Two foreign nationals were found dead on the grounds of a Buddhist temple in Thihagoda, a rural town in southern Sri Lanka, on the afternoon of August 16, 2026. Police there are investigating. One of the men was a British singer, Thomas Crawford, who was born in Glasgow.
The ages given for the pair by Sri Lankan reporting, which drew on police, were 57 for a French national and 52 for the Scottish national; British coverage, which named Crawford, gave his age as 54. Temple-goers arriving that afternoon for religious observances came upon the bodies and alerted police, who traveled out to the remote site in Southern Province. A kohomba (neem) tree standing in front of the Bodhi Maluwa — the shrine built around a temple’s sacred bodhi tree — was where both men were found hanging, in the village of Palolpitiya in Thihagoda. The temple itself has not been named by police.
What Officers Found at the Temple
Officers recovered a pair of shoes, a motorcycle helmet and a Scooty-type motorcycle near the scene. The machine’s registration, when checked, showed it had been hired in the Weligama area — the place both men had been staying.
Inquiries remain open under Senior Superintendent Wasantha Kumara of the Matara Division. Sri Lankan reporting published three days after the deaths said preliminary investigations suspected the two men had taken their own lives, and that the reason had not been established. British coverage reported that Thihagoda police did not believe any suspicious circumstances were involved — British phrasing that means no third party is thought to have been responsible. Post-mortem examinations were scheduled; neither a result nor a cause of death has been made public.
They Left the Coast That Morning
A tourist resort at Gurubebila, in the Midigama area of Weligama, had been home to both men. The surf town on the island’s southern coast draws long-stay visitors and remote workers who settle there for weeks or months at a stretch. On the morning of their deaths the two left the resort, telling staff they were bound for Hambantota, the coastal city that was among the areas worst affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Well off the tourist trail, the temple lies inland from the main coastal route, in a part of the Matara district far more familiar to Sri Lankans than to visitors. British reporting put the journey from Weligama at roughly an hour.
A Musician Living on the Island
Sri Lanka had been Crawford’s home, according to British reporting, which described him as a singer and gave Glasgow as his birthplace. He chronicled that life online for friends in Scotland and elsewhere, posting guitar clips alongside photographs of paintings in progress.
No public identification has been made of the French national who died alongside him, and neither police nor any outlet has given an account of how the two men knew one another.
What Remains Unresolved
What investigators have assembled so far is sparse: a hired scooter, a helmet, a pair of shoes, a temple courtyard reached by an hour’s ride inland, and a stated trip to Hambantota that was never completed. Officers in Thihagoda have given no indication of when their inquiries will conclude.
More than two weeks on, as of early September, nothing further had been released — no post-mortem result, no cause of death, and no reported coroner or consular process in either country.