't even suffer. It was transferred, as we understand,
(11:38):
to his son into some other family members, and for
a lot of years, mister Band's dive school has been
one of the biggest, if not the biggest dive school
in terms of certifications, not only in Asia but really
in around the world. I mean, that's how big of
business it's turned into. Just people kept coming and coming.
And obviously most people go to Kotao if never of
(12:00):
mister Band, you know, they don't know how he was killed.
But you know, we've talked to a couple of people
who were on the island who knew about mister Band,
who were aware of him, and even though his death
was shocking, it didn't shock the island. Nothing changed. I mean,
the party really didn't stop this place, right. It really
(12:21):
seems to you know, get its clause into you, and
once it does, these people just really don't want to leave.
People love it there. We've had a couple different people
to describe it as like the wild wild West. And
if we start the modern day Kotau experience, sometime in
the late nineties, early two thousands, you know, mister Band's
death is sort of the first big death murder on
the island, and he was murdering. He was literally assassinated
(12:43):
in the street. And you know, the progress of the
wild Wild West just continues. You know, people keep flooding in,
people keep coming to dive hotels are built, the culture
or the industry of the paradise continues to grow. It's
almost like mister Band's death as a signal to anyone
who was involved in Koto that you're pretty much going
(13:04):
to be able to get away with whatever you want.
Because if one of the preeminent people on the island
can be gunned down in broad daylight on the street,
you're going to have an increase in some of these
unexplained mysterious deaths over the course of the next five, ten,
fifteen years. And I feel like mister Bann's assassination in
the middle of the street sets the tone for everything
(13:27):
we see coming forward out of what Kotal becomes. Let's
stop here for a break, we'll be back in a moment.
In the early two thousands, more incidents were occurring on
(13:49):
the island, which the locals and expats both seem to
be turning a blind eye. Two two years prior to
mister Bann's assassination, there was another questionable death on Katao.
Once we really started digging in here in our research,
we came up with a story that we found taking
place before any of the other stories. That's Andrew Again,
(14:12):
a producer on this podcast. Around the time of mister
Band's assassination, there is a backpacker who was found dead,
stuffed into a cement pipe in the ground, and every
person who was interviewed about what happened said the same thing.
He probably went to go pee and fell in. So
(14:36):
Ian Jacobs was a traveler who came from the UK.
He went to Thailand for vacation for diving. You know,
that's a time when like hardcore divers who just wanted
to dive in vacation were coming to Kotao around two
thousand and the official sort of story as well, he
fell into this well and that's how he died, but
that's not really what other people have described. We spoke
(15:01):
with one of Ian's friends from college, Mick Lark. My
name is Michael Locke. I'm a British citizen. I'm a
friend of Ian Jacobs who who died kota tell me
about Ian. Tell me about how you knew him, Tell
me about who he was as a person. We met
when we were at Bristol Polytechnic, so when we were
eighteen years old. We hit it off. We shared a
(15:23):
love of football, of music. We went on a few
travels together. He had a lot of friends, very much loved,
I have to say, you know, he was very amusing,
very charming, a lot fun. Yeah, he was a really
fun guy and I knew him until he died. We
were very close friends until until he went to Kotawan
in two thousand when he was thirty five. How did
(15:43):
you guys end up going to Thailand? We didn't go together.
He went to Thailand. I went to India. We both
hatched a plan to go babling after the Millennium. We
worked together on the Millennium Evening. There was a big
party in Bristol organized by a friend of ours in
the in the Mains where in Bristol divive music and everything,
and our friend asked us to do a food store,
(16:05):
a food bar. Being got together. We rented a burgh
of vm we sold food all night and with the
money we pocketed on that very auspicious night, the Millennium night.
We decided to go traveling. He went to Thailand. I
went to India. I was more into India. He wanted
to go and do a diving course in Kotown. He
(16:28):
had been there once before. He'd been to a wedding
in Thailand a friend of a friend got married the
year before, so he'd gone out there and they'd been
to Kotao and done a basic I think, and then
he fell in love with the place and decided he
wants to go back and get his PADDY certificates. PADDY
stands for the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. They train
(16:52):
and certify scuba divers all around the world. You have
to be a very strong swimmer to get a certification.
And how did you hear about his death? Yeah, so
I left to go to India about a week after
he'd gone to Thailand, and I was setching a bus
up to him Alayas and checked my emails and I
had an email from a mutual friend of ours in England.
(17:14):
He told me he was he was dead, simple as that.
I was completely dumbfound its completely shocked, you know, in
a state of it wasn't really sadness. It was shocked,
you know, absolutely disbelief. I gleaned more information and I
found out he was being cremated in about a week's
time in Bangkok. So I decided that I was going
(17:35):
to get on a plane and go to Bangkok and
go to his cremation. What did you hear was the
cause of death? But we were told he had died
from a blow to the head. But he was found
at the bottom of a well, and I thought, okay,
is it possible for someone to have stumbled ahead and
fallen in the well and drowned. It's a little hard
(17:58):
to make out, but make a saying, is it possible
for someone to have stumbled along, hid their head and
fell into a well and drowned. I was under the
impression that he didn't die from drowning. Me his friends
in England had no doubt straight away. There was never
a moment's doubt that he was murdered. I don't think
even across our mind that it was accidental. We suspected
(18:19):
foul play from from the beginning. Why did you suspect
that from the beginning? I can't remember why, but there
was just this consensus amongst that something was not right
and That is why, after I went to the cremation
in and Cock, I decided to go to Kotau. And
remember how I was thinking of it in my head.
