Police investigators yesterday recovered the head of a victim of dismemberment in New Taipei City’s Yonghe District (永和) following the arrest of a suspect a day earlier.
The suspect, identified as Fu Kuang-chun (符冠?), 54, was arrested and questioned on Wednesday evening. The victim is believed to be his 84-year-old father, who had until recently lived in Taichung for about 39 years after separation from his family.
Local police on Wednesday morning received a report that a decapitated torso had been found floating in the Yonghe section of Wayaogou River (瓦?溝), a tributary of the Sindian River (新店溪) that borders Jhonghe (中和) and Yonghe districts.
Photo: CNA
After the body was recovered, it was found that its arms and legs had been hacked off. Its bloated condition indicated that it had been in the water for several days.
Investigators reviewed footage from surveillance cameras around the site and saw a figure about 600m from where the body was discovered pulling a suitcase and dumping an object into the river.
At about 10:30pm on Wednesday, law enforcement officials, armed with an arrest warrant, went to Fu’s residence on the sixth floor of an apartment building in Yonghe to gather evidence as part of an overnight homicide investigation.
Fu was quoted by police as saying that he had suffocated his sleeping father to death on Nov. 28 because his father had repeatedly physically abused his 77-year-old mother.
However, new findings that Fu had asked his father to leave Taichung and live with them in Taipei less than a week before the killing cast doubt on his motives, prosecutors said.
Fu is likely to face charges of homicide, along with abandonment and destruction of a corpse, they said.
Officers at Yonghe Police Precinct said Fu has a prior criminal record for theft. He was arrested for shoplifting in May and stealing several times at supermarkets in 2019.
As of press time, the search was ongoing to find the missing limbs. Investigators said the limbs, being lighter, would have floated further down the river.
Prosecutors said it was important to recover the head along with the torso for forensic examination and DNA testing for identification.
Additional reporting by CNA
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