Employees suspected of killing employer

JAKARTA (JP): A team of Central Jakarta Police detectives are hunting down a gardener and a driver who allegedly killed their employer, Megawati Purnomo, on Monday.

A source at the Menteng Police substation said on Wednesday that vengeance was the most obvious motive behind the murder since the two suspects Saputra, 25, (driver) and Susanto, 15 (gardener) took nothing from their employer.

"Based on the questioning of Megawati's housemaids Nita and Ifah, we are 90 percent convinced that the suspects killed their employer out of revenge," the source, who requested anonymity, said.

The source quoted Nita, 22, and Ifah, 16, who were questioned as witnesses, as saying that Megawati had treated her employees inhumanely, including the suspects.

According to the housemaids, their employer was very talkative and frequently humiliated Saputra, who had been working for her for more than three years. Susanto was hired just three months ago.

The police assume the suspects fled to their hometowns in Central Java.

"She (Megawati) did not even provide a bedroom for the driver and the gardener so that they had to sleep in the garage," the source quoted the housemaids.

The witnesses also claimed that their employer seldom fed her employees and sometimes forgot to pay their monthly wages.

Megawati's son, Benjamin Sulendro, was also questioned at Menteng Police substation, but he refused to speak with a group of waiting journalists.

Earlier on Wednesday, Central Jakarta Police chief Sr. Comr. Mathius Salempang said Megawati's blue Nissan Terano van bearing registration number B 2232 B was found late on Tuesday near a swamp in Penjaringan subdistrict, North Jakarta.

Megawati, 67, wife of export-import businessman Sulendro, was found dead with numerous stab wounds and bruises in front of the Kapuk residential complex in Cengkareng, West Jakarta, on Tuesday. She left her house on Jl. Irian in Menteng at 9:30 p.m. on Monday, just after she visited her husband at Gatot Subroto Hospital, in Central Jakarta.

The body of Megawati was being kept at Atma Jaya mortuary in Pluit, North Jakarta, as of Wednesday afternoon.(01)