Woman found dead at exclusive estate

JAKARTA (JP): A young woman was found dead on Thursday night in the flush Simprug Golf estate in South Jakarta.

As of Friday evening, the cause of her death remained a mystery. Her relatives could not be found to get their consent for a postmortem examination.

However, a small hole was seen in her throat and a 9- centimeter-long thin white object was pushed upward beneath the skin of her neck. The body was kept at the morgue of Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital.

"The object looks like a fish bone," said a member of the state hospital's forensics team.

He described the case as the only one of its kind he had seen in his career at the morgue. He said her death could have been caused merely by the strange object stuck under the skin of her throat.

A clue to the woman's identity was given on Friday morning when a man, looking for his employer who had been missing since Thursday evening, visited the morgue.

The man, who refused to identify himself, showed a photograph of his female employer and told morgue staff that his boss, Marina, 30, had been missing since he dropped her off in front of a supermarket in Tebet, South Jakarta, at around 5 p.m. on Thursday.

Accompanied by hospital staff, he was then allowed to view the body of the woman found in Simprug, about 10 kilometers away from Tebet.

The mysterious man said the dead woman looked like Marina.

He then hurriedly left the morgue, telling staff he would fetch relatives of the deceased.

He refused to disclose the woman's address or occupation.

Iwan, a security guard at the Simprug Golf complex, said he was told about the dead body by a man riding a bicycle around the area.

He said he found the body on a street nearby. According to Iwan's description, the woman was about 1.6 meters tall, with light skin and short hair, and wore a black blazer, white blouse and black midi skirt.

Police said they have no leads on the case.

But judging from her clothes, the victim might have been an office employee, South Jakarta Police chief Lt. Col. Satriya Hari Prasetya said.

"There's a possibility that she was the victim of a murder," he said. (04)