Her body was found on Sunday afternoon (February 2) by an assistant and a neighbour, who called the authorities. Police arrived with rescue foundation staff who took Mrs Carmichael’s body to Vachira Phuket Hospital for an autopsy. It is believed she died sometime on Saturday night.
Mrs Carmichael was born on Christmas Day, 1948 and was raised in California and, before coming to Thailand, worked for IBM, writing code back in the days when computers filled whole rooms.
She first came to Thailand about 20 years ago, visiting Koh Samui, where she met her Thai husband, Addy. She also got to know the owner of a book store on the island, whom she helped by sourcing books from America.
She decided to set up her own book store and initially targeted Koh Chang. However, she contracted malaria and became very ill. After that she decided against Koh Chang and moved instead to Phuket.
In Rawai she and Addy built their own home and in 1996 Mrs Carmichael opened her first secondhand book store in Kata Centre. After about four years she moved to a better location close to Club Med, at a lower rent.
The business went well and she was was able to hire an assistant and also to sell Native American Indian collectibles.
Five years ago, however, Addy died of a heart attack and, just months later, the landlord of the book shop, a good friend of her husband, asked her to move out.
A neighbour, who asked to be named only as Peter, said, “Carol became very stressed. Her husband had just passed away, and she had too many books to move, and she didn’t know where to go. Depression seems to have been the cause of her problems since then.”
She found a new place for her business not far away, but the rent was much higher than in the old shop, and sales drifted down. After about 18 months she decided to close the store and retire. Her home still contains thousand of books.
The assistant, who had worked for her for four years, continued to visit her every two or three days as she became more and more reclusive.
Peter said, “I have known her since 1996 and she had a real passion for music. She loved classic rock and R&B and all that hippy music stuff; she was a child of the sixties.”
Two months ago, he said, she picked up a sore throat – a virus that was going around. She went to hospital once and clinics twice but after that stopped getting medical help.
“She didn’t want to go to hospital, nor did she want to eat. She just seemed to give up on life,” he said.
Mrs Carmichael is survived by her 96-year-old mother in the US and a son in his mid 40s, also in the US.
The funeral will be held at Wat Rawai at a date to be set once the autopsy has been completed. This is expected to take about a month.