Elise Dallemagne who was found in a jungle on Koh Tao island in April. Photo / via Facebook
Elise Dallemagne who was found in a jungle on Koh Tao island in April. Photo / via Facebook
A backpacker found dead on a Thai holiday island used a false name days before her body was discovered, it has emerged.
Thai police are reopening an investigation into the "suicide" of Elise Dallemagne who was found in a jungle on Koh Tao island in April after her family claimed she may have been murdered, the Daily Mail reported.
She had been travelling around Asia and included Australia and New Zealand in her itinerary before finding herself in an Agama yoga community.
Koh Tao island where the Beligian tourist's body was found. Photo / Supplied
The 30-year-old Belgian was found half-eaten by lizards and police originally determined that she killed herself on the island where seven other foreigners have died in the past three years.
But the mystery around her death deepened after it emerged she had appeared to try to hide her true identity when checking into a hotel in the days before her death.
According to reports in Thailand, she crossed out the name Dallemagne and wrote in Dupuis instead.
An unnamed worker is said to have told police that the backpacker checked into the Triple B Hotel at Mae Hat bay on April 19, and asked for the cheapest room.
She would not write in her passport number - unlike other guests, insisting she would supply it later, the worker said. Dallemagne then scribbled out her surname and wrote in the fake one.
Last month, posts on social media said Dallemagne had booked a ticket to Chumphon province, on the mainland, and that her luggage arrived after her death, implying that she had not intended to kill herself.
"Police continue to look for new evidence, because it was an unnatural death, but we have not found any," Colonel Preecha Kladsawad, deputy of Surat Thani police, said.
Dellamagne's mother Michele van Egten says she does not believe the Thai police's version of events amid fears authorities are working to suppress a series of grisly tourist murders.
Van Egten made the details of her daughter's death public while appealing for information, saying the case would have gone unnoticed otherwise.
She told magazine Der Farang that she had been promised an autopsy report by investigators that had failed to materialise.
"I do not believe what the police have told us. We fear somebody else was involved.
"We're more and more thinking that the police information is not the right explanation."
Van Egten revealed that her daughter had been travelling around Asia for the past two years, and before her death had been living at a yoga and tantra retreat on Koh Phangan.
She was also part of the Sathya Sai Baba cult and lived with a self-proclaimed "guru". She left the island on April 17 to return to her native Belgium, van Egten said.
But on April 28 she was found dead in the jungle in Koh Tao.
Phone records show that Dellamagne called her mother on Skype on April 17 before leaving on a ferry April 19.
It is not known why she alighted on Koh Tao instead of continuing on to the mainland.
An unexplained fire that evening burned down three bamboo huts on Koh Tao - including the one Dellamagne had been staying in.
Dellamagne fled 2.5km through the jungle to Tanote Bay and took a room at the Poseidon Resort where she booked another ticket for Bangkok leaving on April 24.
According to reports in Thailand, she crossed out the name Dallemagne and wrote in Dupuis instead. Photo / via Facebook
Eight days later locals living near the island's idyllic Tanote Bay found Dellamagne's body after becoming suspicious of a monitor lizard going back and forth into the jungle.
They followed the animal and discovered that it had been feeding on Dellamagne's remains, which were found among rocks behind the Tanote Family Bay Resort.
The backpacker had to be identified using dental records and previous X-rays.
Police told van Egten that her daughter had taken her own life by hanging herself from a tree about three days before she was found.
But no suicide note or message were recovered and van Egten is desperate for information surrounding the mysterious death.
Dellamagne's bags appear to have been loaded onto the ferry she was due to take, and arrived at Chumphon province where she should have caught a bus to the capital.
Van Egten says police told her that Dellamagne had been wrapped in old T-shirts or cotton shawls and an empty fuel bottle was found next to her.
An autopsy was performed in Surat Thani Hospital and later by the Institute of Forensic Medicine Police Hospital, Bangkok, and Dellamagne was cremated 14 days later.
Van Egten said: "Too many things show us that someone is involved. Police told us that Elise hanged herself in the jungle. I cannot accept why my daughter should have killed herself.
British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were murdered there in 2014.
Police said Witheridge, 23, had been raped and bludgeoned to death and Miller 24, had suffered blows to his head.
Of all the deaths, theirs were the only ones to be investigated as murder after a public outcry. Four others were ruled suicides.
In March, Russian tourist Valentina Novozhyonova, 23, vanished from her hostel on Koh Tao and has still not been found.
Bricklayer Luke Miller from the Isle of Wight was found dead in a swimming pool on January 8, 2016, and an inquest this month found "no evidence" he was murdered.
British holidaymaker Christina Annesley, 23, died on the island in January 2015, after apparently mixing antibiotics she was taking for a chest infection with alcohol.
But her parents slammed Thai police for failing to properly investigate the death.
Frenchman Dimitri Povse, 29, was found hanged in a bungalow on the island on New Year's Day 2015. His death was ruled a suicide despite his hands being tied behind his back.
On New Year's Day 2014, 25-year-old Nick Pearson, from Derby, was found floating in the sea and his parents believe he was murdered - despite police claims he fell 50ft and drowned.
