He’d never even had a girlfriend…: That’s the chilling detail friends are now revealing about Australian man Simon Peter Carman as the suitcase murder case takes another disturbing turn. Now an ex has come forward with a message she says left her terrified long before his arrest. But the image investigators can’t get past is the suitcase caught on CCTV rolling through the darkness just hours before the horrifying discovery… 👇🧳
The arrest of forty-five-year-old Australian truck driver Simon Peter Carman for the brutal murder of seventeen-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla has sparked widespread horror across two nations. Yet, while the details of the crime—a teenage girl’s naked body stuffed inside a black suitcase and callously dumped beside railway tracks—have shocked the general public, those who knew Carman back in Australia paint a portrait of a deeply unsettling individual whose downfall was far from unexpected. Described by former acquaintances as a chronic “weirdo” and a “creep,” Carman stood out for his highly disturbing behavioral patterns even among the demographic of Western men who frequent Bangkok and Pattaya in search of younger companions.
According to former friends in Australia, Carman’s most alarming trait was a pathological obsession with asserting his dominance over other men. He was known as a socially awkward loner with few close relationships, who frequently rubbed people the wrong way. An acquaintance recalled that Carman would routinely try to physically dominate people in social settings under the guise of horseplay:
“He would always try to assert dominance in every situation. He’d make it out like a joke but would start wrestling with guys just to show off. The news of him being arrested for killing a teenager is awful, but I’m not shocked. I’ve seen him on the news and he looks too cool and calm. That’s exactly how he is.”
This chilling emotional detachment, observed by millions on global news broadcasts following his high-stakes arrest at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, came as no surprise to those who had witnessed his calculating behavior firsthand in Australia.
REJECTING THE MENTAL DISABILITY SPECULATION
In the wake of his arrest, widespread online speculation emerged suggesting that Carman suffered from an intellectual or mental disability, a theory largely fueled by his distinctively slow, deliberate speech patterns during televised police interrogations. However, insiders and former mates have fiercely rejected this narrative, insisting that the truth is far more sinister.
A former close acquaintance clarified that while Carman did possess a visible physical scar from a childhood medical procedure, his cognitive faculties were entirely intact.
“He had a tumor removed from his brain when he was a kid and you can still see the scar, but he functioned perfectly fine as an adult. He had a job, hobbies like camping, fishing, and dirt bikes. He owned multiple guns and loved shooting. He is in no way mentally disabled. He just speaks slowly.”
Rather than navigating life with a cognitive impairment, Carman was a fully functioning adult who consciously pursued his hobbies and a highly destructive lifestyle. Former neighbors from his time living alone in an industrial estate in Rockingham, on the outskirts of Perth, corroborated his obsession with firearms, noting that he actively kept a collection of guns until Western Australian Police formally raided the property and confiscated them.
EXILE DRIVEN BY REJECTION AND FUNDED BY WORKERS’ COMPO
The dark motivation behind Carman’s permanent relocation to Southeast Asia was rooted in a lifetime of romantic rejection and social alienation in his home country. According to those within his former social circles, the forty-five-year-old had never managed to secure a romantic relationship in Australia.
“He has never had a girlfriend here. No way,” an acquaintance revealed, explaining that Carman was merely a peripheral figure in social settings, tolerated only out of long-standing family history. “No woman I know here would give him the time of day.” Driven by his inability to find a partner, Carman traveled overseas with the explicit goal of finding a wife in Thailand, where he believed his Western background would afford him leverage.
This overseas lifestyle was bankrolled not by active employment, but by a substantial, ongoing financial stream from back home. Before moving to Thailand, Carman had sustained a severe back injury while operating commercial trucks in Australia, a condition that left him heavily reliant on specialized medication. This workplace injury yielded a significant workers’ compensation payout. It was this payout that funded his comfortable, dual existence, allowing him to split his time between Australia and Thailand’s tourist hotspots on and off since before the global pandemic.
THE CHILLING MESSAGE TO A THAI EX-GIRLFRIEND
While acquaintances in Australia viewed Carman with deep suspicion, he worked tirelessly to project a completely different, benign persona to his social network in Thailand. He had become a familiar face in the coastal community of Jomtien, seamlessly integrating into a network of both male and female Thai friends.
