A troubled member of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s family has confessed to the vicious murder of his girlfriend in the Thai resort of Phuket, police said today.

Paul Chetwynd-Talbot, 32, turned himself over to Thai authorities last night after slashing his wrists. He was admitted to hospital suffering from extensive blood loss.

"Paul said he had killed his girlfriend and that he’s sorry and guilty," Police Colonel Theerapol Thipcharoen, commander of Kathu police in Phuket, told the Agence France Presse news agency today.

The police said that Mr Chetwynd-Talbot would be treated for his wounds, which are thought to have become infected, before he is formally charged with the murder of Debra O’Hanlon, a 31-year-old primary school teacher whose body was found in a guest house in the Patong district of Phuket on Monday night.

The police said Ms O’Hanlon was probably killed on Monday evening. Neighbours reported hearing a noisy argument before police entered the rented room shared by the couple to find Ms O'Hanlon's body.

Ms O’Hanlon had a broken neck and jaw and bruises all over her face and body, according to Colonel Thipchareon, who added that it appeared she had struggled with her attacker.

The dead woman was a schoolteacher from Kettering, Northamptonshire. Friends said that she arrived in Thailand last Saturday to rescue Mr Chetwynd-Talbot from the clutches of a Thai bargirl. Ms O’Hanlon was celebrating her 31st birthday during the visit, but the couple were heard arguing loudly in the days before her death.

Mr Chetwynd-Talbot has the same name as the Earl of Shrewsbury's brother, an Eton and Oxford-educated insurance broker from Grateley, near Andover, Hampshire.

The Hon Paul Chetwynd-Talbot, spent yesterday besieged with telephone calls about his troublesome namesake.

"He has been the bane of my life for years," he said. "Every time he runs up a debt, people come on to me about it. He is a thoroughly bad lot who has gone round causing a lot of trouble. I have never met this character. About three times a year I get letters from debt collectors. I have had telephone calls from people on whom he has bounced cheques, which is always extremely annoying."

Chetwynd-Talbot is the family name of the Earls of Shrewsbury and Waterford. Relatives said that Paul Chetwynd-Talbot, who is public school-educated, is not a blood relative but inherited the name through a female member of the clan.

Police believe that Mr Chetwynd-Talbot tried to cheat Ms O'Hanlon out of money. Her money and credit cards were gone.

Yesterday Police Colonel Suwit Othong said: "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 them to send her 100,000 Thai baht (£1,500) but they refused her."

The couple had run a bar, Red and Dead, together in Patong Beach. The last time they were seen together was late on Sunday night, entering their room.

An expatriate friend said: "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.

"But he got himself into bad debts. Debs . . . bought him a return ticket to take him back to England. She was completely besotted with him. He told us all he was going home and that he would settle his debts as soon as he started earning money back home."

Miss O’Hanlon had taught at King’s Cliffe Endowed School, in Peterborough, and was due to begin as deputy headteacher at Wollaston School in Wellingborough. Yesterday, Rachel Dempster, the head teacher of King’s Cliffe said she would be badly missed.

"Debra was a very, very talented, powerful and gifted teacher. She had everything to live for," she said. "She had worked for me since Easter at King’s Cliffe, and was a very committed, dedicated teacher, who will be very sadly missed."

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