Thai cops detain Brit husband of ‘Lady of the Hills’ victim 21yrs after wife’s half-naked body found in UK beauty spot
Thai cops detain Brit husband of ‘Lady of the Hills’ victim 21yrs after wife’s half-naked body found in UK beauty spot
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A BRITISH lecturer at the centre of a cold case murder mystery has been detained in Thailand – six years after he denied killing his wife. David Armitage, 62, was held by immigration officials in the town of Kanchanaburi where he has been teaching at a university for nearly 20 years.
![[Photo of David Stuart Armitage, a teacher at Kanchanaburi Rajabhat University.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/david-armitage-former-husband-lamduan-474924846.jpg?strip=all&w=629)
He is now facing being deported from Thailand after a probe into his visa, according to Thai media. If he travels back to the UK then police investigating the Lady of the Hills case plan to speak to him about the 2004 murder of his Thai wife. The development comes more than a year after he refused to meet cops from North Yorkshire Police's cold case unit who had travelled to Thailand in February 2023. He had agreed to speak to them but cancelled at the last minute.
![[Photo of Lamduan Seekanya in Thailand.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/collect-lamduan-seekanya-native-thailand-474924641.jpg?strip=all&w=644)
Lamduan’s partially-clothed body was found in a mountain stream in the Yorkshire Dales in 2004 near the village of Horton-in-Ribblesdale. At the time police – who were unable to identify her – treated her death as non-suspicious. She was dubbed the Lady of the Hills by villagers who buried her in an anonymous grave in Horton in 2007.
![[Elderly couple holding a framed photo of their deceased daughter.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/home-rural-thailand-nr-udon-474924666.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Around a decade later North Yorkshire Police’s cold case unit launched a fresh probe and declared her death was murder. The mother-of-three was finally identified as Lamduan after fresh police appeals. She had moved to the UK in 1991 after marrying Armitage, who is from Burton-in-Kendal, Cumbria, in Bangkok.
![[Timeline of the Lady of the Hills murder investigation.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/RB-TIMELINE-LADY-OF-THE-HILLS-2.jpg?strip=all&w=562)
