An subcontracted railway employee has confessed to raping and killing a 13-year-old girl on an overnight train from the southern province of Surat Thani to Bangkok early Sunday morning.
The body of the 13-year-old girl was found near the southern track in Prachuap Khiri Khan early Tuesday. (Bangkok Post photo)
Wanchai Saengkhao, a 22-year-old bed-sheet replacement employee of a company contracted by the State Railway of Thailand, reportedly confessed Monday night to raping and killing the girl, identified only as Kaem, before throwing her body out of a window of a sleeper car of Train No. 174.
The girl's relatives went to Hua Hin district in Prachuap Khiri Khan province where a train bed sheet and a blood-stained T-shirt had been found near the track.
About 4am on Tuesday, the naked body of the girl was found in thick grass two metres from the southern track about 2 kilometres from where the railway crosses the entrance of Pran Buri Forest Park in Wang Pong sub-district, Pran Buri district.
Relatives and rescue workers had begun lookng for the body in the dark about 2am on Tuesday.
Mr Wanchai said he had taken methamphetamine after the train left Nakhon Si Thammarat province and drank beer with friends in the fourth sleeper car. The victim had been in the third car of the train.
He said he opened a window of the non-air-conditioned car where the girl was sleeping so that the wind blocked other noise before attacking her. After raping the girl, he killed her and threw her body off the train as it was approaching the Wang Pong station.
He then threw the blood-stained bed sheet and the victim's clothes out of the window as the train was passing the next station, Nong Kae.
Pol Maj Gen Thanate Sunthornsuk, commander of Prachuap Khiri Khan police, and forensic officers went to again inspect the spot where the body was found on Tuesday morning, before it was removed.
Mr Wanchai was taken by a helicopter to re-enact his crime in Prachuap Khiri Khan on Tuesday morning.