# What's Next For The Aussie Charged With Murdering A Teen In Thailand?

An episode of [True Crime Conversations](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1469153910), 15 Jul 2026, 37 min.

Audio: https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/3ea926be-9be7-482a-8ac3-a44f016e43d1/abaa347e-8ac5-454e-85f9-aa64005c285f/304aa535-4bb1-48a7-a688-b4870051bc25/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=6d9fdc19-147e-4f77-8d3f-aa64005e5923

It’s late June 2026, and police in Pattaya, Thailand, are retracing the movements of Australian man Simon Carman through hours of CCTV footage. At first, his day appears unremarkable. He eats breakfast, runs errands and returns to his accommodation before, just after 9pm, quietly leaving through a rear exit with a large suitcase. Security cameras capture Carman riding a rented scooter into the night, the suitcase still in tow, until the footage abruptly ends. When he later reappears on camera, the suitcase is gone. Hours later, police find the body of 17-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla inside the abandoned suitcase. Carman is arrested at the airport and charged with her murder. LINKS If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. Contact Full Stop Australia on 1800 385 578, 7 days, 24 hours. GET IN TOUCH Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @truecrimeconversations Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at truecrime@mamamia.com.au or send us a voice note. Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. CREDITS Guests: SMH South-East Asia correspondent, Zach Hope Host: Gemma Bath Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman Group Executive Producer: Ilaria Brophy Video Editor: Julian Rosario Audio Designer: Tegan Salder Mamamia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: It's a Friday in late June twenty twenty six and
[0:06] Speaker 1: police in the city of Pataya, Thailand, are scarring through
[0:09] Speaker 1: CCTV footage. They're watching an Australian man going about his Thursday.
[0:14] Speaker 1: He's eating breakfast, buying groceries, doing his laundry, ordinary daily happenings.
[0:20] Speaker 1: But at nine pm they see him leave his unit
[0:22] Speaker 1: under the cover of darkness, wheeling a suitcase behind him.
[0:26] Speaker 1: Instead of going through the front entrance of the accommodation
[0:28] Speaker 1: he's staying at, he exits through a back door. He
[0:32] Speaker 1: rents a scooter, and footage captures him driving through the
[0:36] Speaker 1: streets with the luggage in tow. Suddenly the vision cuts out.
[0:41] Speaker 1: There are no more cameras on that stretch of road.
[0:44] Speaker 1: When the man reappears driving back towards his hotel, the
[0:48] Speaker 1: suitcase is gone. I'm Jemmy Bath and you're listening to
[0:56] Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's mostorious crimes
[1:01] Speaker 1: by speaking to the people who know the most about them.
[1:04] Speaker 1: The man in the footage was Australian born Simon Peter Carmen,
[1:09] Speaker 1: and later that Friday he was arrested at the airport
[1:12] Speaker 1: about to board a flight because in a suitcase on
[1:15] Speaker 1: the side of the road, investigators found the body of
[1:19] Speaker 1: a teenage girl. Her belongings had been jammed in beside her.
[1:24] Speaker 1: Her name was Tanjanok don Homla, and Carmen has been
[1:28] Speaker 1: charged with her murder. This is a story that made
[1:33] Speaker 1: international headlines, outraging people in Thailand and Australia alike, and
[1:38] Speaker 1: we're only at the start of it. Carmen is about
[1:41] Speaker 1: to face a lengthy, highly publicized court process, while the
[1:45] Speaker 1: family of the girl he allegedly murdered share their grief
[1:48] Speaker 1: with the world. Zach Hope is the Sydney Morning Herald's
[1:52] Speaker 1: Southeast Asia correspondent and has.
[1:54] Speaker 2: Been following this story closely. He joins us.
[1:57] Speaker 1: Now, Zach, thanks for joining us on true crime conversations.
[2:05] Speaker 1: Can you tell me about how you first heard about
[2:08] Speaker 1: this story and what it meant for you as a
[2:10] Speaker 1: correspondent on that side of the world.
[2:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, it was a weekend.
[2:15] Speaker 4: I was out with my family and an email and
[2:19] Speaker 4: a couple of texts started to come through, and straight
[2:23] Speaker 4: away I knew that it would probably be a big one.
[2:27] Speaker 4: Anytime in Australia is in trouble overseas in this part
[2:31] Speaker 4: of the world. I'm often on a plane.
[2:35] Speaker 3: You know.
[2:35] Speaker 4: I don't think we knew at that time sort of
[2:38] Speaker 4: the full well, we didn't have maybe a comprehension of
[2:42] Speaker 4: the full sort of horrors of this story, the backstories
[2:47] Speaker 4: and the grizzliness behind it.
[2:49] Speaker 3: But yeah, I was, I was on a plane.
[2:53] Speaker 4: I was in part of you the next day, I
[2:56] Speaker 4: believe it's It's been a really big, a really big
[3:00] Speaker 4: couple of weeks as the correspondent in this part of
[3:03] Speaker 4: the world. And I mean just from a sort of
[3:06] Speaker 4: a work perspective. Some of the challenges are filing against
[3:11] Speaker 4: really tight deadlines in time zones that are not very complementary,
[3:16] Speaker 4: and language.
[3:17] Speaker 3: Barriers and.
[3:20] Speaker 4: Access to the right people and this sort of thing.
[3:22] Speaker 4: So these are just all parts part of the challenges
[3:25] Speaker 4: of this role.
[3:26] Speaker 1: Let's start with Simon Peter Carmen. What do we know
[3:29] Speaker 1: about him and his backstory and why he was in
[3:32] Speaker 1: Thailand in the first place.
[3:34] Speaker 4: There's still a lot that we don't actually know about
[3:37] Speaker 4: this fellow.
