Vienna, Nov 18, (dpa/GNA) – Austrian police said on Tuesday, they have found the bodies of a woman and her 10-year-old daughter, in a suspected double murder.
The victims, a 34-year-old Syrian national and her child, had been missing since July 2024.
They were discovered in an apartment in the western city of Innsbruck.
A close friend of the woman and his brother are under suspicion. They are said to have murdered the two and hidden the bodies in a flat in Innsbruck, according to public prosecutor’s spokesman Hansjörg Mayr.
A 55-year-old Austrian man and his 53-year-old brother have, been in custody since June in connection with the case, police said earlier.
Investigators found that the older of the two had tried to sell the woman’s furniture online, shortly after her disappearance. He had also sold her jewellery, they said.
According to the police, small payments made with the woman’s ATM card, indicate that false trails were also laid.
After months of surveillance of the suspects, they were detained last June. Just a few days ago, the 55-year-old main suspect admitted to an accident and to hiding the dead.
His brother’s flat in Innsbruck was then searched, and the bodies were found.
The public prosecutor’s office is not assuming that the duo’s deaths were the result of an accident, but that the mother and daughter were murdered.
The spokesman for the judicial authority did not provide any information on the possible motive. He only stated that there had been a friendship between the Syrian woman and the 55-year-old, which was described as “difficult.”
According to the police, it is also still unclear how the woman and her daughter were killed. As the freezers were not in use during the investigation, the bodies were badly decomposed, they said.
GNA