Koh Phangan police unable to identify mystery corpse found by foreign expats

Police on Koh Phangan island said today they have been unable to identify a corpse discovered by a group of expats during a sunset swim.

A week after a body of an Asian man was found off the shore of Koh Phangan, the superintendent of the island’s sole police station told that they are no closer to identifying the man or what killed him.

“No one on the island has been reported missing over the last few weeks. We also coordinated with officials in surrounding provinces including Chumphon and Nakhon Si Thammarat, and no one matching the body’s descriptions has been reported missing either,” Col. Sathit Kongnian said, adding that he suspects the deceased was a fisherman from a neighboring country.

“His body may have fallen off a boat and was carried here by the current” Sathit said. He is still waiting for an autopsy report from Bangkok. As of Tuesday afternoon, neither suicide and murder have not been ruled out.

Sathit said it was his first case involving an unidentifiable dead body since he took up his post on the island about a year and a half ago.

Reached by phone, a representative of the Bangkok Institute of Forensic Medicine said today that the autopsy report had been completed but refused to share the findings, citing policy.

The body was originally discovered by a group of expats going for a sunset dip on June 30. Briton Jamie Wrate described how he and four friends spotted “something big” bobbing in the ocean while they were swimming.

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