Disturbing Discovery: Remains of Vanished Mother and Child Found in Freezing Units in the Alpine Nation
The bodies of a mother aged 34 and her young daughter, 10 have been located inside freezing appliances in an flat in the western part of Austria.
The victims, a woman from Syria and her child, who had been missing for a number of months, were detected on Friday. The freezers were concealed behind a false wall in the dwelling, located in the Innsbruck area.
Two individuals, a Austrian man, 55 and his brother aged 53, were taken into custody in June. The older man, a colleague of the Syrian woman, informed police last week that there had been an incident—but disputed homicide.
Addressing journalists recently, a official for the public prosecutor's office announced the pair were being held on "high likelihood of homicide".
Personal details of those implicated have been withheld by police, in accordance with Austrian law.
The family's disappearance was first reported by the woman's cousin, who lives in Germany, on the 25th of July last year.
Police said the woman's colleague told them at the time she had taken an prolonged visit with her daughter to visit her parents in the nation of Turkey.
The victim's bank card was then found to have been used in foreign locations on multiple occasions.
Yet when investigators entered the mother's apartment, her smartphone was found.
A witness also stated listening to a commotion in the flat, and cries of "mum" on the occasion the two were presumed to have gone missing.
A broader police investigation was started, with investigators finding multiple communications sent from the woman's phone—including a job termination message to her workplace and texts to the male colleague.
Law enforcement said a four-figure sum was also moved to the man.
A senior police official informed reporters on that day that a storage unit had been leased before the mother and child went missing and a freezer had been positioned inside.
The two suspects extracted the freezer from the unit on the day the mother and daughter disappeared, she revealed. And a seven days after, they acquired an additional appliance.
Officials say they consider this indicates the fatalities were planned in advance.
"The reason for their demise was not identifiable due to the state of decomposition of the victims," Tersch said.
The prosecutor's spokesman—of the public prosecutor's office—noted the exact sequence of events is not yet known, but the remains were expertly concealed and went unnoticed during a earlier inspection.
While the suspects were detained in the summer, it was not until 12 November that the 55-year-old acknowledged an occurrence and to hiding the bodies. He disputes any plan to cause death, authorities said.
In a related development, his brother acknowledged a attempt to hide evidence but rejected awareness of a homicide.
The two suspects are currently in detention before court proceedings in prisons in separate locations, situated at a distance.
In a joint statement, the nation's official for women's affairs and the top legal representative declared the "alleged double murder... constitutes the sudden and brutal end of two human lives and uncovers a brutal scheme".
"Female individuals are falling victim to homicide due to the simple reality that they are of the female gender," they continued.
"Femicides are a deeply rooted and society-wide problem that we must combat firmly."