Man Admits To Chopping Up Drug Mule’s Body And Walking Down Gżira Main Road With Suitcase Before Dumping It At Sea
TW + CW: The following post contains gory details of a crime.
In a series of shocking developments from court, more information on the grisly discovery of a dismembered man inside a floating luggage in Sliema has been revealed.
Andres Leonardo Gamboa Duran, the 43-year-old Colombian man who was arrested in connection with the crime, told police interrogators that he knew the drug mule victim, who was finally publicly named as Raoul Eduardo Rei, born 1974.
Duran told police that he found Raoul dead inside his Msida apartment, going on to say he “panicked”, shredded his passport and documents, bought an axe and a €75 suitcase in San Ġwann, and then cut up his body.
After he dismembered Raoul’s body and put it in the suitcase, Duran said he walked with it down Rue d’Argens, unsure of what to do with it, before throwing it out into the sea. During a court hearing earlier today, the inspector said Duran was “surprised and disappointed” when the suitcase containing the dismembered body failed to sink.
While a Scottish man was reportedly the first to spot the suitcase out at sea, it has now emerged that two French children on a paddleboat actually spotted it before, towing it to shore and lifting it up to land on the waterfront with the help of two adults who happened to be walking by.
Police have not filed murder charges against Duran, but the list of charges against him range from the disposal of evidence of a crime to drug trafficking. Cocaine and other drug trafficking paraphernalia – along with a receipt for bleach, garbages bags, cleaning cloths and adult nappies – were found inside the apartment where he was arrested. The dismembered body was stripped of all clothes, but had a nappy of the same brand.
Inside another apartment just around the corner, an axe wrapped in plastic was found inside a bathroom cabinet alongside two small bones and blood traces near a bathroom drain. Duran admitted to using the axe to chop up the body, saying he worked alone and laid the body on bedsheets before cutting it up.
The case will now continue on 30th January, with lawyer Yanika Barbara Sant acting as legal aid counsel.
Accused’s Photo by Matthew Mirabelli for Times Of Malta
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