Suspect reenacts murder, mutilation of girlfriend

JAKARTA (JP): Looking pale but calm, First Sgt. Uki Wardana, 24, demonstrated to Military Police investigators and onlookers how he murdered, dismembered and dumped the body of his 29-year- old girlfriend.

During the four hour reenactment last Thursday, the suspect explained how Rahayu Chaeranti, alias Butet, visited him at his boarding house on Jl. Yusufyah in Lubang Buaya, East Jakarta, at around 1 p.m. on June 26.

The couple then had sex in Uki's tiny bedroom in the house, he recalled.

Afterward, Butet voiced fears that she was pregnant because her period was late and suggested that they get married.

"I was furious... marrying her would only be an obstacle in my career," Uki said, staring at a female tailor's dummy which was provided by investigators to represent the victim.

The two were then involved in a heated quarrel until Uki "silenced" the woman who had been his girlfriend for two years.

The suspect demonstrated on the dummy how he strangled Butet and slammed her head against the wooden edge of the bedroom door several times.

"She died instantly. I was scared and confused," Uki said.

He then walked to the house of one of his neighbors, Sanusi, to borrow a machete.

While performing the reenactment, a crowd of onlookers numbering in the hundreds and made up mostly local residents shouted angrily at him.

"Murderer...murderer!" they said while trying to push past 200 police and military personnel to get nearer to the suspect.

After borrowing a machete from Sanusi, he returned to the boarding house and moved his girlfriend's body from his bedroom to a small private kitchen.

The time by now was about 3 p.m.

Using Sanusi's machete, Uki first decapitated his victim then removed her limbs.

"I did not feel any emotion when doing that. I was in a hurry," Uki told the officers.

"I just hoped that nobody would recognize her. That is why I dismembered her body. It would be impossible to identify her without her head or hands from which to take fingerprints."

Best option

Uki denied that he had imitated a similar case in which the dismembered body of a woman was found in Tangerang a few days before he murdered his girlfriend.

"No. No. I did it because it was the best possible option," he replied.

The suspect then put the victim's severed head into a pail of water and placed the dismembered body in five black plastic bags before taking a rest.

At 10:30 p.m that night, he loaded the severed head and limbs onto his scooter -- license plate number B 5419 DK -- and drove to Halim Perdanakusuma air base, where he worked, and dumped the bags containing the body parts in bushes about 200 meters from the runway.

"It was the easiest place I could think of.

I thought hard about where to dispose of the body and decided that near the runway at Halim was the best place because it was far from where people carried out their daily activities," Uki said.

He then headed back to his boarding house.

At 2 a.m. he took a taxi to Pondok Ranggon in Cipayung, East Jakarta, to dump Butet's torso.

"I just asked the taxi driver to take me to Pondok Ranggon. I did not talk much and I paid the fare as usual," he recalled.

Fishpond

At a nearby fishpond Uki showed investigators how he disposed of what remained of Butet's body.

The torso was discovered floating about four hours later by two women who were on their way to the toilet.

The victim's head and limbs were then discovered at Halim on the morning of June 29 by two Air Force patrol officers.

After Butet's body had been identified by her family, police tracked Uki down at his boarding house and arrested him that evening.

Police then handed Uki over to the Jakarta Military Police.

Jakarta Military Police Commander Col. Hendardji told The Jakarta Post over the weekend that the reconstruction matched earlier testimony which Uki had given to the police and military police interrogators.

"It is obvious that he acted on his own. Nobody else helped him to commit the crime," he said.

The dossier on this case will be ready in less than a month.

"We want to work as quickly as possible to bring this case before a military tribunal," he added.

Uki will be charged with premeditated murder under Article 340 of the Criminal Code. The charges carry a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and maximum penalty of death. (edt)