The stepmother of a 17-year-old girl found dead in a suitcase in Thailand has told the ABC her family is “shocked and speechless” over her gruesome dєatᩚh.
Australian man Simon Peter Carman has been charged with the murder of Tunchanok Donhomla, telling her family her dєatᩚh was “out of my control”.
Her stepmother, Oradee Bussarakum, said she and the teenager’s father had tried but failed to contact her.
“We never expected this. When they found her, we still hoped she was alive,” she told the ABC.
Ms Oradee said her stepdaughter went to Pattaya on June 16, telling them she wanted to go for a holiday with her friend.
“She asked for money from her grandmother and she gave her some,” Ms Oradee said.
“She said she wanted to see the sea.”
The teenager, whose nickname was “Cake”, lived in Kalasin with her father and stepmother. She did not have any siblings.
“She sometimes helped her father and me by selling garlands or fruits at intersections on the road, during Songkran (water festival). We did not force her to work,” Ms Oradee said.
“She was still young, so sometimes we let her go out and gave her 50 to 100 baht.”
In a teary interview with Reuters outside a police station in Pattaya, Ms Tunchanok’s father, Thongchai Donholma, said he was “deeply saddened” by his daughter’s dєatᩚh and said she was always helpful to him.
“We were scared. We just hoped it wouldn’t turn out the way we feared,” Ms Oradee added.
“Now our eyes are swollen from crying.”
Mr Carman was arrested at Suvarnabhumi Airport overnight on Friday.
Shortly after, police found a large suitcase near railway tracks, which contained a naked body identified as that of Ms Tunchanok.
Police retraced her last moments to a Pattaya hotel room she entered with Mr Carman in the early hours of Friday morning.
He has been charged with four offences: murder, concealment of a body, moving or destroying a body, and taking a minor aged between 15 and 18 for 𝘴єxual purposes.
Police told the ABC Mr Carman denied all charges, and that he said she “disappeared from the room while I was asleep”.
Mr Carman reportedly also told authorities he acted in self-defence, alleging Ms Tunchanok threatened him with a knife.
According to Thai media, he said he had not known Ms Tunchanok before they met in Pattaya and went to his condo, and that they initially agreed on a payment of 1,000 baht ($43), but they argued after he offered 500 baht instead.
Police told the ABC the pair had argued about money but declined to discuss further details.
“She had no chance to speak,” said Police Colonel Anek Srathongyoo, Superintendent of the Pattaya City Police Station.
“The guy can say anything; we cannot prove it.”
In a video recorded while he was in custody, Mr Carman told Ms Tunchanok’s family he felt bad for “what happened to your daughter”.
“It was out of my control,” he said. “Um, I hope you — I know you’ll be very sad, upset; same-same me.
“Um, it shouldn’t happen and I hope you’re OK. I know you’re not, but I hope. Um, and please tell other girls to be not — just to be careful, and not — I don’t wanna talk [unintelligible].”
The ABC understands Mr Carman is now in detention in Pattaya Prison.
“We believe he killed her, and he is being questioned on suspicion of murder,” said Colonel Anek.
“He has fingernail scratches across his body that are consistent with a struggle, but he denies killing her.”
In a video taken after his arrest, Mr Carmen was asked about scratches on his neck.
“I think it’s a spider; they always get in here,” he said.
Where is Pattaya City in Thailand?
Police release timeline
The Pattaya City Police Station outlined how its investigation unfolded in an AI infographic posted on social media.
June 25, 3:34am: CCTV footage from a condo lobby shows Mr Carman and Ms Tunchanok walking hand-in-hand and entering an elevator.
June 25, 9:25pm to 9:48pm: CCTV captures Mr Carman dragging a large suitcase out of his room and leaving the condo on a motorcycle with the suitcase strapped to the back. He then sped alongside the railway tracks, disappearing from view for nine minutes.
June 25, 9:57pm to 10:06pm: CCTV footage shows Mr Carman returning to the accommodation.
June 26, 11:36am: A friend lodged a missing person report for Ms Tunchanok, telling police they had last seen her with a foreign man.
June 26, 2:26pm: Mr Carman is seen leaving his condo.
June 26, no time provided: Police gather evidence to request an arrest warrant from the Pattaya Court. Officers find Mr Carman’s passport during the inspection of a hotel room.
June 27, 1:15am: Investigative teams from the Pattaya City Police Station and the Immigration Bureau arrest Mr Carman at Suvarnabhumi Airport.
June 27, 1:30am: Police discover a suitcase near railway tracks about a 10-minute drive from Mr Carman’s hotel, which contains Ms Tunchanok’s body.
The exact timings are unclear, as this timeline contains some discrepancies from previous reports.
A court date will not be announced until police have completed their investigation, which they have 84 days to do.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement to the ABC that it was providing consular assistance to an Australian detained in Thailand.
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
