Family finally admits Bogor remains are son's
Family finally admits Bogor remains are son's
TANGERANG (JP): Parents of 12-year-old Bambang Arie Prasetyo,
who has been missing since he was kidnapped in November last
year, have admitted that the dismembered body found recently in
Bogor belongs to their son.
Accompanied by close relatives, Adji Sugianto and his wife,
Nur Hayati, took the remains from the morgue of the Red Cross
(PMI) hospital in Bogor on Wednesday evening after previously
insisting that the body was not Arie's.
At around midnight the mourning family sent their son's
remains for burial at the hometown of Arie's parents in Wonogiri,
Central Java.
Following the family's acknowledgement, police detectives
hastily started investigations into the kidnapping and killing of
the sixth-grade student from SDN 6 elementary school in
Tangerang.
The head of the Violent Crimes unit of Tangerang Police,
Second Lt. Sarwanto, told reporters on Thursday that his men had
already identified a suspect.
"He's a close relative of the victim's family. We're still
tracing his whereabouts," Sarwanto said, refusing to give further
details.
According to the victim's relatives, the suspect is Sugianto's
nephew.
The partly decomposed body parts -- a head, torso, two arms
and two legs -- were found by residents on Sunday buried in the
yard of a house in Kampung Bojong, Gunung Putri, in Bogor, about
a one-hour drive from Tangerang.
Besides the remains, the locals also found a white elementary
school uniform bearing the name of Arie and his school, a saw and
a newspaper dated Dec. 18, 1998.
The parents of Arie reported to Tangerang Police that their
son was kidnapped from his school compound at 10 a.m. on Nov. 4,
1998.
Sugianto, a member of the administration staff at Tangerang's
National Land Agency office, reportedly had fulfilled a money
transfer of Rp 50 million (US$7,250) for the kidnapping suspect.
Following the discovery of his son's school uniform with the
mutilated body, Sugianto went to PMI Hospital in Bogor two days
later, but did not identify the body as Arie's.
A few hours before he eventually claimed the remains, he told
reporters at his house in Tangerang: "It's not Arie. My son has
body marks. Besides, Arie was only 12 years old."
The PMI hospital earlier announced that the mutilated body was
male and between the ages of 30 years and 40 years, weighing 52
kilograms and with a height of 155 centimeters.
Sugianto said on Thursday that his family began to believe the
remains were Arie's when they heard a complete report from the
postmortem examination, conducted by a forensics team from the
Medical School of the University of Indonesia at Cipto
Mangunkusumo General Hospital, Central Jakarta, on Wednesday
afternoon.
The results, he said, revealed that the remains were from a
12-year-old boy, and there was a surgery mark beneath his navel,
which matched that of his son.
At the family home in Agraria housing complex, a number of
people were seen reciting the Koran and praying for Arie.
The victim's mother, Nur Hayati, has reportedly fainted
several times.
To reporters, she said: "I still can't believe it. My son is
still alive."
Separately, Bogor Police chief Lt. Col. Ade Husen told The
Jakarta Post on Thursday that the murderer, believed to have
rented a house near the burial site, had buried the body several
days before it was found on Sunday by the house owner.
"The suspect knows how to bury a corpse so that it does not
decompose easily," the officer said.
But Ade said police are still in the dark about the motive for
the kidnapping and killing.
"The victim's parents are not completely open about giving
information regarding the case to us. We think that Sugianto
(Arie's father) has hidden something," he said.
He speculated that Sugianto had done something to upset the
suspect, who then sought revenge by kidnapping and murdering his
son.
"For that, we're still digging for any related information,"
Ade said.
Teachers at Arie's school earlier said that the boy did not
resist when he was taken from school. (41/21/bsr)