[3:39] Speaker 3: He was born in Ballarat forty five years old.
[3:42] Speaker 4: He appears to have lived much of his life in
[3:45] Speaker 4: Western Australia. He was a truck driver for a time.
[3:49] Speaker 4: He seems to have been a guy who spent a
[3:52] Speaker 4: lot of time in Thailand, so he wasn't just a
[3:55] Speaker 4: tourist there for a few days or for a week.
[3:58] Speaker 4: He seems to have lived there sort of on and
[4:00] Speaker 4: off for quite some time. His neighbors in the condominium
[4:04] Speaker 4: where he lived said that he'd been in that particular
[4:07] Speaker 4: unit for about the last eight months, so he was
[4:11] Speaker 4: a long, long term kind of guy in that condominium complex.
[4:16] Speaker 4: It's a multi tower sort of thing which costume the
[4:20] Speaker 4: equivalent of three hundred and thirty Australian dollars a month
[4:23] Speaker 4: to live there, so pretty cheap. Lots of lots of
[4:26] Speaker 4: expats there, lots of lots of older Europeans who have
[4:30] Speaker 4: gone there to retire.
[4:33] Speaker 3: You know.
[4:33] Speaker 4: It's interesting that the area where he lived is called
[4:36] Speaker 4: john t Enne. That's about twenty minutes drive south of Pata.
[4:42] Speaker 4: John Tien is a much quieter Karma sort of place.
[4:46] Speaker 4: That's often where people go to live to get away
[4:48] Speaker 4: from the wild scene of Pata, and that's.
[4:53] Speaker 3: Also where this alleged murder has also taken place. In
[4:58] Speaker 3: his condominium in.
[4:59] Speaker 1: John Well to move over to Pattaya and to tell
[5:05] Speaker 1: that story, a little bit. It's known as the sex
[5:07] Speaker 1: capital of the world, isn't it.
[5:09] Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and I absolutely couldn't disagree. I've never actually
[5:14] Speaker 4: been there before until this story. We stayed in john
[5:19] Speaker 4: Tenn when we were there and before going to pata
[5:22] Speaker 4: And of course it's all part of the same ecosystem, right.
[5:25] Speaker 4: You could call John Tienne Paatea if you're like, it's
[5:27] Speaker 4: sort of a neighboring suburb or satellite kind of neighborhood
[5:31] Speaker 4: or something, you know. But anyway, before going to Patea,
[5:34] Speaker 4: I was in a pub talking to some old grizzled
[5:36] Speaker 4: Englishmen and they sort of said, we've you know, we've
[5:39] Speaker 4: done Paatea.
[5:40] Speaker 3: We've you know, this is more our speed. Now.
[5:42] Speaker 4: It's the kind of place where you can go for
[5:44] Speaker 4: a little while, but you have to check out pretty
[5:47] Speaker 4: quickly because it's so full on. So I was sort
[5:50] Speaker 4: of prepared for it. But yeah, it's a really really
[5:52] Speaker 4: wild scene. We went down a lot of your listeners
[5:57] Speaker 4: and viewers would have been to walking street in Patea.
[5:59] Speaker 4: I'm sure the neon lights, the blaring music, the rows
[6:03] Speaker 4: of girls, the men holding little cards for ping pong shows,
[6:10] Speaker 4: and god knows what other shows trying to get you
[6:12] Speaker 4: into their establishments, and then not too far away is
[6:18] Speaker 4: Soy six, which means Street six. And I think that
[6:21] Speaker 4: was even while they're still there, there must have been
[6:23] Speaker 4: at least a thousand young women in bikinis and lingerie
[6:28] Speaker 4: sort of dancing out the front of the bar trying
[6:30] Speaker 4: to entice guys in for a drink and whatever was
[6:34] Speaker 4: to follow after that drink. And you know, this was
[6:37] Speaker 4: this was the low season as well. You know, I
[6:43] Speaker 4: can just imagine what it's like on a weekend in
[6:45] Speaker 4: the high season.
[6:47] Speaker 3: Two.
[6:47] Speaker 2: What is the situation with sex services in Thailand? Is
[6:50] Speaker 2: it legal illegal? Are the kind of things that they
[6:54] Speaker 2: are allowed to do not allowed to do?
[6:56] Speaker 4: Well, it's a real it's a real grayzone. So brothels
[7:01] Speaker 4: strictly outlawed, pimping strictly outlawed. Prostitution in and of itself
[7:08] Speaker 4: is a little bit more complicated. The way it was
[7:10] Speaker 4: explained to me by a tire legal expert is that
[7:14] Speaker 4: that is not in and of itself and it's not
[7:16] Speaker 4: actually outlawed. And if you go look at the laws,
[7:20] Speaker 4: there are no offenses for prostitution in and of itself,
[7:23] Speaker 4: but there are offenses for doing it openly, shamelessly, or
[7:27] Speaker 4: creating a nuisance. And I think that creates a lot
[7:31] Speaker 4: of gray zone. I mean, for example, what does openly mean?
[7:35] Speaker 4: You know, does that mean just someone coming up and
[7:38] Speaker 4: talking to someone on the street, approaching someone on the street.
[7:41] Speaker 4: Does openly mean you know, wearing skimpy clothes and clearly
[7:44] Speaker 4: presenting as a sex worker?
[7:46] Speaker 1: You know?
[7:47] Speaker 4: So I think that's where the grave zone comes in.
