Police in Thailand have issued an arrest warrant for a former British public schoolboy after the brutal murder of his girlfriend, a primary school teacher, on the island of Phuket.

Debra O’Hanlon, 31, a schoolteacher from Kettering, Northampton, was found late on Monday night in Patong Beach. Her neck and jaw were broken and she had also been stabbed several times.

Police Colonel Suwit Othong said: "There was blood all over the room and hand prints made in blood on the walls, a towel, and a wash basin.

"We have put an alert out for her boyfriend, British national Paul Chetwynd-Talbot, aged 31. We believe he tried to cheat her out of money and she refused. Her money and credit cards have gone."

Ms O’Hanlon arrived in Thailand last Saturday, her birthday, for a supposed re-union with Mr Chetwynd-Talbot. The couple had run a bar together called Red and Dead in Patong Beach until the resort was hit by last’s year's tsunami.

Colonel Suwit Othong added: "We do not think he intended to return to England. He had left his ticket behind. He just took a ticket to Bangkok. We believe he just needed this woman for the money to continue his life here. But she probably refused. We understand she had called home to her parents to ask her to seen 100,000 Thai baht (£1,500 ) but they refused her."

Ms O'Hanlon had apparently gone to Thailand to rescue her boyfriend from the clutches of a Thai bar girl. One friend, who asked not to be named, said in Phuket today: "Their business went bust after the tsunami and both returned to England last January. But Paul was back by himself within a month. He took a Thai girlfriend and got a job as a short order chef in a local diner called Fat Bo.

"But he got himself into bad debts. Debs had been out here this year and she gave himself some time to sort himself out. This time she bought him a return ticket to take him back to England.

"She was completely besotted with him. She arrived on her 31st birthday. They were all over each other. We all had the feeling that he did not really want to go back to England. Also her parents did not like him.

"But he told us all he was going home and that he would settle his debts as soon as he started earning money back home.

"We are all shocked by what has happened. Even though he was a public schoolboy both he and Debs were very volatile. But this is really terrible."

Another British expatriate, Sefton Hanley, said: "We are all stunned. I was at Debs' birthday party at the weekend at the Fat Boy diner where Paul works. It was a double celebration because she said she had just been made deputy head at her school. She would have done anything for Paul. I her buying his ticket home at the travel agency. I can’t think what could have gone wrong."

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