Slym jumped to death after row with wife, police surmise

Sally Slym told police they had fought so much that night that she could not talk to her husband any more

The three-page handwritten note discovered in the room occupied by late Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym was penned by his wife, Thai police officials said on Tuesday.

Sally Slym has told the police she had a heated argument with her husband about a 'family problem' on Saturday night, following which she wrote the lengthy letter to him to express her feelings.

She went to bed later, only to be woken by the police the following morning, who broke the news about Slym’s death. His skull was smashed after he fell from the 22nd floor suite of the luxurious Chao Phraya river-facing Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok.

A Thai police spokesman, as reported by The Telegraph, said, “The wife said they had rowed so much about a family problem that she could not talk to her husband any more. They had been fighting and it had become very loud. She went to the bedroom and decided to write her husband a letter to let him know how she felt. She gave it to her husband and then went to sleep.”

In the early hours on Sunday morning, the police surmise, the 51-year-old Slym climbed out of a tiny window of his room, next to a huge sealed window, before taking the deathly plunge. His body was found by hotel employees, who called the police.  

Slym had flown to Bangkok on Friday with his wife, to attend a board meeting of Tata Motors (Thailand), a Tata Motors-controlled, pick-up manufacturing joint venture company. The couple were overheard engaged in a loud and bitter fight on Saturday night, according to reports.

Thai police had already ruled out the possibility of murder; the body showed no sign of struggle. Police lieutenant Somyot Boonyakaew, heading the investigation said, "We didn't find any sign of struggle. We found a window open. The window was very small, so it was not possible that he would have slipped. He would have had to climb through the window to fall out because he was a big man. From my initial investigation, we believe he jumped."

After falling a little more than six per cent, its biggest single-day decline in 18 months, the Tata Motors stock recovered on Tuesday to close 2.4 per cent higher at Rs 356.25 on the BSE exchange.

The Mumbai-based companyis likely to announce an interim MD in place of Slym in some days. It is awaiting more details from the Thai police.