Mother of 'Lady of the Hill' blesses daughter after killer is apprehended

After the British suspect in the murder of his Thai wife in 2004 has been arrested in Mueang district of Kanchanaburi province and will be extradited to his home country, The mother of the victim revealed that she has always believed her son-in-law was the one who killed her daughter.

David Stuart Armitage, 62, wanted for the murder of Lamduan Seekanya, a Thai woman from Udon Thani province, was arrested by the Immigration Bureau and the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) on January 23.

Armitage, who had fled the UK, was residing in Thailand for an extended period, according to the DSI investigation.

The arrest ended a two-decade-long investigation into the mysterious death of Lamduan in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, UK.

On Sunday (January 26), a reporter traveled to a house in Phen district, Udon Thani, to meet 80-year-old Joomsri, the mother of Lamduan.

Joomsri opened up after learning that the police had arrested her son-in-law, who was married to her daughter. 

Reflecting on nearly 20 years of events, she shared that she had always believed her daughter's husband was the one who killed her, because when her daughter visited home, she told her that her husband had been physically abusive. 

Joomsri said she never suspected anyone else for her daughter’s death but had been unable to do anything. She recalled that the last time she saw her daughter was in 2004 when she visited home with David, only to later hear that her daughter had died on a mountain.



"My daughter was always naive person, never involved in any arguments or conflicts with others. I had a strange feeling when she went to England, as though she was leaving and would never return," said Joomsri.

With tears in her eyes, Joomsri expressed that even after 20 years, she still missed her eldest daughter. If no one had brought up the past or asked about her, she wouldn't have thought about it, but when asked, it made her emotional. "I thank the police for helping to bring my daughter’s killer to justice. My daughter has received justice," she said.

If her daughter’s spirit could hear her, she added, "I want to say, may her soul rest in peace, and don’t worry. If there is a next life, I hope she won't come back as a human, but as a deity or a divine being, because being human is full of suffering, both mental and physical."In 2004, the body of a young woman was found lying dead in the mountains of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Local residents referred to the unknown woman as the "Lady of the Hills" because no one knew her identity. 

The body was found half-naked, face down, barefoot, and wearing a wedding ring. Officers issued a public appeal to locate her relatives, but no one came forward. Her body was buried in a grave at a village near the site where she was found.

Ten years after her death, a new investigative team in the UK took over the cold case, hoping to resolve old unsolved mysteries. The officers formed a hypothesis, suggesting that the woman could have been a "Thai-bride type", meaning a Thai or Southeast Asian woman who married a foreigner and moved to the UK. This was a common migration trend in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The police speculated that the reason no one had reported her as missing could be that her acquaintances believed she had returned to Thailand, and thus did not consider her disappearance unusual to report her as missing.

The investigators theorised that she may have been killed at home and her body transported to the remote valley to be discarded as a way to conceal the crime. The perpetrator, they assumed, must have been familiar with the area, suggesting local knowledge.

In the meantime, the police sent tissue samples and other remains from her body for analysis, including her bones and teeth. The tests revealed that she was Southeast Asian and contained isotopes in her bones that were specific to regions in South Cumbria and the northern tip of Lancashire. 



At this point, the police were able to narrow down the possible origins of the woman and where she may have lived in the UK. They contacted Thailand for information, asking if any Thai woman with the described features had gone missing. Authorities in Thailand publicised the case, and eventually, a family came forward. They identified the woman as Lamduan Seekanya from Udon Thani, who had married a British man and moved to live with him in the UK. In the beginning, she sent money home and consulted her family about being physically abused by her husband. After that, there was no further contact, and her family had no knowledge of her fate.

The UK police then coordinated with forensic institutes to collect DNA samples from her relatives for comparison with the DNA of the "woman of the hills". The results confirmed that the woman was indeed Lamduan Seekanya.

After her identity was confirmed, the British media began investigating her husband’s role and questioned him about Lamduan's disappearance. At that time, her husband had relocated to Thailand and was working as a language instructor at a university.

The suspect will be deported and sent back to the UK to face legal proceedings.

(2025/01/26-00:00)