I wanted to prove to myself that he couldn't have
(18:41):
fallen into the well and hit his head on the
way down. That was my purpose of going to Kotau.
How quickly did you get to Kotao after his death?
It must have been within two weeks. I think the
cremation was probably a week after his death, and then
I went straight from the cremation down to Kotao. So yeah,
within two weeks, I think I was there, spoken as there,
all of whom thought there was something suspicious. I went
(19:04):
to the police. I made an excuse to go to
the police. I wanted to have an excuse to go
to them. So my excuse to go into the police
was I wanted his possessions because I knew he'd had
money on him, because you don't go traveling without money.
So I asked the police what happened to all his money.
They told me they'd taken his money to pay for
transportation back to the mainland. When police told Mick how
(19:25):
they used Ian's money, his suspicions were raised, but they
also had questions about the well that Ian supposedly fell into.
I went to the well, and the aperture of the
world was so small. If you walked along and tripped
over its rim, you would fall over the world. He
wouldn't fall down. There was just no way that one
could stumble and fall into the world. So my suspicions
(19:47):
were confirmed. I suppose the well is the big question here.
Tie police on Katao reported that Ian was drunk and
looking for a police to urinate. Allegedly he had fallen
into well, hit his head on the way down, and drowned.
I'd say the well was a few feet across three feet.
It wasn't big enough to just fall in unless someone
(20:09):
pushed you in it. From what Mix saw, there was
no way an adult human could fall down the well
on their own. He returned to his hotel and came
back the next day to take photos of the well,
which he said a body would have to be folded
into to fit into. I went back to take photos
and the well had been bulldozed over. There were just
(20:30):
mounds of sand everywhere. That obviously made me even more suspicious.
Mick returned to the Catau police station a second time
after my first visit to the police, but the police
told me to come back in a few days time
there when the chief of police from Copang Gang, the
neighboring island, would be there. On my return the second time,
the chief of police from Copang Gang, he said there's
(20:51):
a fairy leaving in the morning and that I should
be on it. The police officers essentially, well, I just
want to be clear, because the police officers actually threatened
you to get off the island. Yes, yes, absolutely, that's
what he did. Did you have a feeling that there
was dodginess sort of around the police at that point
or did that come out of the blue when that happened.
(21:12):
Were you stunned? I mean, what was your thought wrong?
I mean, because we all assumed it was a murder
and we the police were saying it was an accident.
I knew that there was a cover up by the
police even at that point, and the more I looked
at the police reports, the more my feeling about that
as reinforced. We'll get back to the police reports, but
(21:33):
remember the story that the Catau police told about Ian's
death hinged on the fact that he was found at
the bottom of a well. We all believe the story
that he was found in a well for fourteen years
until I had conversations with Susan Buchanan. She told me
that he wasn't found at the bottom of a well
at all, and she says he was found inside a
(21:54):
piece of concrete pipe. Now, it's the same sort of
piping they used for welles. They bury concrete pipes into
the ground to make the wealth. But this was just
a bit of concrete pipe and the earth inside was
at ground level and he was just inside one of those.
If what Sue told Mick was true, then Ian was
found in a piece of concrete pipe that was standing up,
(22:16):
not even installed in the ground. Yet. If the story
told by Gatou police was fiction, what happened to Ian?
Mick has some thoughts like what else could have happened?
I mean, my feeling is that if, for example, if
some tie guy was hitting on a Western girl and
she wasn't enjoying it, even if he didn't know her,
(22:38):
he's the sort of guy until the tiger to get off,
that was the sort of guy he was when he
was done. Yeah, And that is my feeling that possibly
that happened. He wasn't that aggressive, you know, but he
would be protected. He was, literally, but in a nice way.
But if someone did something that he didn't agree with,
he would make his feelings clear. You know. He wouldn't
(23:00):
go looking for fighting. You never fight in his life.
But at the same time, he was outspoken enough to
stick up for people, and he wouldn't He wouldn't stand
for any ship. What we've heard is that, like you know,
essentially there's a history of violence on the island. People
are scared and don't really want to disrupt their own
personal paradise exactly, and it just sort of looked the
(23:23):
other way as long as it doesn't happen to me. Absolutely.
I did speak to some people in the guest house
that I stayed at, which I same guest out he'd
stayed at, and I do remember people saying, oh no,
that they thought it was suspicious. They thought he was murdered,
but that's it. Nobody said anything about who might have
done it or anything like that. Could Ian have stuck
up for someone in the bar that led to him
(23:43):
being murdered. Connor speaks to Soup Buchanan about what she
thinks of the theory, and is that something they could
get you killed? Oh? Hell yeah, you can look at
someone in Thailand the wrong way and it would get
you killed. I mean, yeah, it doesn't take much. Mick
went back to the police reports to try and find
answers about Ian Staff. Did you see two different autopsies
police reports. I've got the police reports in front of me. Yeah.
(24:06):
So this is the mystery of the whole thing. There
was an autopsy which took part place in Kopangang, the
island next to Kotao, which says he died from drowning
and that he was completely disfigured from having spent three
days in the well before the body was found. You know,
there's a big story, the police stories about him having
(24:27):
had ropes tied to him to be pulled out of
a four meter deep well. And then there's another autopsy
from Bangkok which makes no mention of his being in
water at all. You think that would be a fairly
obvious thing. And the autopsy from Bangkok says he died
from the head. So there's basically the autopsy say different things,
which probably means the one in Bangkok with some distance,
(24:51):
some space and hopefully more professional. Ye absolutely, hold on,
Here is cause of death. This is the Bangkok one,
bleeding in the brain due to severe impact at the head.
