An Australian man charged with the murder of a teenage girl in Thailand says he feels “bad for what happened” but claimed the situation was “out of my control” in a video recorded following his arrest.
According to local reports, Simon Peter Carman, 46, was arrested at Suvarnabhumi Airport on Friday while attempting to leave the Asian nation.
Carman has now been charged with murder and burying, concealing, moving or destroying a body to conceal the dєatᩚh or cause of dєatᩚh, and offences relating to taking a minor for indecent purposes.
Thai media reports Pattaya City Police Superintendent, Colonel Anek Sarathongyu, said Carman had initially been charged with taking a minor for the purpose of committing an indecent act.
The body of a teenage girl was found stuffed in a suitcase alongside a railway track in Pattaya after Carman’s arrest.
A friend reported the teen missing after walking off with a man, with police tracking her using CCTV footage and seeing her enter the Australian’s building.
“We believe he killed her, and he is being questioned on suspicion of murder,” the Colonel said before more charges were laid.
“He has fingernail scratches across his body that are consistent with a struggle, but he denies killing her.”
The Bangkok Post reports police found signs of a struggle at Carman’s condominium, as well as his passport, and authorities then arrested him at the airport attempting to buy a ticket to Australia.
The Post reported Carman told police he had not known the 17-year-old before they met and he agreed to pay 1000 baht ($53) “for her time”.
There was an argument over the price at Carman’s room, The Post reported, “after which the suspect alleged that the girl picked up a knife to threaten him and demand more money”, the major Thai outlet reports.
“He claimed he then acted in self‑defence, grabbing her neck and causing her dєatᩚh. He insisted he had no intention to kill.”
Carman claimed the situation was “out of my control” in a video taken after his arrest.
“I feel bad for what happened to your daughter; it was out of my control,” he said in the video.
“I know you will be very sad, upset, same me. It shouldn’t happen and I hope you okay, I know you’re not, but I hope.
Carman also tried to explain scratches on his body during the footage, wearing a West Coast Eagles AFL jersey as he sat in the Thai police station.
“I think it’s a spider; they always get in here,” he said.
“Please tell other girls … just to be careful.”
He was arrested before the body of the 17-year-old girl was discovered abandoned in a suitcase alongside a railway track in Pattaya.
Footage from news outlet ASEAN Now shows police retrieving the suitcase from an area of tall grass, and bringing the bag to the roadside.
Forensic police are seen taking swabs of the suitcase handle.
The footage is then blurred, but police can be seen opening the suitcase; its contents are not clear in the footage.
The teen was last seen entering a residential building in the gulf coast city about 3.30am on Thursday, local time.
CCTV published by Thai media outlet Buzzin Pattaya shows the teenager holding hands with a man believed to be the arrested Australian.
It is alleged that the man had picked up the girl from Pattaya’s Beach Road in the early hours, with friends reporting her missing on Friday.
It is then reported that Carman was arrested while attempting to board a plane in the Bangkok airport late on Friday night.
At about 11pm local time on Friday, the teenager’s naked body was found stuffed into a suitcase alongside a railway line – about 10 minutes from the hotel where she was last seen.
Police in Thailand have told Viral Press that the suspect has initially been charged with “taking a minor for the purpose of committing an indecent act”.
A Facebook post shared by Pattaya Police identified the girl as Tunchanok Donhomla, who was reported missing by a friend.
The lengthy post reads: “Pattaya City Police wishes to express its deepest condolences to the family of the (alleged) victim.”
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan on Sunday called the allegation “abhorrent” and said her thoughts are with the teenager’s family and loved ones.
“What is alleged here is just terrible, terrible actions, and my thoughts are with the family and loved ones of the victim,” Allan said.
“This is a matter being handled, as I’m advised, by Thai police … I don’t want to say anything that cuts across that investigation, other than to reiterate that this is an allegation of an abhorrent crime, and my thoughts are with the young girl’s family and friends.”
Allan said she did not have any information on whether Carman is from Victoria.
A spokesperson for Australian authorities confirmed government departments were aware of the case.
“The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to an Australian detained in Thailand,” the statement read.
“Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment.”
💔 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.
