It is 24 minutes by road between the sordid Pattaya vice strip packed with go-go bars where Simon Carman met a 17-year-old girl, to his squalid flat where she died.

Little did Thanchanok Donhomla know when met the 45-year-old truckie early last Thursday morning along the bustling street and walked off with him, that she would have just a few short hours of her already short life left to live.

The distance from his grimy condo to the lonely spot beside a rail line where she was found is shorter, but by then ‘Cake’, as she was known, was oblivious; tragically dead and stuffed into a suitcase.

The trip of 3.4km, with Cake inside the black bag strapped across the back of Carman’s rented Yamaha motorbike, took just nine minutes.

The Aussie expat is accused of heaving the case and flinging it in tall grass behind the Pattaya Night Markets, where some of the food and clothing vendors were just shutting up shop.

It would have taken some strength to toss it across the train tracks and down a slope, despite the diminutive girl’s small frame and the 29-inch long bag having slid some of the way.

There, Cake lay untouched as overnight temperatures dipped no lower than 25 degrees.

Carman took a little under 24 hours to clean up and get out of town, but was reportedly unhurried as he washed his clothes and talked to neighbours at his unit complex in the morning.

‘Little Cake’ was out on Pattaya’s sin strip last Thursday evening and met up with Perth truckie Simon Carman around 2.30am before going back to his squalid condo where the 17-year-old died soon afterward

From the sordid vice strip packed with go-go bars, nightclubs and girls (above) where Simon Carman met the 17-year-old back to the grimy flat where she died is 24 minutes by road

From sex strip to death in a suitcase: 17-year-old ‘Little Cake’ had been in Pattaya 12 days when she was picked up by Perth truckie Simon Carman, taken to his dirty flat where she died, driven on the back of his motorbike in a suitcase to a railway line and dumped

At that point, the teenager’s friends – including the LGBTI mate she’d travelled down from northern Thailand with – had already reported her missing. 

Cake had been in Pattaya just twelve days on her first visit and had a fake ID saying she was 22, five years older than she was.

Carman had been living in Pattaya for a stretch of about eight months, but was a repeat visitor.

They met near Pattaya’s red light Soi 6 after midnight, with the area as usual packed with girls grabbing at passers-by to try and entice them inside.

Carman’s social media accounts show his interest in Asian women.

He likely approached and hatched an agreement with Cake, because sometime after 2.30am, the West Australian and the girl from northeast Thailand are caught hand-in-hand on CCTV walking along a quieter stretch of Pattaya’s Beach Road.

They turned up on CCTV again, at 3.34am, 8km away and walking through the tiled foyer of Rimhad condominium in Jomtien, a more sedate residential area south of central Pattaya.

Street workers line Pattaya’s infamous vice strip awash with neon lights, bars, girls and men looking for sex in southern Thailand’s notorious sleaze capital

Carman rented a squalid flat at Rimhad Jomtien condominium (above a $300-a-month example in Rimhad) where after arguing with Ms Donhomla he is accused of choking her and holding the body overnight in his dirty bathroom

Simon Carman, 45, told Thai police he argued with Ms Donhomla over money before she pulled a knife and he killed her

If Cake was expecting anything glamorous, she would have been disappointed. 

The rooms at the Rimhad rent from as little as $AUD300 a month and, while already rudimentary, Carmen’s was a trash heap, with the girl texting her friend to say: ‘It’s so messy’.

Room 380 where Carman rented can be entered via a dingy hallway where the electrical wires are strung up alarmingly like power lines in Australian streets, and the transoms above the doors are lined with newspapers.

Inside it is hardly different with tiny rooms big enough to hold only a flimsy double bed, a TV, a nightstand and a small, plastic couch.

Extension cords are suspended between a fridge and a microwave opening off onto a tiny bathroom with cracked and moldy tiles.

At some point, the two got into an argument over money, reportedly a difference in price from what Carman wanted to pay, 500 baht ($21) and what Ms Donhomla charged, 1000 baht or $43.

Pattaya Police Colonel Anek Srathongyoo later said Carman told them the girl ‘used a knife to threaten him’ and that ‘he squeezed her neck, causing her to lose consciousness’

‘He confessed that he killed her after they had an argument,’ police said.

Then, Carman kept Cake’s body in his bathroom all day, during which temperatures outside peaked at 34 degrees, and into the evening.

A bathroom in one of the cheaper flats in the Jomtien condominium where Simon Carman kept the girl’s body during the day before stuffing it into a suitcase and dumping it

Carman strapped the suitcase carrying Ms Donhomla onto the back of the bike. CCTV catches him, motorbike helmet compliant, riding through Pattaya’s streets on the way to the city’s night markets

Rescue officers carried the suitcase up the embankment in a sling and laid it out on the ground above. A policeman gingerly tugged at a zip and got it open, the horrific sight of Little Cake’s remains emerging from inside.

Around 9.30pm on June 25, Carman is caught on CCTV once again, alone but for the black suitcase he wheels down to the car park where his rented red-black Yamaha Aerox motorcycle is parked. 

Street CCTV shows him, motorbike helmet compliant, riding with the case strapped on the back.

No security footage has yet emerged of Carman removing or tossing the suitcase, but he slept one more night in his rented apartment before emerging and speaking with his condo neighbours.

‘After the incident happened, he just lived his normal life,’ Col. Srathongyoo said. ‘Going out from the condo room, getting his clothes washed, chatting with surrounding people, (who had) no clue that he had done something bad.’ 

The naive newcomer to Pattaya’s vice strip had been in town 14 days when she met Aussie truckie Simon Carman

The police eventually raided the premises – after Cake’s friend tipped them off about the last person with her – and found it empty.

Pattaya detectives issued a warrant and an immigration alert was sent out, airport police only just managed to get to Carman, at about 9.30pm last Friday, as he boarded Jetstar Flight JQ76 to Perth. 

Police got to the railway tracks behind the night market a few minutes after midnight. It is believed Carman told them where to look.

The suitcase lay in the grass. Rescue officers carried it up the embankment in a sling and laid it out on the ground above.

A policeman gingerly tugged at a zip and got it open, the horrific sight of Cake’s remains emerging from inside.

Just 48 hours earlier, Thanchanok Donhomla had been a vibrant, if naive, teenager venturing onto one of the world’s most bustling and dangerous streets of sin, likely to support her dirt poor family.

They have now lost their cherished daughter.