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