Three pairs of friends, five dead young women, families in torment around the globe

Best friends since childhood, Holly Morton-Bowles and Bianca Jones were only 19 but already eager to explore the world.

Catching a dose of the travel bug, their adventure began in the small communist nation of Laos, backpacking the Banana Pancake trail, a route famed for being affordable and safe.

Their parents proudly, excitedly, supported them.

“She was just really so excited to see other parts of the world and experience new things and make some amazing memories. She always spoke about it,” Holly’s mum, Samantha Morton, told 60 Minutes.

From left: Grieving parents Mark Jones, Samantha Morton, Shaun Bowles and Michelle Jones.Credit: 60 Minutes

Holly’s dad, Shaun Bowles, describes a carefree and happy pair.

“They were having the time of their lives. We didn’t have any concerns about them because they’re two very smart girls,” he says, noting they had travelled extensively in the region.

Bianca’s dad, Mark Jones, had the time of his life travelling and was “thrilled that she was starting to do what I did”.

When Bianca and Holly checked in at the Nana Backpackers Hostel in Vang Vieng, Laos, in November, their parents received continual updates of the fun and adventure.

“They were just having the time of their lives. They really were. And you could see that,” Shaun Bowles says.

Fifteen thousand kilometres away in Copenhagen, Denmark, an almost identical story was unfolding. Two sets of loving parents sending their childhood-friend daughters off for the trip of a lifetime.

Freja, Rikke and Karsten SorensonCredit: 60 Minutes

Karsten and Rikke Sorenson’s daughter, Freja, and Didier Coyman and Anne-Marie Orkild’s daughter, Anne-Sofie, were also heading to South-East Asia.

“We asked her, could you just keep in touch with us? Show us what’s going on and so forth? And she made the classical comment, ‘Dad, you and I both know that’s not going to happen’,” Freja’s dad, Karsten, told 60 Minutes.

Anne-Sofie, 20, and Freja, 21, lived together and were itching for an adventure. They ended up at the same hostel as the Australians. None of the girls, or their parents, had any idea of the danger they were in.

“I was so happy for her. She was so excited, but I just didn’t think that she wasn’t going to come back,” says Bianca’s mum, Michelle.

In Laos, at the Nana Backpackers Hostel, on November 12, 2024, the young women from both countries accepted free shots of whisky and vodka from the hostel bar – one of the well-known perks of the backpacker haunt.

Didier Coyman, Anne-Marie Orkild and Anne-Sophie Orkild-Coyman.Credit: 60 Minutes

Those drinks took the lives of all four women, along with those of two other travellers.

“These are people with a life ahead of them. Now, our girl will never be more than 20,” says Anne-Sofie’s mum, Anne-Marie.

It’s a pain shared around the globe. In the United Kingdom, Sue White lost her 28-year-old daughter, Simone, to the adulterated alcohol at the same place on the same night.

Like the other women, Simone White was alongside a friend, Bethany Clarke. They were drawn to the region for an exotic tropical adventure.

Simone and Bethany drank the same amount of free spirits. Bethany survived, reasoning that, by chance, her drinks had a lower concentration of methanol.

“Yeah, could’ve easily been me,” she says.

Bethany Clarke (left) and Simone White.Credit: 60 Minutes

With so many people poisoned at the same time, in the same place, it is suspected that it was not an isolated spiking event.

But facts are still hard to come by, and there is little information on offer from the Laos government, which, as this masthead reported on Sunday, has upset the grieving families.

Bethany Clarke says that when she and Simone joined revellers at the Nana Backpackers Hostel bar that night, there was little to suggest they were drinking tainted alcohol.

“If it looked dodgy, I wouldn’t have drunk it. We went up to the bar and I watched him pour them out from a glass bottle with a vodka label on it,” she says.

One of the dangers of methanol poisoning is that it initially appears similar to food poisoning or being drunk.

“You just physically can’t move. It’s like you are more or less paralysed,” Bethany says. “You can still walk, but everything is much, much, much more difficult than it would be ordinarily, but yeah, mainly fatigue, nausea, I fainted.”

Foreign tourists walk past the closed Nana Backpackers hostel in Vang Vieng.Credit: AP

As Bethany began her recovery, Holly and Bianca’s parents were making a desperate flight from Melbourne. Another traveller had alerted them that their daughters were unwell.

As they were flying, their critically ill daughters were moved to a better hospital at the Thai border town of Udon Thani. The parents arrived to a distressing scene.

“Seeing the girls on the ventilators and just all the tubes attached to them, it was just not what anyone would ever like to see,” says Holly’s mum, Samantha.

Despite both women being on life support, Bianca’s mum, Michelle Jones, was encouraged because her daughter looked herself.

“She was just lying there peacefully, her face actually had colour and I thought: ‘OK, she’s got colour. She’s still alive.’”

The very next day, doctors confirmed the methanol poisoning and gave the women a 1 per cent chance of survival.

“I still thought that it was a 1 per cent. I had to pray that it was 1 per cent,” Michelle says.

The doctors believed the best chance was moving to a state-of-the-art hospital in Bangkok but judged only Holly was stable enough to survive a medical airlift.

For their parents, seeing the two young women, friends since they were babies, torn apart in their final moments was heartbreaking.

Watching Holly’s helicopter fly off, Mark Jones thought better care might bring better results.

“It wasn’t to be for either of them,” he says.

The women now separated, the horrible reality of Bianca’s prognosis was explained to Mark and Michelle. Their daughter had severe swelling on the brain; their 1 per cent chance was fading. A week later, the swelling remained and Bianca was declared medically brain-dead.

A tearful Mark says the decision was made “to turn off all the life support, then we said our final goodbye”.

Michelle held her daughter one last time.

“And then she just passed away in my arms,” she says.

The next day, Holly also lost her life.

By the time British mum Sue White arrived at her daughter Simone’s hospital bedside in Laos, her hope was almost immediately extinguished. Simone, in a coma, was wheeled into brain surgery and spent another three days on life support. Sue was told she would have to turn off the machines because the doctors’ religion prevented them from doing so.

“I then had to take the tube out of her mouth. It was just absolutely terrible. It was just so traumatic,” she says.

In Denmark, it’s a trauma Anne-Sofie’s parents, Didier Coyman and Anne-Marie Okild, and Freja’s parents, Rikke and Karsten Sorenson, share. It wasn’t until Karsten received a call from another backpacker in Laos that they had any idea that the women were in danger.

“He couldn’t find the girls. And he had found out about a girl being brought to a clinic in a coma, and so he raised the alarm.”

They hunted for information – unaware their beloved children were already dead, having died three days earlier, the day after the poisoning.

They were denied any chance of a farewell when authorities, who had the pair’s identification from the time they were hospitalised, failed to notify the families they had fallen ill, even after their deaths.

“How can your kid be dead three days and you still have absolutely no information? I don’t know. I don’t understand. When I was there, all of her belongings were sitting in the police office, so they can’t just say they didn’t know,” says Didier.

The grief experienced by all the families has only been compounded by the lack of information they have received from the Laos government.

As they wait for developments from the promised Laos investigation, the parents are now focused on raising awareness about the threat of methanol poisoning. They hope that no other family has to go through the same pain they have suffered.

“We can’t have another family go through what we’ve all gone through. It’s just horrendous. This is just the worst,” says Michelle Jones.

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