Was ‘Lady of the Hills’ a murdered Thai bride?
Forensic evidence sheds new light on unidentified body found dumped in Yorkshire Dales in 2004
A BODY found dumped in the Yorkshire Dales more than 14 years ago may have been a “Thai bride” murdered by her English husband, new evidence has revealed.
The woman, nicknamed “the lady of the hills”, was discovered by a group of walkers lying in a mountain stream on Sept 20 2004. She was wearing just a pair of socks and green Marks & Spencer jeans, and had a ripped bra hanging off her left arm.
Police never found out who the woman was or how she ended up halfnaked at Sell Gill Holes caves near Yorkshire’s Three Peaks.
They decided that the death was not suspicious and that she had perhaps got lost and then died from hypothermia – sufferers have been known to undress, believing they are overheating. But new forensic evidence, which emerged after the file was reopened by the North Yorkshire Police Cold Case Review Unit, could shed some light on the mysterious death, which has baffled investigators for years.
It showed that the unidentified woman had grown up in south-east Asia and spent the last two years of her life in a rural community in north Lancashire or south Cumbria.
The wedding ring she was wearing was traced to Bangkok, leading investigators to believe she had married an Englishman in Thailand then come to live in the UK.
Adam Harland, a retired detective chief inspector and lead investigator, thinks she was murdered by her husband then dumped in a secluded area a mile from the main road, several miles from the nearest town of Settle.
He told BBC News: “The term ‘Thai bride’ does not necessarily mean the woman comes from Thailand, but that she is a lady who has taken up a relationship with a white gentleman and has come back to live in the UK in the late 1990s or early 2000s.
“The fact that no-one has reported her missing suggests the relationship has broken down and her disappearance was because she’s ‘gone back home’. In this case, her partner had a natural excuse to explain her absence and for that reason I think, for now, he’s got away with it.”
Stable isotope analysis, which was not available in 2004, was used to find out where the woman had been living before her death.
Scientists studied the levels of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen in samples of her hair, teeth and bones.
This provides information about drinking water and soil, which could shed light on a person’s previous location. Tests on her bones and teeth confirmed that she grew up in southeast Asia, and isotopes found in just a few places in Britain, including south Cumbria and northern Lancashire, were discovered on a hair sample.
The woman’s body was found off a rocky track that can only be reached using a 4x4, leading investigators to believe the killer lived in a rural location.
It is also thought the murderer had good knowledge of the area because the body was not dumped in the Sell Gill Holes caves where walkers often visit, but was instead positioned out of sight under a hump in the grass. The woman was likely aged between 25 and 35, weighed about 10st and was 4ft 11in, with shoulder-length, dark brown hair. In 2007, a coroner recorded an open verdict and the body was buried in Horton in Ribblesdale, North Yorkshire. The parish council organised her funeral as no one had come forward to identify the body.
Pathologists concluded she had been dead for between one and three weeks and had been in the open air for just a few days.
They found no obvious injuries that might explain her death and her organs were so decomposed that they could not determine whether she had died of natural causes.
‘Her partner had a natural excuse to explain her absence and I think, for now, he’s got away with it’