Police crack case of dismembered woman
Police crack case of dismembered woman
Jakarta (JP): Police in Malang, East Java, say they may have
cracked the case of the murder of a young woman, whose head,
intestines and limbs were found floating in the Brantas river
last month.
Five men have been arrested and two others are wanted in
connection with the murder of the woman, identified as 21-year-
old Sumiati.
Preliminary investigations of the five men suggest that
Sumiati may have been gang-raped before she was hacked to pieces
and then dumped in different plastic bags into the river.
One bag, containing her head, was found by children while they
were playing along the river bank. Villagers in the area
subsequently found the other parts, including her thighs, arms
and intestines.
It took a while for the police to be able to identify the body
because all the parts were swollen. Having done that, they then
had to track down the murderers, and this came almost by chance.
They got their break when a man reported to the police that he
found bloodstains in the car which he had been loaned to a group
of young people. The car was believed to have been used by the
youths to rob houses.
The man helped the police identify the youths who borrowed the
car and all but two were subsequently rounded up.
The bloodstains found on the car matched Sumiati's blood type
and police also confiscated clothes belonging to the victim from
one of the suspects.
The five men first denied any involvement with the killing but
they subsequently confessed to the brutal crime, according to
Malang police as reported by the Antara news agency.
Jealousy was believed to have been at the root of the rape and
murder because Sumiati, who had been the girlfriend of one of the
suspects, had been seen going out with a man from out of town the
night she was murdered, the police said.
The five men have been identified as Muafi (20 years old),
Sumarto (26), Sumarto (17), Heri (19) and Samad (30). The two men
still at large are identified as Sjukur and Samuri. (arf)