Murders of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller

On 15 September 2014, the bodies of Hannah Witheridge, 23, from Hemsby, England, and David Miller, 24, from Jersey, were found on Sairee Beach on the Thai island of Koh Tao between 4 and 5 am, a few hours after their deaths. Both had been backpacking in Thailand and had met at the same hotel. They were last seen together after 1 am, having left a beachside bar. Both victims had been struck several times on the head with a hard object; Witheridge had been raped, and Miller had drowned. A bloody hoe and a wooden club were found near the bodies, along with cigarette butts and a used condom.

The Thai authorities, concerned about the potential impact on tourism, moved quickly to investigate. Initial police speculation focused on various individuals, including a British tourist who briefly became the subject of a manhunt before being cleared. Two weeks after the killings, police identified and interrogated two 22-year-old Burmese migrant workers, Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, both from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Following an interrogation without adequate translation or legal counsel, the two men confessed. They later retracted their confessions, alleging they had been obtained through torture, threats of electrocution, and threats of extrajudicial killing — allegations the national police chief denied. The men were forced to re-enact the killings for media, a move condemned by legal observers.

In December 2014, Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo were indicted on charges including premeditated murder, killing to conceal a crime, rape, and illegal entry into Thailand; Wai Phyo was also charged with theft of Miller's phone. An 18-day trial began in July 2015 at the Koh Samui Provincial Court. The prosecution relied heavily on DNA evidence linking the men to samples taken from Witheridge's body and from the alleged murder weapon. The defence argued the investigation was flawed, citing mishandled forensic evidence, coerced confessions, and scapegoating of vulnerable migrant workers. A court-ordered DNA retest during the trial found that DNA on the hoe did not match the defendants, though the original samples from Witheridge's body had already been exhausted.

On 24 December 2015, both men were found guilty of murder and rape and sentenced to death. Appeals to Thailand's High Court in 2017 and Supreme Court in 2019 were unsuccessful, with the Supreme Court ruling the forensic evidence was "clear, credible, and detailed." On 14 August 2020, a royal decree by King Vajiralongkorn commuted the death sentences to life imprisonment.

The case drew sustained criticism from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, and Thailand's own National Human Rights Commission over allegations of torture, inadequate legal representation, translation problems, and contamination of the crime scene. The verdict prompted protests in Myanmar and cyberattacks on Thai police and court systems attributed to the hacker group Anonymous. Comments made by Thailand's prime minister about foreign tourists' safety drew public backlash and a subsequent apology.