The Mother of a Belgian Tourist who Died on a Thai Island Has Accused Local Police of a Cover Up

Thai police have reportedly re-opened an investigation into the death of a Belgium backpacker on a popular tourist island after local media and the victim’s mother disputed official claims she had committed suicide there.

The Samui Times, a local online newspaper, reported that the body of 30-year-old Elise Dallemange was found in the jungles of Koh Tao in late April after a series of bizarre events, including a fire that destroyed a bungalow she was reportedly staying in.

Chokechai Suthimake a deputy police chief based in Surat Thani — the nearest major city to the island — said autopsies of Dallemange’s body had been conducted there and in Bangkok, after which investigators determined that she had committed suicide, the Bangkok Post reports.

Read More: This Septic Isle: Backpackers, Bloodshed and the Secretive World of Koh Tao

But the victim’s mother, who said she had still not received a final autopsy report, disputed his account: “I do not believe what the police have told us. We fear somebody else was involved,” she told a German-language news portal for expatriates in Thailand Der Farang, according to one translation. “She was normal in the last conversation and no signs of depression were visible. I don’t know why she would have booked a transfer to Bangkok and then went into the jungle to commit suicide.”

Dellemange’s case is the latest tourist death to prompt accusations of police cover ups on Koh Tao. After a highly dubious trial, replete with a macabre reenactment, the murder of British tourists Hannah Witheridge and David Miller in September 2014 was blamed on two Burmese nationals, who were then sentenced to death.