Now the Copang Gang autopsy does mention scratches on the head,
but says that he died from drowning. And you said
(25:13):
that his mother always believed that he was murdered, but
you didn't find that out till years later. The family
ever said to you had that suspicion. So I never
met his mother after Inn's death. The word I was
getting was that the family believed the official police story
and didn't want anything made of it. This is why
so much time passed before gone public with us, because
(25:35):
we believe that the family just wanted to lay it
to rest. It was only about five years ago I
finally met his mother. She lives in Scotland. I was passing,
so I went to see her one day. And if
I didn't want to be the person that said to
his mother, you, we think you're Inn was murdered. You know,
if you're sitting there in your old age believing your
son met an accidental death, we probably don't want to
(25:57):
be someone to go along and tell you that he
was murdered. You know, I wasn't going to be the
person that upset her like that. So anyway I went
and saw her. We got chatting, so eventually I said,
what do you think happened? And she just said straight up, oh,
he was murdered. And then it was like, okay, so
I don't need to be secret for about anymore. So
we had a long chat. She said she'd read the
(26:18):
police reports, the ones that I've got here sat in
front of me, and she said they just didn't had him.
And she mentioned the witness reports. And again if you
read the witness reports, they are suspicious. They're not eyewitnesses.
One is from a doctor, one from the village head.
One is from the taxi driver who met in on
the night he died. But they all sort of says
(26:39):
believe the cause of death was most likely because the
tourists was on his way to urinate and happened to
fall down the well. And then another one it's believed
that the cause of death was that the man was
drunk and on his way to urinate. The edge of
the well was oh, the man who noticed it and
happened to fall down the well. Third one, the witness
(27:00):
that the cause of death was because the tourist was
on his way to urinate but unfortunately happened to fall
down the well. It doesn't add up. They will say
exactly the same thing slightly different ways. You know. One
of the things that we've come across is that there's
an emphasis of the Thai police to always blame the
person who dies on Kotao, that the deaths as a
(27:22):
result of their own action. And I think that you
see that really clear in these witness statements. Right, he
was drunk, he fell down. Yeah, he did this to
himself as absolutely, even when it says it's unlikely that
he was attacked since the area had no trace of fighting. Now,
if you really think someone's fallen into a well, why
do you even need to say that. I mean, this
is long before the island has this reputation. I can
(27:44):
understand them saying that today, but in two thousands years
before anyone has any bad feelings about Kotao. But of
course they put that in there because they're trying to
deflect from what probably happened. Absolutely, Is there anything else
you want to add? As I say the slam dunk,
let's say, is what Susan's this? You know, the fact
(28:06):
that he wasn't even found in the well. You can
analyze the police reports as much as you want, you
heard them with a fine teeth comb. But when you
hear what Susanne says, I she's telling no reason to disbeliever,
then you might as well just tear up the police
reports because they all refer to a man who was
found at the bottom for well in water. And if
you believe Susan, there was no well. There was no water.
(28:30):
Now whether they the police found his body and then
threw it in the well, because I mean, they're going
into good detail about the depth of the well and
how they got the body out of the well, and
how the body looked because it had been in the
well for so long. Yeah, I mean this is a
continuing pattern of what you're describing. This isn't like a
one off thing. This is something we keep hearing time
and time and time again, which is police essentially blaming
(28:51):
the victim for their death and then also the same
time putting in information that doesn't make any logical sense
of to how somebody dies. Yeah, the police are acting
light there, untouchable that they can make up any story
and then nothing will come back to the police. Let's
stop here for another break. Since high authorities Uncle Tao
(29:24):
considered Ian's death an accident, there was never a proper investigation.
But there are lots of questions. Why do all the
witness statements sound so eerily similar, as if coordinated. How
would any of them know that Ian was urinating when
he fell into the well? Connor debriefed with Andrew after
the interview with Mick, No questions asked, no investigation, Let's
(29:47):
not get to the bottom of this. And so you know,
in early two thousand, you've got both of these deaths
with mister Bann and Ian Jacobs, and they're both you know,
I think they set that signal, They set that sort
of anything will go on this island because the only
thing that's important is keeping tourists coming here, keeping the
money flowing, keeping the divers coming, keeping the people going
(30:08):
to resorts. And you know, nobody on Kotau, really, no
one in Thailand was interested in even asking questions about
Ian Jacobs, and you know, staying with mister Van and
we don't have much on these because it's been twenty
two years since it happened. However, the information that we
can gather from these is stage setting. It's setting the
(30:28):
precedent for strange and mysterious deaths with no explanations given
at all, and when any explanation is given, the explanation
given by TIE authorities or contradictory. As early as two thousand,
we see major differences between the autopsy reports done by
the mainland police in Bangkok versus what the Catau police
(30:49):
report says, so which one is the truth? And the
eyewitness statements, which may have been fabricated, show a clear
pattern of blaming the victim and covering up the true
cause of death. Jonathan Samuel's is a reporter for Sky News.
He has covered some of the deaths and crimes in Catao.
