A GERMAN backpacker was brutally raped, murdered and dumped behind rocks on an idyllic island in Thailand.

Miriam Beelte, 26, was found with severe head wounds yesterday after she was repeatedly smashed in the face with a rock on Koh Si Chang.

Miriam, from Hildesheim, Germany, was lying in a pool of her own blood for at least five hours before she was found by a local at 6pm, police said.

Her body was partially covered with leaves and her clothes had been torn, police said.

The lone traveller had been holidaying in the nearby city of Pattatya when she decided to take a boat into the island.

SCORNED 'KILLER'
After she rented a motorbike, suspect Ronnakorn Romruen, 24, initiated conversation, before he asked her for sex.

After she refused, he followed her and then pinned her down to sexually assault her.

Romruen was arrested shortly after Miriam's body was found.

Speaking to police he admitted raping Miriam while he was high on drugs - four hours after he was interrogated.

He even said he murdered her to stop her from reporting the incident.

This morning, footage shows him surrounded by police as he is escorted from a police boat in handcuffs.

ALONE FOR HOURS
Police had taken him to his house to force Romruen to point out what clothes he was wearing during the attack.

Police Colonel Angkul Sarakul said that the killer was detained at the Koh Si Chang Police Station waiting for the legal proceedings.

This morning he was then taken on a boat to the mainland in Chonburi province where he will be remanded in custody and charged.

Miriam's death has chilling echoes of the murders of Brits Hannah Witheridge and David Miller on Koh Tao, southern Thailand, in 2014, where they were bludgeoned to death on a beach.

Officer Sarakul added: "The suspect was brought to the station in the early hours of the morning.

"Based on his confessions, he will be charged with premeditated murder, rape and concealing a body.

"The body of the victim will be sent to the forensic hospital for a full examination to find the exact cause of death.

"We immediately contacted the German embassy for them to communicate with the relatives of the victim."

It is the latest in a series of similar crimes which took place on the nearby northern island of Koh Tao.

Following a series of unexplained backpacker deaths it has since become known as "death island".

Last summer, a Brit backpacker was allegedly sexually assaulted in Sairee Beach and it took officials two months to investigate her claims.