DUBAI // A butcher has been arrested after a three-month search for a killer who dumped a headless body on the outskirts of Dubai.
Lt Gen Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, Chief of Dubai Police, said the suspect, a Filipino, was a relative of the victim.
He had allegedly borrowed Dh10,000 from the woman, an Abu Dhabi housemaid identified as M S L. When she repeatedly asked him to pay her back, he is said to have killed her and then chopped off her head and hands, burned them and then buried them in a sandy area in Ajman. The headless body was dumped in Al Warqa, Dubai, and was discovered by a Dubai Municipality cleaner at 8am on May 27.
Maj Gen Khalil Al Mansouri, assistant to the Dubai Police chief in Criminal Investigation Affairs, said: “He confessed during investigations that the maid requested her money back. The man could not pay her back and decided to kill her.”
On the day of the murder, in May, the accused, who had previously worked as a butcher illegally in Dubai, drove his flatmate’s car to the maid’s house in Mussaffah and told her to come out to talk about resolving the financial issue.
They drove around the area for a while before the argument became heated and he stabbed her several times, police allege.
“He cleaned the windshield of blood, lowered the chair and covered her body with a towel and drove back to Dubai,” said Maj Gen Al Mansouri.
After dismembering her and dumping her body, police said that he went to a petrol station to have the car cleaned before driving back to his apartment in Al Nahda, where he threw the knives he used in a dumpster near his home.
He later drove to Ajman and bought flammable fluids from a petrol station before digging a hole in the sand and burning her dismembered body parts in it for half an hour before burying them, police said.
Dubai Police officers went through 9,751 missing Asian maid reports and were able to compare DNA samples by visiting their sponsors until a DNA match for the victim was found. Once she was identified, the accused was apprehended on Tuesday.
Police said he admitted to committing the crime and he was referred to prosecutors to face trial.
tzriqat@thenational.ae