Tourism is so important to Thailand, I mean hugely important,
(31:12):
and I think the last thing the Thai government wants
are these sort of stories going around the world, and
they will do almost anything it takes to make sure
they don't and to try and sort of wrap things
up in such a way that it doesn't make the
ties be put up for this, because it would look
so bad for Thailand about protecting their tourism industry and
(31:34):
the huge amount of money it brings in the mysterious
deaths of mister Bann and I and Jacobs, and the
lack of proper investigations into those deaths sets the stage
for the next twenty years. It's a refrain that will
become more and more pronounced over the years. Someone dies
Thaie authorities dismiss it as an accident and blame the
(31:54):
victim or find a scapegoat to cover it up. And
this is just the start of it. And I think
that lack of governance, that lack of professionalism, that hint
of suspicion of corruption amongst the police. When you couple
that with young people doing things to excess, experimenting, acting
(32:17):
in a way that perhaps they wouldn't act if they
were at home, then those two things coming together can
be disastrous. If you have any information about Ian Jacobs
or mister Bann, please contact us at producers at Katie
dask studios dot com for more information and relevant photos.
(32:39):
Follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Death Island
is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Connor Powell, Andrew Arnow, Jeff Shane,
Chris Cacaro, Gabriel Castillo and me Courtney Armstrong, editing and
sound designed by Jeff Tis, music by Vanacore Music. Death
(32:59):
Island is production of iHeartRadio and KAT Studios. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
In January of two thousand, Ian Jacobs traveled alone from
the UK to Catao for a diving vacation. On January fifteenth,
the thirty five year old's body was discovered in an
above ground well situated off a dirt road. His neck
was broken. The police's theory was that a drunken Ian
(00:23):
had been attempting to walk back to his bungalow when
he stumbled into the well and died. However, as Ian's
friends continued to look into his death, they discovered that
Ian had recently loaned money to local ti men. Local
police allegedly told those friends to leave the island as
soon as possible. Was this cryptic warning a sign that
(00:46):
something nefarious had happened to Ian? Two years later, a
man named mister Bann founded one of the most popular
diving schools in the world. In early February of two
thousand and two, mister Bann was speaking with three friends
on the popular Sarre Beach. A lone man approached, wearing
a balaclava which covered everything but his eyes. Mister Band
(01:10):
was shot to death six times at close range. His
friends were left stunned covered in mister Band's blood. Some
say it was over a gambling debt. Some say it
was an assassination ordered by a local businessman. Welcome to
Death Island a production of Katie Studios and iHeartRadio, Episode three,
(01:33):
The Cases of Ian Jacob and Mister Bann. I'm Connor Powell,
an investigative journalist at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker, Courtney Armstrong,
Andrew Arnow and Jeff Shane. Tell me about mister b
Who was he, when was he killed? What did he operate?
(01:55):
He had a thig dive school in the middle of
Sire Beach and at the time he had dives were
the only ones that had an IDC and Instructor development course,
so you could do all of your courses with the
other dive schools, but to become a scuba dive instructor
you had to go through Bans. Yeah, they're one of
the biggest dive schools in the world. But he was
an inveterate gambler and he used to gamble with Mon
(02:15):
from Good of You, which is the other side of
the island, and then him and Mon fell out and
the next thing I was I was at home and
my friend came to my house like covered in brain
and blood and he's like Jesus Christ, like mister Bann
has just been assassinated in broad daylight by someone wearing
a balaclava. Varat a shan vin nonn Katao as mister
(02:36):
Ban was forty two years old when he was gunned
down in broad daylight. He was shot while speaking with
three friends near Surrey Beach. A lone gunman walked right
up to mister Ban and shot him six times. And
in a lot of ways, mister Ban's death was the
beginning of a new era in Katao. While working on
(02:56):
this podcast, our investigation into the island has uncovered dozens
of mysterious deaths, but mister banns appeared more straightforward than
most of the other cases. We will explore. He was
murdered in broad daylight? And was this a business dispute?
Was this a gambling dispute? Gambling? Soup Buchanan lived in
(03:17):
Thailand when mister Ban was murdered. She wrote the book
The Curse of the Turtle, The True story of Thailand's
backpacker murders. She says that there was a local man
known as Quote the Butcher on the island who was
convicted for the murder of mister Bann, but many people
believe that the butcher was ordered to kill mister Ban
by a powerful katab businessman. So the butcher went to
(03:44):
prison and he's still being paid, like he's been paid
to go at prison, but it was organized it but
left the island and he's never returned to the island.
He's never been allowed back to the island after that.
The words you know, I have no idea, but he's
still maintains I mean it sounds like you can be
sort of a sent away but you still control your
business empire. Yeah, but I mean that happens at the
(04:04):
businessman allegedly ordered the murder of mister Ban over a
gambling dispute, yet still maintained his business interests on the island.
Who was this other businessman and why was he not
investigated further by the local police. I want to go
back to the Serry Beach. This isn't some remote island
beach on Kotau, right, I mean, Sorry Beach is the
(04:25):
main spot, right, main spot. You couldn't do anything on
Sorry Beach without being seen. So it's very possible that
there are multiple people who see this murder. It's impossible
for them not to have done. That's like murdering someone
in Piccadinny Circus or Time Square and saying there's no witnesses.
We connected with a former employee of mister Bann for
their protection. They've asked that we not reveal their identity,
(04:48):
and we've altered their voice. Will refer to them as
Bill going forward. Bill lived on Katao in the late
nineteen nineties. He explained that there were a few main
families on the island that essentially ran all the businesses,
and mister Bann was head of one of those families.
The people I've talked to who were there in their
early days talk about mister Bann as the guy who
(05:09):
kind of created kataw as we knew it is that
fairy Yeah, you could say that for sure. I mean,
he definitely helped to mold things a certain way on Kotow.
His dive school became, I think the biggest dive school
and the most influential. Mister band gave Bill an opportunity
to work at one of his many businesses and said
(05:30):
he would look out for him. Was it a pretty
well run organization? I mean, did he run a good business.
