Hong Kong police yesterday were questioning a 29-year-old British financier who worked for Bank of America Merrill Lynch after the grisly discovery of the bodies of two women, including one in a suitcase, in his upmarket apartment.
The women were found dead on the 31st floor of the residential block in Wanchai District in the early hours of Saturday morning — when many revelers were out celebrating Halloween.
Police yesterday said that the suspect remained in custody, but had not been charged, while local media outlets identified the man as British expatriate Rurik Jutting.
“A person with that name previously worked at this firm,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch spokesman Paul Scanlon said.
The man was arrested after he called police to his apartment on Saturday where they found a naked woman with knife wounds to her neck and buttock in the living room.
The corpse of the other woman was discovered decaying inside a suitcase on the balcony.
The woman found in the living room, described by police as a foreigner aged between 25 and 30, was declared dead at the scene, with the cause thought to be a cut to her throat.
Police were scouring thousands of photographs stored on a mobile phone seized from the suspect, including some showing one of the corpses wrapped in a carpet inside a suitcase on the balcony, the South China Morning Post reported.
On social network platform LinkedIn, Jutting is listed as a graduate of Cambridge University. A person by the name posted last week that he was embarking on a “new journey.”
“Stepping down from the ledge. Burden lifted; new journey begins. Scared and anxious but also excited. The first step is always the hardest,” said the post uploaded to Facebook on Monday last week.
The victims are believed by police to be sex workers of Southeast Asian origin, local reports said.
One of the victims was thought to be a 25-year-old Indonesian, the government in Jakarta said, adding that its consulate in Hong Kong was coordinating with police to identify her.
Officers said earlier that maggots were found in the corpse hidden in a suitcase.
“From what we can see it was intentionally hidden because it was put in a travel suitcase,” police assistant district commander Wan Siu-hung told reporters. “This body belonged to a person who had passed away quite some time ago.”
A resident said a “disgusting” smell had been emanating from the building.
“It was the smell of a dead body. Maybe the police were moving it,” the man, who lived on the 11th floor and refused to give his name, said yesterday.
Britain’s Foreign Office confirmed that a British national had been arrested in the territory.
“We are in touch with the local police and stand ready to provide consular assistance,” it said.
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