[7:49] Speaker 4: But most people just would just say that it's illegal
[7:53] Speaker 4: essentially just because of this gray zone. But that doesn't
[7:57] Speaker 4: stop the industry at all. In fact that it's just
[8:00] Speaker 4: absolutely rampant. Everyone knows it's rampant. There's some estimates that
[8:04] Speaker 4: there might be in aarone as many as fifty thousand
[8:08] Speaker 4: sex workers in the high season there. So you know,
[8:12] Speaker 4: if it is illegal, then it's certainly not being policed.
[8:17] Speaker 1: Do people go to this area of Thailand for things
[8:19] Speaker 1: other than sex? Is it a popular tourist spot for
[8:23] Speaker 1: you know, families or anyone else?
[8:25] Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's it's been trying to rebrand itself as
[8:28] Speaker 4: a spot for families. And there's a nice beach and
[8:30] Speaker 4: it's beautiful weather and all this stuff. And yeah, I
[8:33] Speaker 4: saw a lot of families, even on Walking street. Now,
[8:35] Speaker 4: I wasn't there at two or three o'clock in the morning.
[8:37] Speaker 4: It was sort of more around ten or eleven at night,
[8:39] Speaker 4: and I saw families there taking it in and the
[8:42] Speaker 4: parents who were probably a little bit regretful that.
[8:45] Speaker 3: They've taken their taken taken their kids there.
[8:49] Speaker 4: But as for other people, you know, it's quite funny
[8:52] Speaker 4: because everyone you speak to, they're not there for the girls,
[8:54] Speaker 4: they'll tell you.
[8:56] Speaker 3: So we's both to a lot of men, and none
[8:57] Speaker 3: of them were there for the girls.
[8:59] Speaker 4: They're you know, they're all there for the clubs and
[9:01] Speaker 4: the drinks and the beach and the good time. So anyway,
[9:05] Speaker 4: there are a lot of other things to do there,
[9:08] Speaker 4: but certainly sex is what is its brand, is what
[9:13] Speaker 4: it's known for, and that's that's what brings in the dollars,
[9:15] Speaker 4: I believe to Pata.
[9:17] Speaker 1: Do we know if Carmen had been paying for sex
[9:20] Speaker 1: services before this incident.
[9:24] Speaker 4: There has been some reports about communication and sort of
[9:27] Speaker 4: attempts and chats that he's had with girls, but nothing
[9:31] Speaker 4: official like that has come from police. But yet there
[9:36] Speaker 4: certainly is reporting to that end. We spoke to one
[9:40] Speaker 4: of his neighbors said that he'd never seen you know,
[9:44] Speaker 4: he'd been living next to Carmen this whole time, or
[9:47] Speaker 4: living down down the hallway from Carmen this whole time,
[9:50] Speaker 4: and I saw him quite a bit and had never
[9:52] Speaker 4: seen him with the girl. But he also said that's
[9:56] Speaker 4: not to say it wasn't happening. You know, they didn't
[9:58] Speaker 4: really mix. Carmen didn't seem to really mix very closely
[10:02] Speaker 4: with many of the neighbors, at least the ones that
[10:04] Speaker 4: we spoke to.
[10:06] Speaker 3: So a bit hard to tell.
[10:09] Speaker 1: Were those neighbors that had had interactions able to kind
[10:12] Speaker 1: of paint a picture of who this guy was in
[10:14] Speaker 1: terms of behavior or what he was like to live around.
[10:17] Speaker 4: It sounds so cliche to say this, but this is
[10:22] Speaker 4: just what they said to us, and they were very
[10:24] Speaker 4: shocked when this news came out. And that's not to
[10:27] Speaker 4: say that he was sort of a you know, came
[10:31] Speaker 4: across as a lovely guy or anything like that. They
[10:34] Speaker 4: said he could be a little bit difficult at times.
[10:36] Speaker 4: He was the kind of guy who wanted his own way,
[10:40] Speaker 4: but he never caused any trouble at the condominium. He
[10:44] Speaker 4: could sometimes get a bit frustrated at drunk people, but
[10:48] Speaker 4: one lady as she said to us that that's just
[10:51] Speaker 4: normal to get frustrated at drunk people if they're making
[10:53] Speaker 4: a nuisance in your room. The most striking thing that about,
[11:00] Speaker 4: they told us, was his slow manner of speaking, his
[11:05] Speaker 4: slow manner of walking, his slow manner of staring at things.
[11:10] Speaker 4: He does have a scar on the back of his head.
[11:14] Speaker 4: One of his neighbors, actually, a couple of people there
[11:17] Speaker 4: thought that he'd had a tumor at some point and
[11:21] Speaker 4: had an operation on the back.
[11:23] Speaker 3: Of his on the back of his head.
[11:25] Speaker 4: You know. There's been other reports though about maybe an
[11:28] Speaker 4: accident that he had.
[11:29] Speaker 3: At some point.
[11:30] Speaker 4: No one knows for sure, and or you know what,
[11:34] Speaker 4: maybe he was just a natural sort of slow talker
[11:36] Speaker 4: and slow walker. I guess all that sort of information
[11:39] Speaker 4: will come out more fulsomely once the court process begins,
[11:43] Speaker 4: we hope.
[11:43] Speaker 1: Let's bring in tannjannok here. What do we know about
[11:46] Speaker 1: her and her kind of story.
[11:49] Speaker 4: I spent an evening and a morning with her family.
