Serial killer may be behind youths' deaths

Serial killer may be behind youths' deaths

JAKARTA (JP): Four young men, whose dead bodies have been
found in bushes around the defunct Kemayoran airport in Central
Jakarta in the past two years, are thought to have been murdered
by one person.

"Judging from the wounds on the four bodies and the place
where the corpses were found, we strongly believe that the crimes
were committed by a single party," City Police Spokesman Lt. Col.
Iman Haryatna said yesterday.

According to medical experts, one of the victims, identified
as 12-year-old Andri Renaldi had also been sodomized.

However, the officer said that a special police team set up to
investigate the case has not yet come to a conclusion whether the
teenagers were victims of a homosexual.

"It's not that easy for us to come to a conclusion about the
motive. The suspect is being hunted while three of the four
victims are still unidentified," Iman said.

Due to the decayed state of the corpses, the lack of material
evidence, or the identities of the victims, "the police are
finding it difficult to solve the case," the spokesman said.

All four victims were aged 12 or 13. Their bodies were badly
decomposed with their palms, fingers and part of their skin and
scalp peeled.

The first two were found respectively on March 28 and Sept. 13
last year and the other two this year on April 9 and last
Wednesday.

It was only the first victim that has been identified, Iman
said.

"So far nobody has come to us to claim the other victims,"
Iman said.

A reliable police source in Central Jakarta said that a man in
his 20s had earlier been suspected of killing Rinaldi,

However the suspect disappeared when detectives arrived at his
boarding house a few days after Rinaldi's body was found.

"His whereabouts is still unknown," the source said.

When asked for confirmation, Iman refused to explain, saying
that the Kemayoran police with the support of senior detectives
from the Central Jakarta police have started work collecting as
much information as they can to track the killer.

At least three other bodies with similar wounds have also been
found in the past two years in East Jakarta. (bsr)