Sally, the wife of Tata Motors Managing Director Karl Slym who died mysteriously after plunging from his 22nd floor hotel room here, had been having marital problems and wanted him to move back to the UK, Thai police said on Thursday.
The final conclusion on Slym’s death will be announced after receiving autopsy and forensic reports, police said.
According to Sally, the couple were having marital problems for quite some time. She said they couldn’t live a normal family life because of his work, chief investigating officer Somyot Booyakaew told reporters.
Slym had to travel a lot while Sally wanted him to have more time but his duties did not allow that to happen, he said.
Before moving to India, Slym, a British national, was with General Motors in China, and Sally wanted him to move back to the UK, Somyot said, referring to the wife’s testimonials.
Slym, 51, fell to his death early last Sunday from a window in the suite at the riverside Shangri-la Hotel that he was sharing with Sally. The couple had been married for almost three decades.
The executive came to Bangkok with his wife to attend a board meeting of the Thai subsidiary of his company.
Somyot said Sally told police she had written the three-page letter found in their hotel room.
In the letter, Sally wrote to her husband about what she wanted from him and about her feelings, as advised by her counsellor, Somyot cited her testimony as saying.
“Her counsellor advised her against talking to him, and told her to instead write to him, to avoid a quarrel,” he said.
Somyot said the couple had talked that night before Sally wrote the letter. He said Sally had told him that she had woken up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and found her husband in the room but that he was not there when she returned.
She thought Slym had gone for a walk and went back to bed, Somyot said.
Though preliminary findings suggested Slym may have committed suicide, Somyot said his team would wait for official results from the forensic police and the forensic institute.
This process might take over two months since the forensic process was getting delayed due to ongoing anti-government protests across the Thai capital, he said.
“The police will examine the evidence found in Slym’s hotel room to see if anything is suspicious,” he said.
“(They) will look into the postmortem report, which will indicate among other things what remained in the late executive’s stomach, and also look at other testimonials collected so far.” Somyot said: “If everything points to suicide, then I will submit the conclusion to the prosecutor. If the prosecutor agrees and no further investigation is required, then the case will be closed.”