[11:55] Speaker 4: That's in the province of Carlsen in the northeast, in
[11:59] Speaker 4: a pretty small ordinary town called Bumbo. She has a
[12:05] Speaker 4: pretty large extended family. We know that her mother left
[12:10] Speaker 4: the family when she was still a baby, her father
[12:16] Speaker 4: and her great aunts raised her. What her father told
[12:22] Speaker 4: us and is a source of immense sort of shame
[12:27] Speaker 4: and grief and regret on his part, is that he
[12:30] Speaker 4: was jailed from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty three for
[12:35] Speaker 4: drug offenses. He was caught with some with pills on him,
[12:39] Speaker 4: which he says was for personal use, but he got
[12:41] Speaker 4: put away for prison for having trafficable amount. But those
[12:47] Speaker 4: years were in Karachuk don Homler's formative years. And this
[12:53] Speaker 4: is a really poor family and her father was the
[12:56] Speaker 4: principal breadwinner, so when he was in prison, they really struggled.
[12:59] Speaker 3: They were really destitute.
[13:01] Speaker 4: And even once he came out, he's not earning very
[13:04] Speaker 4: much money at all. He's a freelance farmhand essentially, and
[13:09] Speaker 4: while his income fluctuates, it averages to that the equivalent
[13:12] Speaker 4: of two hundred and fifty Australian dollars a month, so
[13:15] Speaker 4: that's not very much and a tonachuk. She did used
[13:21] Speaker 4: to go to school, but her family says that she
[13:24] Speaker 4: was bullied and teased at school because in part because
[13:28] Speaker 4: her mother had gone and her father was in prison.
[13:31] Speaker 4: So you can maybe imagine some of the cruel kind
[13:33] Speaker 4: of things that was said to her in the playground.
[13:37] Speaker 4: Whether she was still attending schools was a little bit
[13:40] Speaker 4: harder to get to. Her family say she hadn't left school,
[13:44] Speaker 4: but she was doing a different curriculum that didn't require
[13:48] Speaker 4: her to be on person at the school premises all
[13:52] Speaker 4: the time, So still a little bit of uncertainty about that.
[13:59] Speaker 4: She didn't have many friends, and her father said that
[14:03] Speaker 4: he didn't necessarily approve of her latest batch of frenzy,
[14:08] Speaker 4: didn't specify why, but he wasn't going to step in
[14:13] Speaker 4: and get in the way of those friendships because she
[14:15] Speaker 4: didn't have others. And so when one of those friends
[14:20] Speaker 4: proposed a trip to Pata Tanachuk wanted to go, and
[14:26] Speaker 4: her father, feeling this intense grief and shame and wanting
[14:31] Speaker 4: to give everything that he possibly could to his daughter,
[14:35] Speaker 4: said she could go and gave it the equivalent of
[14:38] Speaker 4: about forty dollars to help her on her way. She
[14:41] Speaker 4: was only supposed to go for a short time, he said,
[14:45] Speaker 4: And he said that the reason that she'd given was
[14:48] Speaker 4: for a holiday to Potato, and she wanted to see
[14:51] Speaker 4: the beach.
[14:53] Speaker 1: And as far as they knew, they didn't know that
[14:56] Speaker 1: she would be involved in sex services.
[15:00] Speaker 4: Absolutely not. No, they're still very uncomfortable about that detail.
[15:03] Speaker 4: It's it's in the police report that she and Simon
[15:08] Speaker 4: Carmen had agreed to sexual services. They're very uncomfortable about that.
[15:15] Speaker 4: They are still wrapping their heads around it. Of course
[15:18] Speaker 4: they're going to try and defend their daughter, but they
[15:21] Speaker 4: say that wasn't what she was doing back home.
[15:24] Speaker 3: She wasn't into drugs.
[15:26] Speaker 4: And her father, you know, said to me, what sort
[15:29] Speaker 4: of father would allow her to do that kind of work.
[15:33] Speaker 4: So whether it was an opportunistic thing, whether she was
[15:39] Speaker 4: taken advantage of in some way, that's still a playout.
[15:45] Speaker 1: After the break, Zach tells me what happened at three
[15:47] Speaker 1: am on the morning of June twenty five, when Tanjanok
[15:50] Speaker 1: met Simon Carmen. Can you talk us through what we
[15:56] Speaker 1: know happened because the pair no met at about three am,
[16:02] Speaker 1: and a lot of this story, I guess is captured
[16:05] Speaker 1: on CCTV camera.
[16:06] Speaker 2: We can kind of see their movements.
[16:10] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[16:10] Speaker 4: So they yeah, they met it at three am on
[16:14] Speaker 4: the twenty fifth of June at near the beach and
[16:18] Speaker 4: say seven in John ten so not in pata in
[16:22] Speaker 4: john Ten one of the friends that Cake and that's
[16:26] Speaker 4: what her friends called That's what Tinner Chook's friends and
[16:29] Speaker 4: family called her Cake. One of Cake's friends who was
[16:32] Speaker 4: with her then filmed the pair walking off, not in a.
[16:39] Speaker 3: Not in a like a.
[16:42] Speaker 4: Sort of a scared or you know, worried kind of
[16:46] Speaker 4: way filming. It seemed, you know, the friend even sort
[16:49] Speaker 4: of made a bit of a like a gesture sort
[16:52] Speaker 4: of thing, almost like a celebritory gesture. Off they go,
[16:56] Speaker 4: So there were no red flags at that point. At
[16:59] Speaker 4: about three point thirty, they've arrived back at Carmen's condominium
[17:05] Speaker 4: and that's where the CCTV cameras capture them in the foyer,
[17:09] Speaker 4: and it captures them disappearing at the elevator. They would
[17:13] Speaker 4: have then got off at Carmen's fifteenth floor and walked
[17:16] Speaker 4: to his room twenty building. What happens next is only
[17:22] Speaker 4: one person alive to give their version of events. When
[17:27] Speaker 4: Simon Carmen was first attained, he said that he didn't
[17:33] Speaker 4: have anything to do with it, but later they started
[17:36] Speaker 4: to present the police started to presenting with evidence, and
[17:40] Speaker 4: that evidence is the same CCTV cameras in his condominium
[17:45] Speaker 4: capturing him about eighteen hours after they had first entered,
[17:50] Speaker 4: leaving with the suitcase, and then less than an hour
[17:54] Speaker 4: later he returns without that suitcase. And now there's also
[17:58] Speaker 4: other CTTV cameras around Pataya and Jumpedy and that have
[18:03] Speaker 4: captured him driving on a motorbike with that suitcase strapped
[18:06] Speaker 4: to the back. So once they've started to present him
[18:10] Speaker 4: with that, then he as according to police, this is
[18:13] Speaker 4: what police have told us. He then said, yes, this happened,
[18:19] Speaker 4: but that he was acting in self defense and that
[18:22] Speaker 4: Cake had come at him with a knife.
