The daughter and son-in-law of a woman in her 50s whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase in a Daegu stream have been identified as the killers, police said.
The Daegu Bukbu Police Station on Saturday emergency-arrested the daughter and son-in-law of the victim, identified only as Ms. A, on charges of parricide and corpse abandonment.
The couple in their 20s are suspected of dumping the suitcase containing Ms. A's body into Sincheon, a stream running through downtown Daegu, near a submerged bridge in Chilseong-dong, Buk-gu.
Police were dispatched to the scene at around 10:30 a.m. Saturday after receiving a report that a suitcase was floating in the stream. Officers confirmed a female body was inside. At the time of discovery, the suitcase was half-submerged, caught on the streambed, and the body had already shown signs of decomposition, according to police.
Investigators collected fingerprints and DNA from the body and confirmed the deceased as Ms. A, a Daegu resident. Police found that a missing person report had been filed for Ms. A once last year, but she returned home safely and the case was closed.
After identifying the victim, police immediately traced her movements before death. They secured closed-circuit television footage from the area where the suitcase was found and investigated family connections, ultimately identifying the daughter and her husband as prime suspects and taking them into custody.
Police plan to conduct an autopsy soon to determine the exact cause of death. An initial examination found no signs of homicide by weapon. However, given the unusual method of body disposal, investigators are not ruling out the possibility of poisoning and are narrowing the scope of their investigation.
Police said they plan to seek arrest warrants after questioning the couple about the exact motive for the crime.
