Death Island victim: CCTV image of Elise Dallemagne, one of seven dead Koh Tao Thailand tourists

A HAUNTING final image has been released of a backpacker found dead and half eaten by lizards in a Thai holiday destination that’s been dubbed ‘Death Island’.

The grainy black and white still from a CCTV camera shows the back of a woman walking down a concrete path on Koh Tao in Thailand on April 21.

Authorities say it’s Elise Dallemagne, a 30-year-old Belgian tourist whose body was found in the jungle on April 28 this year, three days after police claimed she took her own life.

However questions remain about the circumstances of her death, including the bizarre days that led up to it. Her family dispute the suicide ruling and believe she was murdered.

Adding further mystery to the case, her mother Michele van Egten told The Sun newspaper that the woman in the image appears too big to be her daughter.

She said: “That’s not Elise’s silhouette — she was much slimmer, that’s not the way she was walking.”

The backpacker’s body was found 200 yards from the place on the CCTV among rocks behind the Family Tanote Bay Resort on April 28.

She was the seventh foreigner to die in odd circumstances on Koh Tao in the past three years. Many of those deaths have been ruled suicide or misadventure by authorities.

The destination, also known as Turtle Island, is a scuba diver’s dream and thanks to Sairee Beac, on the west coast, tourism has flourished in recent years.

But behind the beauty lies a macabre secret where local mafia allegedly rule, backpackers flock to party and, according to one report, there are “enough deaths and suspicious disappearances to warrant the island its own CSI franchise”.

A DANGEROUS DESTINATION

One local newspaper, The Samui Times, reported the island has been dubbed “Death Island” amid wild speculation regarding the cause of recent tourist deaths.

British tourists Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were brutally murdered in 2014.

Two Burmese men were eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but some have claimed the pair were made convenient scapegoats.

And a British friend of one of the murder victims told how local gangsters threatened to hang him and frame him for the killings in the days after the deaths.

Frenchman Dimitri Povse, 29, was also found hanged on the island on New Year’s Day 2015.

His death too was ruled a suicide but police could not explain why his hands were tied behind his back.

And just eight months before Sean’s terrifying run-in with the mafia, 25-year-old Nick Pearson, from Derby, was found floating in the sea at the foot of a 50ft drop.

Despite claims of a fall, he had no broken bones. Police ruled out foul play but Nick’s family, who say officers did not investigate a single witness, believe he was murdered.

Christina Annesley, 23, from Orpington, South East London, was said to have died of natural causes after mixing antibiotics she was taking for a chest infection with alcohol.

But no toxicology report was conducted and her suspicious loved ones slammed the investigation.

And Luke Miller, from Newport, Isle of Wight, was found at the bottom of a swimming pool at the Sunset Bar at Sairee Beach on the island on January 8, 2016.

Since his death, his family have accused cops of trying to cover it up.

ELISE’S ODD AND TRAGIC TALE

“I do not believe what the police have told us. We fear somebody else was involved,” Elise’s mother said. “We’re more and more thinking that the police information is not the right explanation.”

Elise had been living at a yoga and tantra retreat on neighbouring full-moon party island Koh Phangan in between travelling around Asia for the last two years.

Phone records show that Elise, who had a degree in medicine from the European Institute Of Medicine Natural in Brussels, called her mother on Skype on April 17 and was planning to return to Belgium.

She left on a Ferry April 19, but it is not known why she alighted on Koh Tao instead of continuing on to the mainland.

Michele has claimed her daughter used a fake name of “Elise Dubuis” to check into the Triple B Bungalows next to Mae Head Pier on Koh Tao as she travelled via the island on a ferry bound for Chumphon province on her route back to capital Bangkok.

An unexplained fire that evening burned down three bamboo huts, including the one Elise had been staying in. Police blame a candle that was likely in her room but did not collect any evidence after the fact because the owner of the resort would not file a complaint.

Elise fled 2.5km through the jungle to Tanote Bay and took a room at the Poseidon Resort where she booked another ticket for Bangkok leaving on April 24.

Eight days later, when locals living near the island’s idyllic Tanote Bay became suspicious of a monitor lizard going back and fourth into the jungle, they reportedly discovered Elise’s half-eaten body on May 27 among rocks behind the Tanote Family Bay Resort.

Police told Elise’s mother Michele that her daughter had committed suicide about three days before she was found and denied her body ever being eaten by animals or wrapped up.

However no suicide note or message was recovered and Michele is desperate for information surrounding the mysterious death.

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