[18:24] Speaker 1: I want to get to those details in a minute,
[18:27] Speaker 1: but first I'm I'm astounded by how quickly the police
[18:30] Speaker 1: moved in this, because you know he was at an
[18:34] Speaker 1: airport by Friday night.
[18:36] Speaker 2: How did they clue into this and get him so quickly?
[18:40] Speaker 4: It was extremely, extremely quick. The police colonel said that
[18:46] Speaker 4: he had had as soon as this woman, as soon
[18:49] Speaker 4: as Cake was reported missing, and that a foreigner was involved.
[18:54] Speaker 4: He said that he had a bad feeling about this
[18:55] Speaker 4: because this sort of thing has happened before. So rather
[19:00] Speaker 4: then just doing the usual missing person report and waiting
[19:03] Speaker 4: for them that missing person to give.
[19:06] Speaker 3: Him a couple of days to turn up again.
[19:08] Speaker 4: They've immediately cracked into gear, so the Cake's friends knew
[19:14] Speaker 4: where Cake had gone and police were then able to
[19:18] Speaker 4: go and look at that CCTV footage, so they whizzed
[19:22] Speaker 4: through the whole thing, so they saw the suitcase coming down,
[19:25] Speaker 4: they saw Carmen returning without the suitcase, and then they've moved.
[19:29] Speaker 4: They've they've then seen CCTV of him leaving with another suitcase,
[19:34] Speaker 4: presumably going to the airport, so they've moved really quickly
[19:37] Speaker 4: from there. They've notified immigration authorities who have picked him
[19:41] Speaker 4: up at the Bangkoks of an a Bum airport just
[19:44] Speaker 4: minutes before he was about.
[19:45] Speaker 1: To get on a flight, a flight back to Australia, right,
[19:49] Speaker 1: that's right, yes, And if he'd made that flight, would
[19:52] Speaker 1: the tie authorities been able to get him back, well,
[19:55] Speaker 1: they would have.
[19:56] Speaker 4: Been an interesting one. They would have wanted him back,
[19:59] Speaker 4: no doubt. Thailand, of course has a death penalty, so
[20:03] Speaker 4: Australia would not extradite someone if the death penalty was
[20:09] Speaker 4: on the table, So I think what would have happened
[20:11] Speaker 4: then there would have been a negotiation between the governments.
[20:14] Speaker 4: Maybe they would have agreed to take that off the table.
[20:16] Speaker 4: And then maybe he would have been extradited back to
[20:20] Speaker 4: Thailand to face court, but I guess that's a hypothetical.
[20:25] Speaker 3: Now.
[20:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, they detained him, arrested him, and they immediately
[20:29] Speaker 1: noticed that he had injuries on his body.
[20:32] Speaker 2: Can you tell us about that?
[20:34] Speaker 4: Yeah, he had what appeared to be scratch marks, and
[20:38] Speaker 4: even some of the published photos that police have released
[20:43] Speaker 4: just of him being detained, if you look closely, you
[20:46] Speaker 4: can see some of the scratch marks or alleged scratch
[20:49] Speaker 4: marks on his body. What the police told us was
[20:53] Speaker 4: that when the immigration authorities at the airport noticed those
[20:57] Speaker 4: and asked what they were all about, and then allegedly
[21:00] Speaker 4: said that he'd been in a fight with one of
[21:02] Speaker 4: his friends, and.
[21:03] Speaker 3: That's what they were.
[21:05] Speaker 4: But as I said, once they got him back to
[21:09] Speaker 4: the to the police station and presented him with evidence,
[21:15] Speaker 4: that's when his story started to change, and he admit
[21:17] Speaker 4: that there had been a struggle with Cake and that
[21:21] Speaker 4: he was protecting himself and that he had strangled her
[21:25] Speaker 4: and didn't intend to kill it. He then moved her
[21:31] Speaker 4: into the bathroom, and what he told us police was
[21:34] Speaker 4: that when he realized that she was no longer alive,
[21:37] Speaker 4: that's when he put her in the suitcase.
[21:39] Speaker 1: So he has been charged with murder, concealment of a body,
[21:43] Speaker 1: and moving or destroying a body, and taking a miner
[21:46] Speaker 1: for indecent acts. As you mentioned, the death penalties on
[21:49] Speaker 1: the table here.
[21:50] Speaker 4: That's correct, that's correct, depending on who you asked. The
[21:53] Speaker 4: legal scholar that I spoke to seems to think that
[21:57] Speaker 4: if convicted, it would be quite likely that he would receive.
[22:00] Speaker 3: The death penalty.
[22:01] Speaker 2: Really, but there's.
