It looked as though he was running for his life. In blurry CCTV footage recorded on the evening of March 12, reality TV star Jordan Wright can be seen sprinting down a quiet road on the Thai island of Phuket and making a desperate glance over his shoulder before turning left and disappearing into the darkness.
Minutes later, a second camera a few hundred meters away picks up audio of the 33-year-old spluttering into a mobile phone. ‘Before they come back, let’s get them back in the head and have a f***ing shootout,‘ Wright appears to say.
Two days later, he was found dead in the same spot, lying face down in a drainage ditch.
Last week, I retraced Wright‘s final steps on the notorious party island in an attempt to bring clarity to the mystery of his untimely death.
Considering Wright’s clearly disturbed state prior to his death, rumours swirled that he may have been a victim of the island‘s thriving drink and drugs culture.
After all, Phuket is the pinnacle of the hedonistic local party scene, attracting hundreds of thousands of revellers each year, many lured by the debauched thrills of the monthly Full Moon Parties. As one acquaintance of Wright‘s on Phuket put it: ‘This is an island that can break you. The heat. The partying. It can catch up with you.‘
However, today the Daily Mail offers a second and indeed far more troubling explanation, with Wright‘s housemate revealing he had been experiencing ‘mental health episodes of paranoia and psychosis‘ while on the island, part of a crisis that dates back to his time on ITV‘s The Only Way Is Essex in 2018.
But let‘s start with the facts of the night Jordan Wright disappeared. We know that at 11.25pm on Thursday, March 12, he took a left out of the COCO Bang Tao Beach Hotel, where he had been staying, in the north-west of the island.
He crossed a car park big enough for just half a dozen cars and followed a gentle slope down into a wasteland roughly the size of a football pitch, strewn with rocks and rubbish and where abandoned metal construction rods poke out of the ground like headstones. This is an uncomfortable place to visit in daytime: one can hardly imagine running across it in the dead of night.
Jordan Wright was found dead, lying face down in a drainage ditch, on the Thai island of Phuket last month
Fred Kelly has retraced Wright’s final steps on the notorious party island in an attempt to bring clarity to the mystery of his untimely death
Contrary to earlier reports, I can reveal Wright then took another left turn – avoiding a dead-end to the right – and lowered himself down a sheer 10ft drop into a second field. In the corner of this similarly neglected spot is a drainage ditch full of stagnant water and bordered by high concrete walls.
As explained, a nearby CCTV camera, seemingly connected to the Title Legendary Bang Tao hotel which borders the ditch, then captures what appears to be Wright’s voice shouting angrily into his iPhone 17, which was later found by police beside the ditch. It is unclear who Wright was talking to, to whom ‘let‘s get them back in the head‘ was directed and what ‘shootout‘, in his agitated state, he wanted to see take place.
However, these vital details clearly raise the question as to whether Wright was involved with the wrong people.
For their part, Thai police insist there is no evidence Wright was being followed on the night of his death, nor that his body shows any signs of a physical altercation. An autopsy is ongoing at the island‘s Vachira Hospital with no indication of when – or indeed if – the results will be made public.
It is likely, however, that a second autopsy will be conducted as part of a coroner’s inquest in the UK due to the sudden nature of the fatality. Wright‘s family are yet to comment.
It is, everyone agrees, a tragic end for a young life that showed considerable promise. Wright’s time in the spotlight began in 2016 when, aged just 23, he dated Geordie Shore star Vicky Pattison, a woman who three years previously had been found guilty of assault, having hurled a high-heeled shoe at a reveller in a nightclub. She later claimed her victim had accosted her with ice cubes.
The relationship ended in 2017 when Wright appeared on MTV‘s Ex On The Beach before being catapulted to reality TV stardom as a series regular the following year on ITV‘s The Only Way is Essex. Although not related to the iconic Wright family that dominated Towie for many years, the well-groomed Jordan quickly became a fan favourite due to his good looks, gym-honed physique and compellingly flirtatious relationship with fellow cast member Courtney Green, which culminated in a vicious on-screen brawl with Green‘s ex-boyfriend, Myles Barnett.
And yet, in 2018, the boy from Basildon experienced a dramatic fall from grace in being dropped from Towie when, after 17 episodes, it emerged he had been taking paid leave from his job as a firefighter with the London Fire Brigade in order to pursue his TV ambitions.
He duly returned to the fire service, though continued to chase work as a DJ and personal trainer in his spare time. By last year, however, Wright had clearly had enough and on December 3 he emigrated to Phuket for a ‘fresh start‘.
From the outside, it appeared the move began well. On December 10 Wright shared his first post from the island on Instagram, standing with his two new housemates – fellow British expats Joey Jeffrey and one named only as Dino – near Phuket‘s iconic Big Buddha statue along with the caption: ‘A very exciting year ahead‘ and a smiling face emoji.
