Thomas Crawford, a Scottish singer and guitarist, was one of two foreign men found dead at a Buddhist temple in Thihagoda, in southern Sri Lanka, on the afternoon of August 16, 2026. Sri Lankan police say the dead were a 52-year-old Scottish national and a 57-year-old French national, who has not been named. Police are investigating.
The Thihagoda police account, carried by Sri Lankan outlets, gives Crawford’s age as 52; some British reports have said 54. The bodies were found in front of the Bodhi tree shrine at a temple in the village of Palolpitiya, in the Matara district of Southern Province. “A group of local residents who had come to the temple for religious activities saw these bodies and immediately informed the Thihagoda Police,” Gossip Lanka reported. Both men were hanging from a kohomba tree. One British account named the temple as Mahindagiri; no Sri Lankan source reachable from here confirms that name.
What Police Recovered at the Scene
Officers collected a pair of shoes, a motorcycle helmet and a scooter. A check of the scooter’s registration showed it had been hired in the Weligama area, where the two men had been staying.
Reporting in Sri Lanka three days after the deaths said preliminary inquiries pointed to suicide and that the reason had not been established. Post-mortem examinations were scheduled, and investigations were continuing under the Matara Division’s senior superintendent of police. Nothing has been made public since about the cause of death, and no post-mortem finding has been released.
They Set Out From the Coast That Morning
British reporting places Crawford at Sugar Co-Living, a beachfront property in the surf town of Weligama; the Sri Lankan police account says the two men had been staying at a tourist resort in the Gurubebila and Midigama area of Weligama. The building faces the Indian Ocean and caters to long-stay visitors and remote workers who settle on the island’s southern coast for weeks or months at a time.
The two men left the property that morning, saying they were going to the Hambantota area — the coastal district that was among those worst affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. They stopped at the temple, which sits inland from the main coastal route.
That religious site lies well off the tourist trail, in a part of the Matara district far more familiar to Sri Lankans than to visitors.
A Musician Who Settled in Sri Lanka
Crawford had lived in Sri Lanka for several years and documented that life online for friends back in Scotland and elsewhere in the world. He posted clips of himself playing acoustic guitar, photographs of paintings in progress, images from inside a music studio ringed with instruments, and shots of a band performance beside a swimming pool.
A recent post told followers that he had recorded an album of religious music, “Master of Miracles,” at the same Sugar Co-Living property where he was living. He released the record online this year with his band, The Angels, according to British reports. One friend said he wrote poetry too, and would talk about his verses with obvious pride.
Praveen Ariyaratne, the man behind Sugar Co-Living, first met Crawford three years earlier, and the two had become close. Among the first to pay tribute, he said: “Thomas was a very talented and kind person. He was involved in a lot of music, art and charity work.”
Friends Around the World Pay Tribute
The news has left friends in several countries reeling, and the messages posted on social media sketch a portrait of a man who poured himself into music, art and charitable causes. One mourner called him the best person.
A loved one wrote of hoping he had arrived wherever it was he had been traveling to. Another spoke of a sad heart and of missing the laughter the two had shared. A third called the death a big shock and said memories of his music would always be treasured.
Several of the tributes reached for the language of Buddhism, the religion followed by most Sri Lankans and at the heart of the temple where the bodies were found. Surangi Dissanayake, a friend, remembered a sensitive and kind-hearted man whose nature came through in the way he spoke and behaved.
“I wish from the bottom of my heart that he will be reborn,” Dissanayake said.
Nadeeka Nirmali, another friend, wished for him that he would attain the bliss of Nirvana and that in no life to come would his mind be led toward so early a death.
Consular Help for the Family
The Foreign Office said it was supporting the family of a British national who had died in Sri Lanka. In cases like this one, consular staff routinely help relatives with repatriation and act as a link between British families and overseas police forces.
What investigators have assembled so far remains sparse: a hired scooter, a helmet, a pair of shoes, a temple compound inland from the coast, and a trip to Hambantota that was never completed. Officers in Thihagoda have not indicate when their inquiries will conclude, and as of early September, nothing further had been released.