He was so sweet. He just said, yeah, just give
me a cut, you know, thirty percent or whatever. It
was that we made a deal with him for we
could do whatever we wanted. Basically, we were under his protection.
(05:51):
If you have a fallout with one of the main guys,
you know, you got to watch yourself. And so the
offer from mister Bann was a blessing because I mean
there was no one else who could have actually offered
that sort of protection to start something. So yeah, it
was it was a blessing. So there was one guy,
(06:12):
for example, that I can't remember his name. He was
kind of like one of the mafia guys that mister
Ban hired at some point to look over us. You know,
we called him the hit man. Was there sort of
a handful of people who ran the island at that time.
I mean they made the decisions about what's going on.
(06:32):
I mean, this is the thing that sort of blows
my mind about this little tiny island. The story that
we were told was that there was a guy that
was arrested for killing mister Ban, but that the person
behind it was this other chieftain type guy who ran
another dive company. Yeah, that's how the rooms went. Were
(06:54):
you there when that happened? Oh well, yeah, so when
mister Bean gets killed. But it described it to me
as sort of like an earthquake on coat out in
that little community because he had been so powerful. Yeah,
I mean it was a pretty shocking moment. I mean,
obviously some real kind of sadness that also, I guess
(07:17):
a realization of how fragile things were there on the island.
After that event, we had to keep our wits about
us a little more. We were being a bit more careful,
and we were we were having more troubles, more issues
with the mafia and whatnot coming into our bar. And
(07:38):
and I mean we even though we were paying our dues,
we were paying the local boys, paying the police as well.
You know, you have to pay everyone out bits and pieces.
But you know, at the end of the day, there
was less kickbacks when we were working with mister Van
because he kind of just had that you know, autonomy there.
(07:58):
So with him not there, it felt like, you know,
the wild was kipped in a bit. More people were
strutting their stuff a bit more than they could all
would beforehand. So we were starting to really fill the
pinch because then we'd had a really massive party and
it looked great from the outside. People were going, Wow,
what a great party. You must have made hicks of money.
(08:18):
And then we were counting our money and then we'd like, okay,
we got to pay this guy here, Pitt's play this
guy there. And by the time we paid all our dues,
it's like we've got enough to go out for dinner.
It sounds like Kotau when you were there, was rapidly
developing and went from just a sort of dive location
to a party scene. And at the same time there's
(08:41):
a ton of money, but nobody's actually making money. Who's
doing the business. It sounds like everybody's paying out. Yeah, absolutely,
So it just became this kind of vicious circle, and
you know, it was getting frustrating too. And then one
day one of the Matthew guys was being relentless at
our bark. He kept asking for more and more free drinks,
(09:03):
and at one point and he was just pissing. Thought.
We said, now, come on, man, that you've had enough,
and then he got his gun out and started shooting
his gun into the bar. And that at that stage
I just realized, hold on, I'd come to this island
and started here because it was an idealliic place to
be in and then now it's like, my life's in danger.
(09:24):
So that that was a pivotal point where we decided,
you know what, let's let's head to Australia and take
some time out and then rethink this through. And and
that was literally the end of our business time there,
because what year is this when you left two thousand
and four. It's not like it's a totally dangerous place
where you know, you're lucky to get out alive, as
(09:47):
they make it out in some reports. But definitely there's
this kind of, you know, this old school mafia kind
of vibe, this attitude of some of the locals of
just you know, this is our place, we run it,
and no one's going to tell us what to do. Well,
how are we going to do it? And if they
get in the way too much and anyway, and then
(10:07):
we'll do whatever we need to do to remove them. Yeah,
all the deaths on Kotao are sort of shocking for
different reasons, but mister Banns is particularly shocking because in
the late nineteen nineties early two thousand he was really
the king of Kotao and I think we have to
sort of put in perspective how important he was to
the island that is now Kotao. You know, for a
(10:29):
lot of years Kotao it was a prison, It was
sort of an empty island. There really wasn't anything, but
it has beautiful scubad iving, incredible reefs, very easy coastal
areas to scuba dive off of it. Mister Bannon is
really the guy who helped bring scuba diving to Kotao,
which transformed the island from really nothing, you know, just
(10:52):
a rock out in the middle of the ocean, to
what it is today, which is a massive tourist destination.
And he was really the k of Kotao in the
late nineties early two thousands. But he also apparently liked
to gamble, according to what people have told us, And
he was shockingly killed in the sort of middle paradise
in front of lots of witnesses. He was shot, and
(11:15):
no one seems to have Billington eye. With the exception
of the odd story here and there, it was kept
relatively quiet and the tourists just kept on coming. That's Andrew,
one of the producers on this podcast. I think one
of the things that's really interesting is that mister Band's
business didn't even suffer. It was transferred, as we understand,
(11:38):
to his son into some other family members, and for
a lot of years, mister Band's dive school has been
one of the biggest, if not the biggest dive school
in terms of certifications, not only in Asia but really
in around the world. I mean, that's how big of
business it's turned into. Just people kept coming and coming.
And obviously most people go to Kotao if never of
(12:00):
mister Band, you know, they don't know how he was killed.
But you know, we've talked to a couple of people
who were on the island who knew about mister Band,
who were aware of him, and even though his death
was shocking, it didn't shock the island. Nothing changed. I mean,
the party really didn't stop this place, right. It really
(12:21):
seems to you know, get its clause into you, and
once it does, these people just really don't want to leave.
