Crime wave rocks the first four weeks of 1996
Crime wave rocks the first four weeks of 1996
JAKARTA (JP): Besides heavy flooding, fires and the rising prices of several commodities, grim murders, sexual abuse, robberies and fraud, have marked the first month of this year.
In many cases, the motives for the crimes were money and sex.
Two days before 1996 started, a 28-year-old housemaid was found dead with 16 stab wounds at her employer's house in the BPS housing complex in Pondok Bambu, East Jakarta. Rp 2 million and US$300 were missing from the house.
Five days later, the local police arrested Arbas Fendaru, 17, a high school student, for the robbery and killing. The suspect was apparently a relative of the housemaid's employer.
On the same day the maid's body was discovered, a shot was fired with a 38 caliber Colt revolver inside a Volvo sedan passing along Jl. Suprapto in Cempaka Putih, Central Jakarta.
Knowing he was being hunted, the suspect, Erfiandy Taufik, 28, gave himself up at a nearby police station seven hours later. He confessed to shooting his former senior colleague, Lukman Lijas, 58, because of a woman.
In a follow-up investigation, two West Sumatra police officers were detained for allegedly lending the gun to the suspect.
On Jan. 8, passersby in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, found the decomposed body of a girl, who was later identified as Nurhayati, 10, in some bushes.
The girl was believed to have been sexually abused by more than one person. The suspects are still at large.
A day later, a 50-year-old American was found dead with his neck strangled by his own trousers, hanging from an iron gate in an alley of the Blok M shopping center in South Jakarta.
Based on his health record and evidence, police concluded that Malthec Langheck, 50, a German-born American citizen residing in Cinere, South Jakarta, had committed suicide.
Another foreigner, a 35-year-old Singaporean, was found dead a week later with his head crushed in the parking lot of the Radisson hotel on Jl. Pacenongan, Central Jakarta, on Tuesday afternoon.
It remains unclear whether Yo Aek Leong Leonard, 35, had been killed or had committed suicide by jumping from the ninth floor of the hotel.
On Jan. 12, two young men, one of whom is still being hunted, killed and robbed a former official of the attorney general's office, in Sukabumi Utara, West Jakarta.
The dead body of Asnawi Naim, 50, was found three days later after neighbors noticed an offensive smell coming from the house. One of the suspects, a 19-year-old high school dropout, was arrested two weeks later at a discotheque downtown.
Then, a housemaid who was mistakenly picked up in an official crackdown on streetwalkers was allegedly raped by a man behind the Gambir subdistrict administration office, where the women were being detained.
The suspect claimed he was there to meet his friend, an employee of the city public order office, which carried out the crackdown.
This month also recorded the largest bank fraud ever to happen in the country. The HongkongBank branch office here reported a loss of Rp 79 billion cash due to fake money orders.
Another Rp 18 billion, which already transferred by the bank to a local bank here, is still in dispute. (bsr)