A British cannabis businessman has been found stabbed to death inside a luxury villa in Thailand, with his young girlfriend arrested after allegedly claiming the killing was a suicide.
Thomas David Powell, 34, from Stoke-on-Trent, was found dead inside the bathroom of a luxury rental home in Nong Prue, near Pattaya, on Thursday morning after a concerned friend went to check on him.
In the video the friend, Charlie, can be heard asking Mr Powell’s girlfriend Isabel Violet Carreras, 21, “what are you going to do with the body?”
“You can’t do anything with it.”
While Ms Carreras is crying.
The grisly discovery comes just a week after another unrelated high-profile killing in the Pattaya region, where an Australian man Simon Carman allegedly strangled 17-year-old girl Tunchanok Donhomla, before stuffing her body in a suitcase.
Ms Carreras showing the camera around the blood-spattered residence. Picture: Asia Pacific Press
Mr Powell was in the bathroom covered with a blanket. Picture: Asia Pacific Press
Police allege Mr Powell suffered multiple stab wounds, including two to his back, three to his torso and one to his left hand. They claim it is impossible to reconcile the injuries with claims he had taken his own life.
Ms Carreras, from Stafford in England’s West Midlands region, was found sitting beside his body when officers arrived.
Investigators allege a 50cm machete, believed to be the murder weapon, had been washed and left in a kitchen sink.
Police also found blood splattered across the villa, with a trail of blood leading into the bathroom where Mr Powell’s body had allegedly been moved. A pillow had been placed beneath his head and he was covered with a grey blanket.
The blood soaked mattress. Picture: Asia Pacific Press
Confronting video filmed by a friend who discovered the body shows bloodstained tiles throughout the property leading into the bathroom, with Ms Carreras questioned about what had happened.
The alarm was raised after a business associate in the United States became concerned and contacted Mr Powell’s friend Charlie, who lived nearby in Thailand. Unable to reach Mr Powell by phone, Charlie went to the villa, discovered the scene and contacted police.
According to investigators, Ms Carreras initially claimed Mr Powell had fatally injured himself and later suggested he had taken large amounts of Valium and had recently been heavily using cannabis.
She also allegedly told police the couple had spent the previous day looking at engagement rings before returning home and smoking cannabis together, but she claimed she could not remember what happened afterwards.
Police say evidence at the scene contradicts that account.
Officers found cuts on Ms Carreras’ fingertips, signs of a struggle throughout the property and several stab wounds to Mr Powell’s back, which investigators say are inconsistent with suicide.
“We firmly believe this was not a suicide,” Nong Prue police chief Colonel Nattaphon Phongsuksakul told local media.