[22:03] Speaker 4: The big caveat is that precedent for Thailand's king to
[22:07] Speaker 4: commute people on death row. So there hasn't been an
[22:12] Speaker 4: execution in Thailand since two thousand and eighteen. Just last year,
[22:20] Speaker 4: Amnesty International's report said, I believe it was one hundred
[22:24] Speaker 4: and nineteen people were given death sentences in Thailand mark
[22:27] Speaker 4: just last year. But it is precedent for the king
[22:30] Speaker 4: to commute those sentences the life imprisonment, and that often
[22:34] Speaker 4: happens on celebration occasions like his birthday or the queen's birthday,
[22:41] Speaker 4: this sort of thing. So what would happen then if
[22:44] Speaker 4: his sentence would be commuted by the king, then he
[22:48] Speaker 4: would probably be given life imprisonment, which would be a
[22:51] Speaker 4: minimum of fifteen years, and after fifteen years he could
[22:54] Speaker 4: again petition the king to have his sentence commuted again.
[23:00] Speaker 4: Of course, this is if he's convicted, because you know,
[23:02] Speaker 4: he claims he claims self defense. So we'll just have
[23:07] Speaker 4: to we'll just have to see what the what the
[23:10] Speaker 4: court decides in that manner of the tight court.
[23:12] Speaker 1: We do have two videos that are circulating from the
[23:16] Speaker 1: airport after his arrest where he kind of talks to
[23:19] Speaker 1: the camera. Can you tell us about those because there's
[23:22] Speaker 1: one in particular that angered me because he kind of makes,
[23:26] Speaker 1: you know, a bit of a warning.
[23:27] Speaker 2: To other girls or other sex workers.
[23:30] Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know what that's about.
[23:32] Speaker 4: I've seen the videos that you're talking about, and he
[23:35] Speaker 4: appears to sort of speak and eclipped almost tie like
[23:40] Speaker 4: he's taking on a bit of sort of a tie
[23:42] Speaker 4: syle of speech in it. Yeah, look, I have seen
[23:47] Speaker 4: I have seen what you're talking about. When he apologizes
[23:51] Speaker 4: to the family, he said that it shouldn't have happened yet,
[23:55] Speaker 4: And you're right, he does say that it should be
[23:57] Speaker 4: a warning to us. You know what what he what
[24:01] Speaker 4: he means? What was beneath those words? I guess only
[24:05] Speaker 4: he and maybe the police sort of know know at
[24:09] Speaker 4: this point, at last last check.
[24:12] Speaker 3: He still didn't actually have a lawyer really.
[24:16] Speaker 4: So that there's there's there's still quite a lot that
[24:18] Speaker 4: isn't actually known about this case.
[24:20] Speaker 1: What he said for listeners is I feel bad for
[24:23] Speaker 1: what happened to your daughter. It was out of my control.
[24:25] Speaker 1: It shouldn't happen. Please tell other girls just to be careful.
[24:31] Speaker 1: And you know, we've got an alleged murderer here and
[24:33] Speaker 1: he is still going to go through the court processes,
[24:35] Speaker 1: but please tell other girls just to be careful, Like,
[24:39] Speaker 1: come on. I know that Cake's family have spoken to
[24:41] Speaker 1: the media quite a lot, and they've been quite graphic
[24:46] Speaker 1: in their descriptions that they want him to be executed
[24:49] Speaker 1: and kind of their anger, haven't they.
[24:51] Speaker 5: They have they they want, they want justice to be
[24:56] Speaker 5: dull to him fairly, and if convicted, then yes, they
[25:01] Speaker 5: want him to get the death sentence.
[25:03] Speaker 3: And what they said explicitly to me was a life
[25:06] Speaker 3: for a life. And you know they're Kate was a very.
[25:15] Speaker 4: Much love member of their family, a very valuable member
[25:18] Speaker 4: of their family. Not only have they been robbed of her,
[25:24] Speaker 4: but they've also you know, this is a poor family
[25:27] Speaker 4: they've also been robbed of her earning potential in the future.
[25:34] Speaker 4: And you know, I'm sure this is secondary to the
[25:36] Speaker 4: love of the person, but these are these are sort
[25:38] Speaker 4: of real factors in poor parts of Southeast Asia in
[25:43] Speaker 4: the world. Who's going to look after her great aunts,
[25:47] Speaker 4: you know, who are starting to get very old now,
[25:49] Speaker 4: who's going to look after her father, who's going to
[25:53] Speaker 4: look after her baby cousin who she looked after, you
[25:58] Speaker 4: know when when the baby's parents we're at work and
[26:01] Speaker 4: doing things like that, So that there's all sorts of
[26:04] Speaker 4: repercussions like this for a family that comes from these poor,
[26:09] Speaker 4: poor areas.
[26:11] Speaker 1: Where is Carmen currently being held What what are the
[26:15] Speaker 1: prison kind of conditions that he would be living in.
[26:19] Speaker 4: Well, he's being held in the prison at Pataya. No
[26:24] Speaker 4: one has been able to get inside and speak to
[26:29] Speaker 4: him or see him. As I said, at last at
[26:33] Speaker 4: my last county still didn't actually have a lawyer. I
[26:36] Speaker 4: don't believe the prison. Well I haven't seen inside, so
[26:40] Speaker 4: I can't I can't say, but I don't think it
[26:44] Speaker 4: will be as bad as prison in Bangkok if that
[26:47] Speaker 4: where he ends up. Put it that way, okay, which
[26:51] Speaker 4: would probably be his likely destination if convicted.
[26:54] Speaker 1: It's not going to be like an Australian cell though.
[26:56] Speaker 1: It's going to be a lot more kind of destitute
[26:59] Speaker 1: than that, isn't it.
[27:00] Speaker 3: I believe so? The Bangkok Hilton is quite.
[27:03] Speaker 2: Famous, is it why it is one of.