People love it there. We've had a couple different people
to describe it as like the wild wild West. And
if we start the modern day Kotau experience, sometime in
the late nineties, early two thousands, you know, mister Band's
death is sort of the first big death murder on
the island, and he was murdering. He was literally assassinated
(12:43):
in the street. And you know, the progress of the
wild Wild West just continues. You know, people keep flooding in,
people keep coming to dive hotels are built, the culture
or the industry of the paradise continues to grow. It's
almost like mister Band's death as a signal to anyone
who was involved in Koto that you're pretty much going
(13:04):
to be able to get away with whatever you want.
Because if one of the preeminent people on the island
can be gunned down in broad daylight on the street,
you're going to have an increase in some of these
unexplained mysterious deaths over the course of the next five, ten,
fifteen years. And I feel like mister Bann's assassination in
the middle of the street sets the tone for everything
(13:27):
we see coming forward out of what Kotal becomes. Let's
stop here for a break, we'll be back in a moment.
In the early two thousands, more incidents were occurring on
(13:49):
the island, which the locals and expats both seem to
be turning a blind eye. Two two years prior to
mister Bann's assassination, there was another questionable death on Katao.
Once we really started digging in here in our research,
we came up with a story that we found taking
place before any of the other stories. That's Andrew Again,
(14:12):
a producer on this podcast. Around the time of mister
Band's assassination, there is a backpacker who was found dead,
stuffed into a cement pipe in the ground, and every
person who was interviewed about what happened said the same thing.
He probably went to go pee and fell in. So
(14:36):
Ian Jacobs was a traveler who came from the UK.
He went to Thailand for vacation for diving. You know,
that's a time when like hardcore divers who just wanted
to dive in vacation were coming to Kotao around two
thousand and the official sort of story as well, he
fell into this well and that's how he died, but
that's not really what other people have described. We spoke
(15:01):
with one of Ian's friends from college, Mick Lark. My
name is Michael Locke. I'm a British citizen. I'm a
friend of Ian Jacobs who who died kota tell me
about Ian. Tell me about how you knew him, Tell
me about who he was as a person. We met
when we were at Bristol Polytechnic, so when we were
eighteen years old. We hit it off. We shared a
(15:23):
love of football, of music. We went on a few
travels together. He had a lot of friends, very much loved,
I have to say, you know, he was very amusing,
very charming, a lot fun. Yeah, he was a really
fun guy and I knew him until he died. We
were very close friends until until he went to Kotawan
in two thousand when he was thirty five. How did
(15:43):
you guys end up going to Thailand? We didn't go together.
He went to Thailand. I went to India. We both
hatched a plan to go babling after the Millennium. We
worked together on the Millennium Evening. There was a big
party in Bristol organized by a friend of ours in
the in the Mains where in Bristol divive music and everything,
and our friend asked us to do a food store,
(16:05):
a food bar. Being got together. We rented a burgh
of vm we sold food all night and with the
money we pocketed on that very auspicious night, the Millennium night.
We decided to go traveling. He went to Thailand. I
went to India. I was more into India. He wanted
to go and do a diving course in Kotown. He
(16:28):
had been there once before. He'd been to a wedding
in Thailand a friend of a friend got married the
year before, so he'd gone out there and they'd been
to Kotao and done a basic I think, and then
he fell in love with the place and decided he
wants to go back and get his PADDY certificates. PADDY
stands for the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. They train
(16:52):
and certify scuba divers all around the world. You have
to be a very strong swimmer to get a certification.
And how did you hear about his death? Yeah, so
I left to go to India about a week after
he'd gone to Thailand, and I was setching a bus
up to him Alayas and checked my emails and I
had an email from a mutual friend of ours in England.
(17:14):
He told me he was he was dead, simple as that.
I was completely dumbfound its completely shocked, you know, in
a state of it wasn't really sadness. It was shocked,
you know, absolutely disbelief. I gleaned more information and I
found out he was being cremated in about a week's
time in Bangkok. So I decided that I was going
(17:35):
to get on a plane and go to Bangkok and
go to his cremation. What did you hear was the
cause of death? But we were told he had died
from a blow to the head. But he was found
at the bottom of a well, and I thought, okay,
is it possible for someone to have stumbled ahead and
fallen in the well and drowned. It's a little hard
(17:58):
to make out, but make a saying, is it possible
for someone to have stumbled along, hid their head and
fell into a well and drowned. I was under the
impression that he didn't die from drowning. Me his friends
in England had no doubt straight away. There was never
a moment's doubt that he was murdered. I don't think
even across our mind that it was accidental. We suspected
(18:19):
foul play from from the beginning. Why did you suspect
that from the beginning? I can't remember why, but there
was just this consensus amongst that something was not right
and That is why, after I went to the cremation
in and Cock, I decided to go to Kotau. And
remember how I was thinking of it in my head.
I wanted to prove to myself that he couldn't have
(18:41):
fallen into the well and hit his head on the
way down. That was my purpose of going to Kotau.
How quickly did you get to Kotao after his death?
It must have been within two weeks. I think the
cremation was probably a week after his death, and then
I went straight from the cremation down to Kotao. So yeah,
within two weeks, I think I was there, spoken as there,
all of whom thought there was something suspicious. I went
(19:04):
to the police. I made an excuse to go to
the police. I wanted to have an excuse to go
to them. So my excuse to go into the police
was I wanted his possessions because I knew he'd had
money on him, because you don't go traveling without money.
So I asked the police what happened to all his money.
They told me they'd taken his money to pay for
transportation back to the mainland. When police told Mick how
(19:25):
they used Ian's money, his suspicions were raised, but they
also had questions about the well that Ian supposedly fell into.