Police at the scene as they investigate the mysterious death of the reality star after mysterious CCTV footage appeared to show him sprinting down a quiet road
Speaking to the Daily Mail last week, Joey explained that Wright had come out to Phuket ‘to better himself‘ and subsequently spent a lot of time working out and taking martial arts classes. ‘We‘d do combat stuff, go to the gym, go out on motorbikes together,‘ said Joey. ‘Jordan was a likeable, nice guy. Great conversation skills.‘
Day to day, Wright worked as a fund manager, helping to invest clients‘ money and – according to Joey – ‘was always on Zoom calls with a suit and tie on. He was very smart, very intellectual. A nice, English gentleman and a businessman.‘
It is understood that Wright entered Thailand on a Destination Thailand Visa (DTV), which functions in a similar way to the ‘digital nomad visas’ introduced in other parts of the world for remote workers. For the cost of just £228 or so the DTV affords tax-free residential status to those living in Thailand provided – among other conditions – they are not working for a Thai company. Phuket alone is home to more than 100,000 expats from around the world, including a large number of Russian and Ukrainians who moved following the outbreak of war.
But while Jordan appeared to be thriving in his new life, everything was about to go horribly wrong. In early March, he decided to book a hotel room in the north of the island near the infamous Bang Tao Beach, home to some of Phuket’s largest and most raucous nightclubs.
According to Joey, he went there ‘to see a girl’, though it is unclear who she was and nothing from the star’s social media indicates he was in a relationship.
Then, on March 12, the day before Jordan was due to check-out of the COCO Bang Tao Beach Hotel, he met his untimely end.
‘I was the first to find out and it was a big shock,’ Joey revealed. ‘We had to go through so many questions and emotions. A lot of different scenarios. There was misinformation going around.’
Joey paused – then delivered his verdict: ‘People say he was running away. But there was an underlying issue. He wasn’t running away from anyone but himself. He had bad mental health issues. He suffered from episodes of paranoia and psychosis.’
Joey, who has seen further unpublished police documents, believes that Jordan’s mental health took a turn that fateful night and the episode of ill-health prompted him to fall into the flooded drainage ditch, making his death nothing more than a tragic accident.
Joey explained that after Wright’s death hit the news, he received a number of calls from people in Britain explaining they were worried about Wright when he left for Thailand and that there had been previous concerns for his mental health.
‘I don’t know how it comes about or what triggers it,’ Joey explained. ‘But the reality is he was in an unstable place mentally. That’s why he came here in the first place, to fix himself.
‘There were no alcohol or drugs in the house. We lived a healthy lifestyle,’ Joey concluded. ‘People said was he in ‘drug trouble’. Well, he wasn’t. It was all internal problems. Men need to have these conversations [about mental health] before it’s too late.’
While it is unclear what first prompted Wright’s mental health crisis, there is a strong suggestion it may stem from his television career.
‘People think it’s glitz and glamour,’ Wright revealed in 2023 of his time on reality shows, ‘but the truth is very far from public perception. I really struggled. When I left, I lost a huge part of myself and my sense of purpose.’
Housemate and fellow British expat Joey Jeffrey said Wright ‘never liked being introduced as from Towie,’ adding: ‘That show must put a bit of stress on anyone.’
CCTV showed Wright running down a road and making a desperate glance over his shoulder before turning left and disappearing into the darkness
‘He never liked being introduced as from Towie,’ Joey admitted. ‘That show must put a bit of stress on anyone. But it was hard to talk with him about it day to day. He was a closed book.’
A spokesperson for the reality show said: ‘Everyone at Towie sends their deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Jordan Wright at this very sad time.’
No doubt, until the full autopsy and toxicology report are released, rumours will continue to swirl over the exact cause of death. However, whatever did happen the night of March 12, it is clear from Joey’s testimony that Jordan was unwell.
In his final Instagram post from England, shared on October 17 last year, Wright wrote a tribute to the Freemasons – his father is a member – saying: ‘In a society where so many young men feel disconnected and without community, Freemasonry teachings provide a bastion of strong morals, traditional virtues & true brotherhood.’
If only someone close to him knew quite how disconnected or lost he had felt at the time.
In the coming weeks, Jordan’s body will be flown back to Britain, according to Joey, at a cost of up to £40,000. ‘It must be horrendous for his parents to go through that. I’m a father myself. I’ve told Jordan’s father that if he ever needs anything to let me know.’
But while Jordan’s body will be repatriated, housemate Joey will remain on Phuket where he runs Grafters – a company offering retreats targeted at young men seeking mental and physical renewal, or: ‘Health. Wealth. Brotherhood’ as the tagline reads.
The next retreat begins tomorrow. But as Joey Jeffrey welcomes the attendees, he promises he will make one thing absolutely clear: that the next ten days are dedicated to someone who should have been there, too.
