Police believe a man stabbed dozens of times and dumped in the boot of his car was part of a drugs and prostitution racket.
Investigators believe the victim had either betrayed members of the criminal group or had some sort of financial dispute with them.
Last Thursday, police arrested and charged Elliot Paul Busuttil, 38, over the brutal murder of Mario Farrugia.
Farrugia’s blood-soaked and heavily decomposed body was found stuffed into the boot of his Peugeot 407 saloon in the Qormi valley earlier this month. He had been missing for 15 days.
An autopsy confirmed Farrugia had been stabbed more than 40 times, including cavernous wounds to the heart and lungs, and slashing lacerations to his hands, indicating he had struggled against his attacker.
Sources said he is believed to have died an agonising death. The police have not established where he was actually murdered.
At the time of the discovery, little was known about Farrugia, a 62-year-old from Pembroke.
Sources said he was known to be a taxi driver and investigators believe he had acted as a runner for drugs and prostitutes for Busuttil, who does not drive.
Investigators’ theory is that Busuttil sold crack cocaine and was in a prostitutes’ racket, including notably one transgender woman, with the assistance of a Libyan associate, Ramzi Abdulhafid Ib Abukem, 42.
Police used mobile phone location data to trace Busuttil to Abukem’s residence on the night the murder is believed to have taken place.
Abukem and two women were arrested last week along with Busuttil, however, they were all released on police bail.
One of the women is believed to be a prostitute.
Abukem has a history of violent behaviour and drugs cases. In one eye-catching case in 2016, he returned to the scene of a Paceville fight swinging a samurai sword at a nightclub bouncer.
Busuttil also has a number of pending criminal cases, including the attempted murder of a man he left for dead after stabbing him multiple times in Ta’ Qali in 2020.
Meanwhile, most of the evidence police have against Busuttil in the Farrugia case is circumstantial. However, they got lucky when a search of his mother’s home uncovered a small drop of blood in the bathroom.
Police believe an agitated and blood-drenched Busuttil, likely high on crack cocaine, went to his mother’s Attard home to wash off the evidence of the frenzied killing.
DNA profiling on this sole droplet confirmed it was the victim’s, and geo-location data established that Busuttil had travelled from the scene of the murder to his parents’ home.
Busuttil is now being held in preventative custody.