I went to the well, and the aperture of the
world was so small. If you walked along and tripped
over its rim, you would fall over the world. He
wouldn't fall down. There was just no way that one
could stumble and fall into the world. So my suspicions
(19:47):
were confirmed. I suppose the well is the big question here.
Tie police on Katao reported that Ian was drunk and
looking for a police to urinate. Allegedly he had fallen
into well, hit his head on the way down, and drowned.
I'd say the well was a few feet across three feet.
It wasn't big enough to just fall in unless someone
(20:09):
pushed you in it. From what Mix saw, there was
no way an adult human could fall down the well
on their own. He returned to his hotel and came
back the next day to take photos of the well,
which he said a body would have to be folded
into to fit into. I went back to take photos
and the well had been bulldozed over. There were just
(20:30):
mounds of sand everywhere. That obviously made me even more suspicious.
Mick returned to the Catau police station a second time
after my first visit to the police, but the police
told me to come back in a few days time
there when the chief of police from Copang Gang, the
neighboring island, would be there. On my return the second time,
the chief of police from Copang Gang, he said there's
(20:51):
a fairy leaving in the morning and that I should
be on it. The police officers essentially, well, I just
want to be clear, because the police officers actually threatened
you to get off the island. Yes, yes, absolutely, that's
what he did. Did you have a feeling that there
was dodginess sort of around the police at that point
or did that come out of the blue when that happened.
(21:12):
Were you stunned? I mean, what was your thought wrong?
I mean, because we all assumed it was a murder
and we the police were saying it was an accident.
I knew that there was a cover up by the
police even at that point, and the more I looked
at the police reports, the more my feeling about that
as reinforced. We'll get back to the police reports, but
(21:33):
remember the story that the Catau police told about Ian's
death hinged on the fact that he was found at
the bottom of a well. We all believe the story
that he was found in a well for fourteen years
until I had conversations with Susan Buchanan. She told me
that he wasn't found at the bottom of a well
at all, and she says he was found inside a
(21:54):
piece of concrete pipe. Now, it's the same sort of
piping they used for welles. They bury concrete pipes into
the ground to make the wealth. But this was just
a bit of concrete pipe and the earth inside was
at ground level and he was just inside one of those.
If what Sue told Mick was true, then Ian was
found in a piece of concrete pipe that was standing up,
(22:16):
not even installed in the ground. Yet. If the story
told by Gatou police was fiction, what happened to Ian?
Mick has some thoughts like what else could have happened?
I mean, my feeling is that if, for example, if
some tie guy was hitting on a Western girl and
she wasn't enjoying it, even if he didn't know her,
(22:38):
he's the sort of guy until the tiger to get off,
that was the sort of guy he was when he
was done. Yeah, And that is my feeling that possibly
that happened. He wasn't that aggressive, you know, but he
would be protected. He was, literally, but in a nice way.
But if someone did something that he didn't agree with,
he would make his feelings clear. You know. He wouldn't
(23:00):
go looking for fighting. You never fight in his life.
But at the same time, he was outspoken enough to
stick up for people, and he wouldn't He wouldn't stand
for any ship. What we've heard is that, like you know,
essentially there's a history of violence on the island. People
are scared and don't really want to disrupt their own
personal paradise exactly, and it just sort of looked the
(23:23):
other way as long as it doesn't happen to me. Absolutely.
I did speak to some people in the guest house
that I stayed at, which I same guest out he'd
stayed at, and I do remember people saying, oh no,
that they thought it was suspicious. They thought he was murdered,
but that's it. Nobody said anything about who might have
done it or anything like that. Could Ian have stuck
up for someone in the bar that led to him
(23:43):
being murdered. Connor speaks to Soup Buchanan about what she
thinks of the theory, and is that something they could
get you killed? Oh? Hell yeah, you can look at
someone in Thailand the wrong way and it would get
you killed. I mean, yeah, it doesn't take much. Mick
went back to the police reports to try and find
answers about Ian Staff. Did you see two different autopsies
police reports. I've got the police reports in front of me. Yeah.
(24:06):
So this is the mystery of the whole thing. There
was an autopsy which took part place in Kopangang, the
island next to Kotao, which says he died from drowning
and that he was completely disfigured from having spent three
days in the well before the body was found. You know,
there's a big story, the police stories about him having
(24:27):
had ropes tied to him to be pulled out of
a four meter deep well. And then there's another autopsy
from Bangkok which makes no mention of his being in
water at all. You think that would be a fairly
obvious thing. And the autopsy from Bangkok says he died
from the head. So there's basically the autopsy say different things,
which probably means the one in Bangkok with some distance,
(24:51):
some space and hopefully more professional. Ye absolutely, hold on,
Here is cause of death. This is the Bangkok one,
bleeding in the brain due to severe impact at the head.
Now the Copang Gang autopsy does mention scratches on the head,
but says that he died from drowning. And you said
(25:13):
that his mother always believed that he was murdered, but
you didn't find that out till years later. The family
ever said to you had that suspicion. So I never
met his mother after Inn's death. The word I was
getting was that the family believed the official police story
and didn't want anything made of it. This is why
so much time passed before gone public with us, because
(25:35):
we believe that the family just wanted to lay it
to rest. It was only about five years ago I
finally met his mother. She lives in Scotland. I was passing,
so I went to see her one day. And if
I didn't want to be the person that said to
his mother, you, we think you're Inn was murdered. You know,
if you're sitting there in your old age believing your
son met an accidental death, we probably don't want to
(25:57):
be someone to go along and tell you that he
was murdered. You know, I wasn't going to be the
person that upset her like that. So anyway I went
and saw her. We got chatting, so eventually I said,
what do you think happened? And she just said straight up, oh,
he was murdered. And then it was like, okay, so
I don't need to be secret for about anymore. So
we had a long chat. She said she'd read the
(26:18):
police reports, the ones that I've got here sat in
front of me, and she said they just didn't had him.
