Retired British businessman plunges to death just hours after filing for divorce from Thai wife
A retired British businessman threw himself from the top of an 18-storied building after filing divorce papers against his Thai wife. John Toms, 68, went to Pattaya, Thailand with his friends in June 2012. There he is said to have allegedly paid 1000 baht (£23) to a woman for a night of sex. The woman in question was said to be Thanyaporn Donsakul, a barmaid.
The man then returned home to Neath, Wales. Later in July, Thanyaporn called Toms and asked him to marry her, says a report in The Sun. The couple kept in touch through Facebook and allegedly Thanyaporn asked him to buy her a moped worth 36,000 baht (£835) in August 2012. John sold off some of his belongings to make arrangements to transfer money to Thanyaporn each month.
Later that year Toms married Thanyaporn moved to Thailand to live with her and worked as a teacher while he kept paying her monthly expenses. John went on to support her with money and later allegedly due to mounting debt, stopped seeing her. His debts are said to have been on the region of £100,000. Ultimately he ended up making all her payments, supporting her family, mother and children, and when he went broke, he was forced to resort to borrowing money from friends to make ends meet.
John filed for divorce against Thanyaporn and was due to attend the court on Thursday. The case was to be heard in his wife's hometown and he feared he'd lose all his money to "corrupt judges". The distressed man left his new girlfriend Naritha Daosri in their hotel room and jumped 18 floors to his death on Wednesday at 1am local time.
Devastated Naritha, who runs a coffee shop said, "John was broken, he met a bad woman, a bad person. She had taken everything from him. He has had nothing in return but pain. He argued with her when she wanted a house." The couple were hoping for the divorce to come through this week and then start a new life together.