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A 45-year-old Australian man accused of murdering a teen girl in Thailand and stuffing her naked body in a suitcase says he was forced to kill her in self-defense.
Ballarat-born Simon Peter Carman pleaded not guilty Friday to a raft of charges, including murder, after the body of 17-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla was found crammed inside black luggage in the tourist enclave of Pattaya in June.
Carman picked up the teen for sex, strangled her in his Pattaya apartment, then went about his day as if nothing happened — all while texting another sex worker, prosecutors said.
The middle-aged Aussie denied the charges, which include concealing and moving a body, and abducting a minor for indecent purposes, the Pattaya Provincial Court said in a press release.
He claims he acted in self-defense because she pulled a knife on him and did not know the girl’s real age.
In a previously reported video message to Donhomla’s parents, Carman said he felt bad “for what happened” but that it was “out of my control.
“I know you’ll be very sad, upset; same-same me,” he said in the bizarre message.
But police allege that Carman had hidden Donhomla’s body inside his bathroom for 18 hours while he spent the day shopping, eating and doing his laundry.
They found the suitcase with Donhomla’s corpse in it dumped in waist-high grass near a railway track a short distance away from a beachfront two days after Carman allegedly strangled her.
Around the same time, cops grabbed Carman in Bangkok as he attempted to leave the country.
In a chilling twist, a sex worker claimed she was messaging with Carman while Donhomla’s body was hidden in his apartment.
“I’m so tired,” Carman texted her, according to 7News, “I’m going to go for a swim today.”
The court deemed Carman a flight risk and denied bail, leaving him to await his fate in a jail cell.
Sources have claimed that Carman “regularly” brought Thai women back to his apartment, occasionally asking them to “clean his room.”
“[Tunchanok] was the youngest, but they were all young,” a source told the Daily Telegraph.
AFP via Getty Images
Others at the apartment block claimed that young women visited the flat at least once a month and that Carman was “respectful” toward them.
The heartbroken family of Donhomla does not believe Carman’s claims of self-defense and are calling for the former truck driver and mechanic to be “executed.”
“I told the police I want him executed. As a mother, I don’t know what else to say. I just want him executed,” said Donhomla’s stepmother, Oradee Bussarakum.
“I asked the police if I could hit him, if I could beat him,” she said.
“Please, just let me. The police told me not to, that he would face the full consequences regardless.”
With Post wires.
English (US)