SHOCKING NEW CLAIM: Fresh photos of scratches on Australian suspect Simon Peter Carman’s arm and neck are raising major questions—but his explanation to Thai police is leaving many stunned. One set of scratch marks. One unbelievable excuse. One CCTV clip investigators still can’t ignore… 👇🧳
A horrifying criminal investigation in the coastal resort city of Pattaya, Thailand, has exposed a deeply disturbing case of violence, culminating in the arrest of a forty-five-year-old Australian national. Simon Carman, a former truck driver and odd-job worker from Perth, was intercepted by Thai authorities just as he was attempting to flee the country on a Jetstar flight back to Australia. His arrest followed the disappearance and brutal killing of seventeen-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla, whose body was ultimately discovered stuffed inside a suitcase. While the physical evidence against Carman continues to mount, it is his bizarre, unbothered behavior in police custody and his highly unusual excuses for fresh injuries on his body that have stunned veteran detectives and the public alike.
The “Damning” Marks and a Wild Deflection
When Thai detectives cornered Carman following the teenager’s disappearance, they immediately noticed several fresh, clearly visible injuries on his upper body. The suspect bore light, parallel cuts running down his neck and three distinct red lines across his left bicep. To forensic investigators, the parallel wounds strongly resembled classic defensive fingernail scratches—a theory heavily supported by social media photographs of Ms. Donhomla, which showed her sporting long, sharply pointed nails.
However, during a recorded police interrogation, a handcuffed and blank-staring Carman offered a bizarre explanation for the marks. Rubbing his neck directly on camera, the forty-five-year-old emotionlessly claimed, “This is a spider.” He further alleged that his condominium unit in Pattaya was completely overrun with spiders that were “always coming in” and causing the injuries.
Local experts and media immediately cast doubt on the claim, noting that while tropical Pattaya is home to standard household insects like ants and mosquitoes, the local spider populations are primarily harmless huntsman variants that rarely bite humans and are physically incapable of leaving long, parallel scratches. Carman’s unusual insect defense closely echoes the infamous 2012 Australian murder case of Gerard Baden-Clay, who unsuccessfully tried to blame caterpillar bites for defensive scratch marks found on his body after murdering his wife, Allison.
A Disastrous Dispute Over Twenty Dollars
As the interrogation progressed, Carman’s narrative shifted from spiders to a claim of lethal self-defense. According to Pattaya Police Colonel Anek Srathongyoo, the suspect alleged that a violent dispute erupted inside his apartment over a trivial financial matter involving just AU$20. Carman claimed that the 150-centimeter-tall teenager brandished a knife to threaten him during the argument, forcing him to fight back. He admitted to police that he “squeezed her neck, causing her to lose consciousness,” asserting that her subsequent death was entirely out of his control.
The cold logistics that followed the killing further illustrated the suspect’s detached demeanor. Carman confessed that after Ms. Donhomla died, he dragged her body into his bathroom, where he kept her hidden throughout the entirety of the following hot tropical day. He then went on camera to deliver a chillingly casual message to the victim’s grieving parents, stating:
“Sawasdee krab [hello], I feel bad for what happened to your daughter. It was out of my control. Um, I hope you… I know you’ll be very sad, upset, same same me. It shouldn’t happen and I hope you’re okay.”
Yet, when flatly asked by a detective seconds later, “You kill her right?”, Carman immediately deflected, responding, “No, no hurt.”
From the Red Light District to a Tiled Foyer
The tragic timeline of Ms. Donhomla’s final hours has been meticulously pieced together by detectives utilizing regional CCTV networks. Friends revealed that the seventeen-year-old had traveled from her hometown of Kalasin in northeast Thailand to the coastal tourist hub of Pattaya just twelve days prior to her death. In the early hours of June 25, she crossed paths with Carman near Soi 6, a notorious, bar-lined strip located within Pattaya’s red-light district.
Surveillance footage captured the duo walking hand-in-hand along a quieter section of Beach Road sometime after 2:30 a.m.. Approximately an hour later, at 3:34 a.m., they were recorded walking through the tiled foyer of Carman’s apartment building, located eight kilometers away in a more sedate residential section of south Pattaya.
The accommodations were far from luxurious; Carman had been renting room 380 inside the Rimhad Jomtien condominium complex for about ten months, paying a basic rent of roughly AU$300 a month. The unit, accessed via a dingy hallway lined with overhead electrical wires and newspaper-stuffed transoms, was described by the victim herself as “so messy” in a final text message sent to a friend shortly after her arrival.
Inside the cramped bedsit—which was only large enough to hold a double bed, a television, a nightstand, and a small plastic couch—investigators later found empty bottles of Casamigos Blanco Tequila and Hopscotch Distillers Dry Gin cluttering the top of the refrigerator. These details emerged from video footage of one of Ms. Donhomla’s frantic friends confronting Carman at the unit shortly after the teenager initially vanished.
The Grim Discovery and Severe Charges
The true horror of the case was realized just a few hours after Carman was taken into custody on Friday night. Acting on forensic leads, police and rescue teams converged on a patch of overgrown grassland located directly behind the Pattaya Night Markets. There, discarded near the railway tracks, authorities discovered a black 29-inch suitcase containing the body of the missing seventeen-year-old girl.
The discovery aligned perfectly with damning security footage recovered from Carman’s condominium foyer. The CCTV clips allegedly captured the forty-five-year-old Australian casually wheeling the exact black suitcase through the main lobby before lifting it onto the back of his rented motorbike to transport it to the dump site.
The legal consequences for the former truck driver are extraordinarily severe. Thai prosecutors have formally hit Carman with a slate of major offenses, including murder, concealing a body, moving or destroying a body, and taking a minor aged between fifteen and eighteen for sexual purposes. Due to the intense nature of the high-profile case and the potential for severe vigilante retribution from the local population, Carman is currently being detained under tight security within the specialized hospital wing of the Pattaya Remand Prison as international and local authorities finalize their criminal case.
SOURE: https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15946811/aussie-thai-suitcase-murder-simon-carman-scratch-spider.html
