Police promise to arrest sadistic killer soon

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)