Roughly a year ago, upon returning to Thailand after a stint in Australia, Carman broadcasted a mass text message to his local contacts, proudly announcing his return and stating that he was living in the exact same building he had occupied prior to the pandemic border closures. One of the recipients of this routine update was a thirty-four-year-old Thai woman whom Carman had dated before the pandemic. At the time, she worked as a cleaner in a nearby building, and Carman had reportedly grown deeply fond of her, even visiting her family’s home.
However, during his extended absence in Australia, the couple stopped dating, and the woman subsequently married a local Thai man. When Carman reached out to her upon his return to Jomtien, she politely informed him of her marriage, drawing a line under any future romantic reconciliation.
In light of the gruesome murder charges now leveled against Carman, that casual check-in text has taken on a terrifying, retroactively chilling significance for the woman. A close friend of the ex-girlfriend revealed that she has been left utterly traumatized, trembling at the thought of how close she came to a potentially fatal encounter:
“She is scared by the news of that girl. We can’t believe how something like this can happen… Now she says, ‘What if I meet with Simon? What if I marry Simon?’ But we never see him like that. He always looked like a nice guy.”
THE EVIDENTIARY TRAP AND THE 500-BAHT DISPUTE
The official case against Carman continues to solidify as Pattaya detectives synthesize closed-circuit television (CCTV) tracking data with physical forensics. The timeline compiled by authorities indicates that Carman met Tunchanok, known affectionately as “Nong Cake,” on Beach Road—a notorious coastal strip heavily populated by bars and street workers, known locally as the “Coconut Bar”.
CCTV footage from the night of the crime documents the pair holding hands as they stepped into a residential elevator. Hours later, separate security feeds captured Carman wheeling a large black suitcase out of the building, securing it to his Yamaha motorbike with heavy straps, and driving away. A mere ten minutes from his hotel, he pitched the suitcase into the long grass beside a railway line siding. Inside the recovered luggage, investigators found the victim’s naked remains alongside her personal effects, including her wallet, a gold bracelet, a necklace, and the distinct white Onitsuka trainers she was wearing in the elevator video.
Carman’s subsequent legal defense has drawn widespread public outrage. He allegedly confessed to investigators that a violent argument broke out inside the room over a financial dispute. According to Carman, the pair had originally agreed on a transaction price of 1,000 baht (approximately $43.45 AUD). However, the situation turned volatile when he attempted to shortchange the teenager, offering her only 500 baht ($21.72 AUD).
Carman claimed the seventeen-year-old girl pulled a knife and attempted to rob him, forcing him to act entirely in self-defense. In recorded police footage, Carman claimed, “I had my wallet open to get my money out, next thing I know there’s a knife in my face.” When questioned about the deep, linear scratches covering his neck and arms—marks forensic experts classify as classic human defensive wounds—Carman offered the widely mocked defense that the injuries were merely “spider bites” from pests infesting his apartment.
MAXIMUM PUNISHMENT: A FAMILY REJECTS THE EXCUSES
In the same videotaped police proceedings, Carman looked directly into the camera lens to deliver an apology to the teenager’s grieving family, stating, “I feel bad for what happened to your daughter. It was out of my control. I know you’ll be very sad, upset, same, same me.” He concluded his statement with a warning, urging other local girls to “be careful.”
This apology has been fiercely and unequivocally rejected by Tunchanok’s parents, forty-six-year-old Thongchai Donhomla and Ordee Butrakhamare. Having made the agonizing journey from their home in the rural, northeastern province of Kalasin to collect her body, the parents wept openly as they demanded absolute retribution. They clarified that it was their daughter’s very first visit to the coastal resort town, having traveled there with a trusted friend because of her helpful, industrious attitude.
Refusing to accept any excuses of self-defense or situational escalation, the parents have formally implored Thai judicial authorities to enforce the absolute maximum penalty under the law. In Thailand, a premeditated murder conviction carries a statutory penalty of life imprisonment or execution via lethal injection. Backed by four severe criminal charges—including murder, concealment of a corpse, destroying a body, and taking a minor for sexual purposes—the state’s prosecution appears unyielding. As Carman awaits trial in Pattaya Prison, the facade of the “nice guy” expat has been permanently shattered, replaced by the reality of an individual whose dangerous obsessions finally crossed a fatal line.
