Forensic experts are running DNA tests on unborn twins that were being carried by a Moroccan woman who was found dead at her home in Mġarr last week.
Meryem Bugeja, 40, who already had two daughters, was five months’ pregnant with twins when she was killed, the autopsy has revealed.
Initially believed to be an accidental death, the incident is now the subject of a full-blown murder investigation.
The woman’s estranged husband Joseph Bugeja was arrested but has since been released. Sources close to the investigation said there was nothing that conclusively linked him to the murder, although the police have reports filed against him for domestic violence.
The couple had been undergoing separation proceedings for the past two years and the children met their father regularly.
Last Tuesday – the day she was found – Mr Bugeja collected his girls from the matrimonial home in Mġarr an hour after school and found them on the doorstep after no one opened the door.
He took them out and when they returned four hours later there was still no answer, so Mr Bugeja and the children went to the police station to file a report.
Ms Bugeja was found at 8pm after members of the Civil Protection Department entered her house through an open window.
Investigators at first believed she had hit her head against a wardrobe after fainting caused by her diabetes.
However, an autopsy revealed another two deep wounds in her skull that seem to have been caused by a blunt object.
Tests have concluded that she had been dead for 10 to 12 hours, which would tally with the time the children went to school.
Sources said that although officers have interrogated Mr Bugeja twice, they are not any closer to solving the mysterious death.
Inquiring Magistrate Doreen Clarke held a second on-site inquiry on Sunday to try to close gaps in the investigation.
Mr Bugeja and his daughters arrived while the investigators were there, saying he needed to fetch more clothes for them, but he was not allowed in as the house was still considered a crime scene.