And she mentioned the witness reports. And again if you
read the witness reports, they are suspicious. They're not eyewitnesses.
One is from a doctor, one from the village head.
One is from the taxi driver who met in on
the night he died. But they all sort of says
(26:39):
believe the cause of death was most likely because the
tourists was on his way to urinate and happened to
fall down the well. And then another one it's believed
that the cause of death was that the man was
drunk and on his way to urinate. The edge of
the well was oh, the man who noticed it and
happened to fall down the well. Third one, the witness
(27:00):
that the cause of death was because the tourist was
on his way to urinate but unfortunately happened to fall
down the well. It doesn't add up. They will say
exactly the same thing slightly different ways. You know. One
of the things that we've come across is that there's
an emphasis of the Thai police to always blame the
person who dies on Kotao, that the deaths as a
(27:22):
result of their own action. And I think that you
see that really clear in these witness statements. Right, he
was drunk, he fell down. Yeah, he did this to
himself as absolutely, even when it says it's unlikely that
he was attacked since the area had no trace of fighting. Now,
if you really think someone's fallen into a well, why
do you even need to say that. I mean, this
is long before the island has this reputation. I can
(27:44):
understand them saying that today, but in two thousands years
before anyone has any bad feelings about Kotao. But of
course they put that in there because they're trying to
deflect from what probably happened. Absolutely, Is there anything else
you want to add? As I say the slam dunk,
let's say, is what Susan's this? You know, the fact
(28:06):
that he wasn't even found in the well. You can
analyze the police reports as much as you want, you
heard them with a fine teeth comb. But when you
hear what Susanne says, I she's telling no reason to disbeliever,
then you might as well just tear up the police
reports because they all refer to a man who was
found at the bottom for well in water. And if
you believe Susan, there was no well. There was no water.
(28:30):
Now whether they the police found his body and then
threw it in the well, because I mean, they're going
into good detail about the depth of the well and
how they got the body out of the well, and
how the body looked because it had been in the
well for so long. Yeah, I mean this is a
continuing pattern of what you're describing. This isn't like a
one off thing. This is something we keep hearing time
and time and time again, which is police essentially blaming
(28:51):
the victim for their death and then also the same
time putting in information that doesn't make any logical sense
of to how somebody dies. Yeah, the police are acting
light there, untouchable that they can make up any story
and then nothing will come back to the police. Let's
stop here for another break. Since high authorities Uncle Tao
(29:24):
considered Ian's death an accident, there was never a proper investigation.
But there are lots of questions. Why do all the
witness statements sound so eerily similar, as if coordinated. How
would any of them know that Ian was urinating when
he fell into the well? Connor debriefed with Andrew after
the interview with Mick, No questions asked, no investigation, Let's
(29:47):
not get to the bottom of this. And so you know,
in early two thousand, you've got both of these deaths
with mister Bann and Ian Jacobs, and they're both you know,
I think they set that signal, They set that sort
of anything will go on this island because the only
thing that's important is keeping tourists coming here, keeping the
money flowing, keeping the divers coming, keeping the people going
(30:08):
to resorts. And you know, nobody on Kotau, really, no
one in Thailand was interested in even asking questions about
Ian Jacobs, and you know, staying with mister Van and
we don't have much on these because it's been twenty
two years since it happened. However, the information that we
can gather from these is stage setting. It's setting the
(30:28):
precedent for strange and mysterious deaths with no explanations given
at all, and when any explanation is given, the explanation
given by TIE authorities or contradictory. As early as two thousand,
we see major differences between the autopsy reports done by
the mainland police in Bangkok versus what the Catau police
(30:49):
report says, so which one is the truth? And the
eyewitness statements, which may have been fabricated, show a clear
pattern of blaming the victim and covering up the true
cause of death. Jonathan Samuel's is a reporter for Sky News.
He has covered some of the deaths and crimes in Catao.
Tourism is so important to Thailand, I mean hugely important,
(31:12):
and I think the last thing the Thai government wants
are these sort of stories going around the world, and
they will do almost anything it takes to make sure
they don't and to try and sort of wrap things
up in such a way that it doesn't make the
ties be put up for this, because it would look
so bad for Thailand about protecting their tourism industry and
(31:34):
the huge amount of money it brings in the mysterious
deaths of mister Bann and I and Jacobs, and the
lack of proper investigations into those deaths sets the stage
for the next twenty years. It's a refrain that will
become more and more pronounced over the years. Someone dies
Thaie authorities dismiss it as an accident and blame the
(31:54):
victim or find a scapegoat to cover it up. And
this is just the start of it. And I think
that lack of governance, that lack of professionalism, that hint
of suspicion of corruption amongst the police. When you couple
that with young people doing things to excess, experimenting, acting
(32:17):
in a way that perhaps they wouldn't act if they
were at home, then those two things coming together can
be disastrous. If you have any information about Ian Jacobs
or mister Bann, please contact us at producers at Katie
dask studios dot com for more information and relevant photos.
(32:39):
Follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Death Island
is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Connor Powell, Andrew Arnow, Jeff Shane,
Chris Cacaro, Gabriel Castillo and me Courtney Armstrong, editing and
sound designed by Jeff Tis, music by Vanacore Music. Death
(32:59):
Island is production of iHeartRadio and KAT 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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