[27:07] Speaker 4: The one of the shocking prisons of the world. Is
[27:11] Speaker 4: a place a place of misery. It is a place
[27:17] Speaker 4: of real punishment.
[27:18] Speaker 1: Do you know much about what we can expect from here?
[27:21] Speaker 1: Is the court processes that Carmen is going to go
[27:24] Speaker 1: up against. Are they going to take weeks, months, years?
[27:27] Speaker 1: Is it like the system back here where someone might
[27:29] Speaker 1: sit in prison for a long time before they see
[27:32] Speaker 1: a judge.
[27:33] Speaker 4: It could happen that way, but you would think that
[27:35] Speaker 4: the tie or given the given the global attention on
[27:37] Speaker 4: this case, given how quickly the police moved, I think
[27:41] Speaker 4: the tiers would want to want to get moving on this.
[27:44] Speaker 4: There isn't a court date set for him yet the
[27:48] Speaker 4: time investigators are still putting the investigation together. They have
[27:53] Speaker 4: close to three months a bit under three months I believe,
[27:57] Speaker 4: from the time of his arrest to be able to
[28:01] Speaker 4: to finalize the investigation and put it to prosecutors. So
[28:05] Speaker 4: there still is a bit of time up to sleeve,
[28:07] Speaker 4: but it wouldn't surprise me if they do want to
[28:10] Speaker 4: get moving on this.
[28:12] Speaker 1: Is there any other evidence that we have been privy
[28:15] Speaker 1: to at the moment, I know an autopsy was undertaken.
[28:19] Speaker 4: Yeah, there was an autopsy done in Bangkok, and what
[28:22] Speaker 4: the police told us about that was that she died
[28:27] Speaker 4: by strangulation, and there weren't any major assault injuries elsewhere
[28:34] Speaker 4: on her body, and that this is a little bit
[28:41] Speaker 4: grizzly that you know, there were no her bones didn't
[28:44] Speaker 4: need to be to be broken to be able to
[28:46] Speaker 4: get her inside the suitcase.
[28:48] Speaker 3: Either.
[28:49] Speaker 2: It's a seventeen year old girl we're talking about here, very.
[28:52] Speaker 4: Petit, very petite, small seventeen year old girl. And Simon Cummens,
[28:58] Speaker 4: most people listening to this, watching this have have probably
[29:01] Speaker 4: seen his photos.
[29:02] Speaker 3: He's a pretty big guy.
[29:03] Speaker 1: In one of your articles, I was interested to read
[29:05] Speaker 1: about one of her aunties attending the crime scene to
[29:09] Speaker 1: prompt the spirit home. Can you tell us about that.
[29:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm certainly no expert on.
[29:15] Speaker 4: Buddhism and associated beliefs, but the family and members of
[29:23] Speaker 4: the family did attend round twenty Simon Carman's unit. They
[29:27] Speaker 4: weren't given very long, but the landlord let them in
[29:30] Speaker 4: to do a short ritual, a short ceremony. And the
[29:34] Speaker 4: idea is that doing so since the spirit back home to.
[29:41] Speaker 3: Where they came from, to where they grew up. So
[29:43] Speaker 3: it didn't ling her in that place any longer. And
[29:46] Speaker 3: that's my understanding of the purpose of that.
[29:48] Speaker 2: She also had some descriptions of the room itself, didn't she.
[29:52] Speaker 4: She said, yo, I mean her exact quote was his
[29:56] Speaker 4: very dirty man when she went in there, there were
[30:00] Speaker 4: piles of clothes, there were piles of dishes, real squalor
[30:07] Speaker 4: real slovenly.
[30:09] Speaker 3: Kind of place.
[30:11] Speaker 1: Before I bring this next question up, I do want
[30:13] Speaker 1: to reiterate to listeners that there has been no suggestion
[30:16] Speaker 1: that Carmen is involved. But there have been two other
[30:19] Speaker 1: cases of young women found in suitcases in the general
[30:24] Speaker 1: vicinity fairly recently, haven't there, Zach, There have.
[30:28] Speaker 4: Been one of the developments, though I understand that police
[30:36] Speaker 4: have actually ruled him out of those cases. Now I
[30:40] Speaker 4: couldn't tell you that definitively, but that's my understanding that
[30:44] Speaker 4: he has been ruled out of those cases. But yes,
[30:47] Speaker 4: there were some similar ones, not in the immediate neighborhood
[30:53] Speaker 4: or anything like that, but in the area.
[30:57] Speaker 1: Up next, we explore the lasting impact this case has
[31:00] Speaker 1: had on Thailand's sex work industry and the women at
[31:03] Speaker 1: its center. What is this meant for the women and
[31:08] Speaker 1: just the residents of Pata. Are they scared? Are they angry?
[31:14] Speaker 1: What's the vibe there?
[31:16] Speaker 4: I think scared and angry is probably a good way
[31:19] Speaker 4: to put it. When we went out onto Walking Street
[31:23] Speaker 4: in Pata and surrounds, we spoke to some women working
[31:29] Speaker 4: openly as sex workers, and neither of them or any
[31:35] Speaker 4: of them needed any prompting. Quite a two people in
[31:37] Speaker 4: the story, but none of the people that we spoke
[31:39] Speaker 4: to needed any prompting about this story. You know, I
[31:45] Speaker 4: would pull up my phone with the photo and I said,
[31:47] Speaker 4: have you heard about have you heard about her? And
[31:49] Speaker 4: straight away they knew the details. It was something that
[31:52] Speaker 4: they had all been talking about. It's something that frightens them,
[31:57] Speaker 4: but it's also something that pops up from time to time.
[32:00] Speaker 4: It's more of a risk to the sex workers who
[32:03] Speaker 4: work independently, so most on Walking Street than soy six.
