February 04, 2025
At approximately 11:30 am, on Monday 20 September 2004, a man walking along the Penyghent, a fell in the Yorkshire Dales of England, happened upon the body of a partially clothed woman. The Guardian reports that the man was one of a group of hikers posing for a picture in front of a stream when he noticed something strange.
The body was found specifically in a stream along the Pennine Way, which lies between Pen-y-ghent and Horton in Ribblesdale.
Police estimated that the woman’s remains could have been there for around three weeks before they were discovered. She was not wearing shoes, nor was she appropriately dressed for hiking outdoors.
An autopsy would later reveal that she died somewhere between the end of August 2004 to the first two weeks of September.
The cause of death was inconclusive, and there were no signs of obvious violence that could be detected from what was left of the remains, but a coroner was able to determine that at some stage of life, the woman had been pregnant.
She was determined to be of Southeast Asian origin and analysis showed that she had resided in Northwest England for the last two years before her death; likely the west Yorkshire Dales, Lancashire, or Cumbria.
Those who regularly walked and lived in proximity of the Pennine Way were questioned by North Yorkshire Police.
Leaflets in several languages were passed out at local holiday parks, and missing peoples profiles were compared for likeness, but the woman’s identity remained unknown.
A digital composite of what the victim may have looked like was published to the public and sent to various countries in Asia but sadly lead nowhere.
The case was even featured in an episode of Crimewatch (UK) but who the woman was and what happened to her was a mystery.
In 2011 the case was reopened, along with several other unsolved deaths, despite the 2007 inquest that deemed the woman of the hills displayed no evidence of physical injury or drowning.
DNA analysis was given a second look, confirming the victim was Thai, or at least was raised in Thailand.
By 2018, a North Yorkshire police cold case team determined that the woman was a victim of homicide.
Years had passed since the body was initially discovered, but finally, at the start of 2019, a Thai family contacted police saying they believed they knew the identity of the victim and had seen a BBC report about them.
They said the woman they believed could be the lady of the hills left Thailand in 1995 to move to Northwest England. She had her British Husband had married in 1991.
The woman’s mother had lost contact with her daughter in 2004.
The husband was contacted but said he had nothing to do with his wife’s death, nor had he reported her missing at any point.
Two months later, DNA testing revealed that the tipsters were correct.
Lamduan Seekanya was born in 1968 in Udon Thani Province, Thailand.
She married for the second time to a British lecturer named David Armitage in 1991, after meeting him in Chang Mai. Lamduan had just left her village, Baan Phon, to look for work when she met David, who was an English teacher at the time.
The pair married in Thailand before moving to Portsmouth, England that same year.
In Portsmouth, Armitage began working as a college lecturer, and Lamduan worked part time in a restaurant there. Lamduan had a son of her own, Khwan, and had two more children together with Armitage- a boy named George who was born in 1992, and a girl named Charlena who was born seven years later.
Lamduan's mother said that Lamduan had several miscarriages over the years, and it affected her health to the point that she stopped working. She said that eventually the pair moved back in with Armitage’s parents and in 2004 Lamduan travelled back to Thailand for a month, staying for one month before returning to the UK after her children begged her to come back.
According to Lamduan’s mother, the final phone call between she and her daughter centered around the topic of Lamduan wanting to return to Thailand with her kids, however, she was unable to cover the airfare for all of them.
She was never heard from again.
In 2020 the Sun reported that Charlena resided with her father in Thailand, that George was teaching English in China, and Khwan continued to live in the U.K.
Police didn't give up on trying to make contact with David Armitage, now 61.
Detectives also travelled to Bangkok and Kanchanaburi as part of the investigation.
Armitage spoke about his wife’s death with the Sun Newspaper in 2020 after they tracked him down in rural Kanchanaburi, Thailand. When asked about his wife’s mysterious death he said: “I’m bored with it all, I just want to get on with work.”
When further pressed by the paper he said: “If the police want to formally speak to me I would co-operate and answer their questions. I made that very clear to the British Embassy here. No problem, I actually made that offer. My position is that I have nothing to hide so why wouldn’t I want to talk to them?"
According to the Sun, Armitage was quoted as saying he felt "out of the loop" and was said that he had "not been allowed to grieve" and wasn't invited to the funeral. When asked about his late wife's family he said: “I do feel for her parents. I would want to know in their situation but some of the things they have said are not true."
In early 2023, cold case detectives visited the victim's home province in Udon Thani, where they talked to Lamduan's parents and showed them photographs of the funeral service held for their daughter in the UK.
Armitage has lived in Thailand since 2019 and continued to reside there until his arrest. The UK courts sent a letters rogatory to the Thai courts resulting in Armitage's arrest at his home in Kanchanaburi on 23 January 2025.
He is being detained in Bangkok and will be stripped of his visa before facing deportation. Although he cannot be forced back to the UK after being deported, if he is to return to his homeland North Yorkshire Police are adamant to interview him regarding Lamduan’s death.
January 28, 2025
