Police promise to arrest sadistic killer soon
JAKARTA (JP): The culprits in Monday's sadistic killing of a mother and her three children in Ciracas, East Jakarta, have been identified and police say they could be arrested soon.
The badly mutilated bodies of a woman and her three children were found on Monday in a house in Ciracas, East Jakarta, in what police say is one of the most sadistic crimes ever committed here.
Jakarta police chief Maj. Gen. Dibyo Widodo said yesterday that police hoped the perpetrators of the multiple murders would be apprehended soon.
"Several people have been questioned, including the victim's husband," Dibyo said.
Dibyo added that police were assuming that the murderers were known to the victim.
"It is probable that the murderers were known by the victims, since they came to the victim's house as guests," Dibyo said.
Meanwhile, Rohadi, the woman's husband, yesterday visited the Cipto Mangunkusumo general hospital where the bodies of his wife and children had been taken for autopsies. He arrived at the hospital morgue at 10:45 a.m. under police guard, his face covered with a cloth.
At the hospital Rohadi met with Uga Wiranto, vice-chairwoman of the Jakarta branch of the ruling political grouping Golkar, as well as with the wife of Jakarta Military Commander Maj. Gen. Wiranto, who came to the morgue to donate money and give moral support.
Uga said the Jakarta branch of Golkar would pay all the transportation costs needed for the burial of the bodies in Cirebon, West Java. She said the Golkar branch was also prepared to pay for the education of Rohadi's two remaining children.
Rohadi left the hospital at 11:45 a.m. without seeing the remains of his wife and three children, which were taken to Cirebon for burial in the afternoon.
Four schools
Rohadi teaches at four different schools: the SMPN 82 junior high school, the Trimulya senior high school, the Pangeran Jayakarta senior high school and the SMIP Putera Nusantara senior-high for tourism. He teaches economics, Arabic and Pancasila ideology.
Kusmadi, one of Rohadi's colleagues at the SMPN 82 junior high school, said Rohadi had already left the school when police arrived to look for him at about 1:30 p.m. on the day of the murders.
"Rohadi said he had to teach in Cibinong," Kusmadi said.
One of Rohadi's students, however, said that Rohadi's teaching schedule in Cibinong was not for Monday but Tuesday.
Saiful, Rohadi's colleague at the Pangeran Jayakarta senior high school, said that police picked Rohadi from that school at about 5 p.m.
Meanwhile, police detectives are working hard to find additional evidence and witnesses to support their case against "the identified suspect."
They are also trying to find out the identity of a person who made a mysterious telephone call to Rohadi's school several hours after the tragedy, saying that the teacher had incurred serious wounds during a fight with a number of people on his way to teach at another school.
After searching for several hours, police finally found Rohadi teaching at a junior high school on Jl. Jayakarta in West Jakarta at approximately 5 p.m., about five hours after his wife and three children were found dead.
Phone call
The small and thin university graduate told the police later that he had no idea about the fake phone call, nor the caller.
"We really hope that Rohadi can help us to solve this brutal murder of his family members," a senior police detective told The Jakarta Post yesterday.
So far, investigation of the crime scene has not yielded any valuable clues which could lead police detectives to discover the crime motive.
"We have not even found the instruments used by the suspects," said the detective, who asked not to be named.
The senior officer said he believed that the cold-blooded murder had nothing to do with robbery or the business activities of the family.
A number of fingerprints have been collected from the scene of the crime. They are still being examined by the National Police Forensic Laboratory.
Rohadi's brother-in-Law, Didi Pendi, said that, as of yesterday, Rohadi and his two children were staying at the Ciracas police precinct.
Karyati, one of Rohadi's neighbors, said Rohadi usually left home early in the morning and returned in the evening.
"He leaves at about 5:30 a.m in the morning and comes home after 7 p.m.," she said.
She said Rohadi's wife, Elly, was a housewife who was busy looking after her five children every day.
"She did not participate in either pengajian meetings (Islamic study gatherings) or in arisan (savings group) gatherings held by wives in the neighborhood. She said she was too busy taking care of her children," Karyati said.(01/bsr)