[32:08] Speaker 4: Most of the girls there are attached to bars. Now
[32:11] Speaker 4: those bars have some pretty heavy duty sort of people
[32:15] Speaker 4: working behind the scenes, I think, right, So there's there's
[32:19] Speaker 4: more security for these sort of girls. It's the ones
[32:21] Speaker 4: who are working independently who then have to make the
[32:24] Speaker 4: choice about, well, where do they go with the client
[32:26] Speaker 4: If the client wants to go back to their condominium,
[32:28] Speaker 4: do they go, Do they take that risk for that money,
[32:32] Speaker 4: or do they knock it back. So one sex worker
[32:37] Speaker 4: told us that she's a veteran at the game. She
[32:39] Speaker 4: said she'd never go to someone's condominium. She has some
[32:42] Speaker 4: hotels that know her that she would go to use.
[32:46] Speaker 3: But it's.
[32:48] Speaker 4: Really center ripple through the industry. But as I said,
[32:53] Speaker 4: these things do happen from time to time. One woman,
[32:58] Speaker 4: as soon as we started talking about out this sort
[33:00] Speaker 4: of listed you know one of another recent one from
[33:03] Speaker 4: last year involving a woman who was mutilated very badly
[33:09] Speaker 4: by a foreign.
[33:10] Speaker 3: Client and found death.
[33:12] Speaker 4: So all these stories are in, these are in these
[33:16] Speaker 4: these these women's minds and thoughts as they go about
[33:19] Speaker 4: their business.
[33:21] Speaker 1: Well, that's devastating to hear that the murders of young
[33:23] Speaker 1: sex workers is cam like relatively common in this part
[33:27] Speaker 1: of the world, and that they're not overly surprised.
[33:31] Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, how do you say it, Maybe shocked but
[33:34] Speaker 4: not surprised. Yeah, in a way to put it, you know,
[33:36] Speaker 4: they're shot shopped at the details, shocked at that it
[33:41] Speaker 4: could happen, but also not necessarily surprised, because these things
[33:45] Speaker 4: do pop up from time to time, and I don't
[33:47] Speaker 4: think it's like a you know, in every and every
[33:49] Speaker 4: week or every even every month or that, or even
[33:52] Speaker 4: every few months kind of things, but they do pop
[33:54] Speaker 4: up any I believe any woman who's been in the
[33:56] Speaker 4: industry there for a long time would have a bit
[33:59] Speaker 4: of a list of not just things that have made
[34:03] Speaker 4: the news, but things that have happened and never made
[34:06] Speaker 4: the news that have happened to maybe her colleagues or
[34:09] Speaker 4: fans or coworkers that might not necessarily involve someone ending
[34:14] Speaker 4: up dead, but just awful experiences with clients, you know.
[34:19] Speaker 4: That said, the workers that we spoke to said that
[34:23] Speaker 4: overwhelmingly all of their clients have been really nice to
[34:26] Speaker 4: them as well, and these they're mostly foreign men, and
[34:31] Speaker 4: that overwhelmingly the majority are very nice and respectful. So
[34:36] Speaker 4: that's just worth worth putting out there too. I don't
[34:39] Speaker 4: think it's necessarily know a magnet for degenerates, although of
[34:44] Speaker 4: course in that sort of crowd that the generates will
[34:48] Speaker 4: be lurking in the midst.
[34:49] Speaker 1: So where are we at now and our Australian authorities
[34:53] Speaker 1: involved at all? Or is this purely in the Thai
[34:56] Speaker 1: police kind of camp now.
[34:59] Speaker 4: As far as the the criminal case goes, that's completely
[35:03] Speaker 4: in the Thai camp, though the Australian government will absolutely
[35:09] Speaker 4: be on the scene in the form of the embassy
[35:14] Speaker 4: and the diplomats in Thailand, just as a matter of
[35:17] Speaker 4: course they would they would provide that service to any
[35:22] Speaker 4: Australian who finds themselves in trouble or overseas. It's a
[35:26] Speaker 4: bit hard to know exactly what they do. They're a
[35:29] Speaker 4: pretty secretive mob defact especially especially when it comes to
[35:35] Speaker 4: their activities overseas, that they would they would that they
[35:41] Speaker 4: would be involved in this as well.
[35:42] Speaker 1: I know you're back in Singapore now, which is where
[35:44] Speaker 1: you're based, But is this a story you're expecting to
[35:47] Speaker 1: cover on the ground more as it unfolds.
[35:49] Speaker 4: I imagine I can see myself in Patea again and
[35:54] Speaker 4: are not too distant future, I'm sure, I think once
[35:56] Speaker 4: this thing starts to move through the courts, what's one
[36:00] Speaker 4: we start to learn more. You know, it's just a
[36:03] Speaker 4: it's just sort of such a shocking a shocking case,
[36:06] Speaker 4: isn't it. These two worlds colliding in a place where
[36:10] Speaker 4: a lot of Australians might have been on a holiday,
[36:16] Speaker 4: and the circumstances in which she was allegedly murdered have
[36:22] Speaker 4: shocked Thailand and shopped Australia. And the fact that she
[36:26] Speaker 4: was also just seventeen years old. So I think that
[36:32] Speaker 4: the interest in the public interest in this story is
[36:37] Speaker 4: going to continue until the case reaches its conclusion.
[36:42] Speaker 2: Thank you to Zach for joining us on this episode.
[36:45] Speaker 1: Make sure you're following our show on Apple Podcasts and
[36:47] Speaker 1: Spotify for updates on this story and all the stories
[36:50] Speaker 1: we cover. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back
[36:53] Speaker 1: next week with another true crime Conversation.

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