A New Zealand holidaymaker yesterday spoke of how he stumbled across a human head on a tourist beach in Fiji — the latest apparent twist in the gory case of a Russian couple murdered and dismembered in the Pacific Island nation.
New Zealand businessman Graeme Bickley and his wife, Jan, said they were walking along Natadola beach on Monday when they spotted a “bundle” wrapped in green cloth submerged about knee-deep in the Pacific waters.
Bickley said the couple’s suspicions were immediately aroused because a host of body parts, beginning with two pairs of feet, have washed up on the beach over the past fortnight.
“We said, just jokingly, that it was more body parts,” he told reporters in a telephone interview as he prepared to return home from Fiji.
“Then when I waded in to grab it, it became apparent how heavy it was, it almost pulled me over,” he said. “It was weighed down with rocks, you could hear them clinking when I dumped it on the beach and we started to get a feeling there was more to it that what it appeared.”
Bickley said he “wasn’t game” to open the round bundle, which was tied with nylon rope, but authorities who interviewed him confirmed that it contained a head.
He said they did not give further details about the deceased person.
Fiji police this week said that DNA tests showed the body parts belonged to Russian couple Yuri and Natalia Shipulin, who went missing on June 16.
Bickley said the murder mystery had gripped the nation during his one-week stay and he and his wife still found it hard to believe they had become involved.
“We were discussing amongst ourselves what sort of person has done this,” he said. “Someone has very callously cut them up, then spent a lot of time weighting them down with rocks and neatly knotting them up. They obviously didn’t expect it to come back to shore.”
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