Thai police seek backpacker over killing of Briton Thai resort

Police in Thailand issued details of a man they wanted to question last night after a British backpacker was found raped and murdered at a popular holiday resort. Kirsty Sara Jones, of South Wales, who was travelling after graduating from Liverpool University, was apparently killed in her room at a guest house in Chiang Mai.

Police in Thailand issued details of a man they wanted to question last night after a British backpacker was found raped and murdered at a popular holiday resort. Kirsty Sara Jones, of South Wales, who was travelling after graduating from Liverpool University, was apparently killed in her room at a guest house in Chiang Mai.

Detectives said they were trying to trace Nathan Fouliey, a British national with the passport number 70463472. He had an adjoining room to Ms Jones at the Aree Guesthouse and had not been seen since the killing.

Ms Jones had booked in alone at the guest house in Chiang Mai, one of the country's least expensive areas and a magnet for young Western holiday-makers. Her partly naked body, a piece of cloth wound tightly around her neck, was discovered by fellow guests and the manager. They had become suspicious when she failed to come out of her room.

Lieutenant Colonel Suvit Khunprasert, of the Thai police, said guests had heard the sound of a struggle, a man shouting and swearing and a scream from Ms Jones's room the previous night. But they failed to act because, they said, they thought it may have been a "lovers' quarrel".

Ms Jones had spent part of the evening before her death with another British woman, 25-year-old Sarah Wiggett, of Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire.

"We were out on the town last night; I'm staying at a different guesthouse to Kirsty so we parted ways at the end of the night," Ms Wiggett, a student at Canterbury University, said.

"I found out what happened at 6.30 tonight [yesterday]. I only met her last week. She was a really nice, fun girl. I think she had a round-the-world ticket and her friend was flying out in a couple of weeks to join her in Bangkok. I don't think she had a boyfriend."

Police have been told by another guest, an Italian woman, that Ms Jones had struck up a friendship with a man staying at the resort. She told police that Ms Jones had gone shopping with him and went for drinks during the day and part of the evening of Wednesday, the day the screams were heard at the guest house.

Thailand has always been a favourite destination for backpackers, made even more popular by the film The Beach. But it can also be dangerous; this year alone, three British tourists have been killed and 22 seriously injured.

In June, 18 Britons were among 166 passengers rescued from a blazing ferry minutes before it sank. A student nurse, Andrea Taylor, 20, was gored to death by a performing elephant at an animal park near Pattaya in April. Another tourist died of legionnaire's disease in May.

In March, George Fletcher was found burnt to death behind a temple in Pattaya. The same month, Peter Livermore, 42, survived after a bogus taxi driver shot him three times during an attempted robbery.