Gardaí searching for Irishman accused of murdering Thai sex worker

The PSNI has asked detectives here to help find Neil Henry Elliott (48), from Fermanagh, who is believed to be in Co Cavan and is suspected of planning to flee the country from Dublin Airport.

Thai authorities want to rearrest him for the murder of a prostitute in Pattaya last April 29.

He has links to Louth, Monaghan and Cavan.

Thai police said the murdered sex worker, named Onn, had been picked up in the red light street Soi Buakhao in Pattaya.

They said she was attacked with a snooker cue “until it snapped” and then killed “with a machete in a drug-fuelled sex session”.

The city on Thailand’s eastern seaboard is notorious for its round-the-clock sex industry.

Mr Elliott is alleged to have visited a strip of closed bars before returning to his rented bungalow with a woman.

Thai police said Ms Onn was found in the bathroom of the property with stab wounds to her neck and right wrist.

Officers said they picked up Mr Elliott on a nearby street after he left the property and crashed a motorcycle.

They subsequently arrested him on suspicion of murder. He was reportedly handcuffed and driven to a police station for questioning.

Police Colonel Chiddecha Songhong, from the Bang Lamung district, said Ms Onn was aged between 35 and 40.

Senior sources told Independent.ie last night that it is not known how or when Mr Elliott left Thailand, but he had relocated to his native Enniskillen and is now believed to be in the Republic.

In May, Col Songhong said the officers detained him after he was interviewed.

“He will be remanded at the station for interrogation while the officers will search his house thoroughly again,” he said.

“There were bloodstains on the floor and blood on many areas of the room.“

A snooker cue was broken and a knife about 60 centimetres long with bloodstains was on the floor.’’

It was reported that Mr Elliott had confessed to killing Ms Onn after a drug-fuelled sex session.

He is said to have admitted binging on the powerful drug yaba – a mix of speed and caffeine – before beating Ms Onn and slashing her with a machete.

It is understood that Mr Elliott claimed he had acted in self-defence and instructed his lawyer to claim diminished responsibility due to the level of drugs in his system at the time of the killing.

A second woman told the Sunday Life newspaper in the North that she had survived a terrifying attack by Mr Elliott in a hotel room only a few months earlier.

Thailand-based sex worker Christina Ka described him as a Jekyll and Hyde character.

“He turned from this normal, happy guy into this complete maniac who was screaming at me, hitting me and trying to strangle me,” she said.