Police believe they have Hutagalung killer
Police believe they have Hutagalung killer
JAKARTA (JP): Bekasi police and relatives of Herbin Hutagalung left for Surabaya, East Java, yesterday to help establish the identity of a man suspected of killing six members of the family a year ago.
"The group flew to Surabaya at 2:30 p.m. today," National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. IK Ratta told reporters here yesterday.
Ratta would not disclose the precise number of police officers, nor which of Hutagalung's relatives had flown to East Java.
"They have been asked to help identify the person who was arrested by Surabaya police detectives on Tuesday evening at a housing complex, after refusing to identify himself properly to employers," he said.
The man, whose identity remains a mystery due to a lack of documents, is believed to be Suyono, alias Gendut (the Fat Man).
Suyono is suspected of murdering Hutagalung's wife, sister-in- law and four of his children, aged between three and 18 years old, on Jan. 5 last year.
The six victims were brutally clubbed to death with blunt objects at the family's house in Kampung Sawah, Jatiwarna village, Pondok Gede, Bekasi, 30 kilometers east of Jakarta.
Ratta quoted the report from the Surabaya police as saying that the detained man has a number of identifying marks that made them suspicious that he was Suyono.
"The man, for example, has a scar at his hairy chest and another one on his face," the spokesman said.
The only difference observed by his captors is that this man is thinner than Gendut, Ratta explained.
"The man believed to be Suyono, alias Gendut, said that he had just recovered from typhoid fever," Ratta added.
"The police have yet to determine that this man is the suspect," he said.
The man currently detained at the Surabaya police precinct was arrested based on reports from his employer, as well as local community members, who said they recognized him as Suyono from the wanted posters that police have distributed nationwide.
The suspect was arrested while on the job as a construction worker at the Karya Bluru Permai Kidul housing complex in Sidoarjo.
During preliminary questioning, the man denied any crime, saying that he knew nothing about the murder. He told police he is a local worker with a wife in Sidoarjo.
Suyono's hometown is Tulungagung, which is near both Surabaya and Sidoarjo.
When the police tried to confirm the man's alibi with his wife, she acknowledged their marital status, but claimed that he had not been home for three years.
Police learned from the suspect's employers that the man always tried to postpone showing them his ID card.
Several weeks after the brutal killing of the family, National Police Chief Gen. Banurusman ordered all his personnel throughout the country to help bring in the suspect, dead or alive.
On Sunday, Jakarta Police Chief Maj. Gen. Mochammad Hindarto told reporters that the police had arrested one of six suspected murderers of the family in February last year.
Hindarto identified the suspect as Marsi, 26, also a construction worker from Tulungagung.
Up to the recent disclosure of Marsi's arrest, the police had named only one suspect in the murder: Suyono, alias Gendut.
Police detectives have questioned a huge number of witnesses and combed a number of towns and villages in Java, Bali and Sumatra believed to be possible hiding places for Suyono.
Up to the time of the arrest in Surabaya, many police detectives believed that Suyono was living and working somewhere in Malaysia.(bsr)