A man accused of chopping up a body, stuffing it into a suitcase and dumping it at sea admitted to the crime when interrogated by the police, a court heard on Monday.

Andres Leonardo Gamboa Duran told interrogators that he knew the victim, ‘Raoul’, as a Colombian drug mule and had found him dead inside his Msida apartment.

The victim, Raoul Eduardo Rei, was publicly named for the first time during the court sitting. 

Duran said he then "panicked", shredded Raoul’s passport and documents, bought an axe and suitcase in San Ġwann and then cut up his body.

Duran said he had then walked with the suitcase on Gżira’s Rue d’Argens, unsure of what to do with it, before finally deciding to throw it out into the sea. He was “surprised and disappointed” when the suitcase failed to sink, the inspector recounted.

The suitcase was found out at sea by two French children on a paddleboat. They towed it to shore and lifted it up to land on the Gżira seafront with the help of two adult passers-by.

The adults opened the suitcase, found its gruesome contents and immediately alerted the police.

Victim identified through fingerprints

Duran was arrested following a two-day manhunt and is pleading not guilty to various charges ranging from disposing of evidence of a crime to drug trafficking. Police have not filed murder charges against him, saying they believe the victim was already dead when he was cut up.

An autopsy concluded that the victim most likely died suffocated, though it was not definitive. Blood tests found no traces of cocaine inside his body. 

The victim was definitively identified through fingerprint records obtained through an Interpol request as Colombian national Raoul Eduardo Rei, born 1974.

Inside the Msida apartment where Duran was arrested, police found cocaine and drug trafficking paraphernalia, a Convenience Store receipt for the purchase of bleach, detergents, garbage bags and cleaning cloths and a packet of adult nappies which had been opened and was missing a single nappy.

The dismembered body found inside the suitcase was naked save for a nappy of the same brand.

Another Msida apartment just around the corner which police searched was spotless and eerily empty. There were no bedsheets on the bed, no food in the cupboards or clothes in the wardrobes.

But inside a bathroom cabinet was an axe wrapped in blue plastic which matched one Duran was seen buying from a San Ġwann store, and forensic analysts found two small bones and blood traces near a bathroom drain.

An AFM patrol boat in Gżira after the suitcase containing the body was found. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Under interrogation, Duran admitted that he used the axe to chop up the body. He told police he worked alone and laid the body on bedsheets as he cut it up.

He said he disposed of Raoul’s possessions separately and decided to dispose of the body after finding him dead inside the apartment. An autopsy revealed that the victim had over 100 capsules of cocaine inside his stomach and that he most likely died of asphyxia.

How Duran was tracked down

In previous hearings, a court heard how investigators were put onto Duran’s trace thanks to CCTV footage from a San Ġwann store dated one day before the body was found. Inspector Wayne Camilleri’s testimony on Monday shed further light on the police work that led them to the suspect.

Investigators traced him to that store thanks to a pricing sticker left on one of the wheels of the suitcase – an eight-wheeler Simona case that sold for €75.

Shop assistants confirmed that somebody had purchased one such suitcase the previous day. And when investigators checked surveillance cameras, they saw that the suspect had also purchased an axe.

The suspect was then seen walking a short distance to Triq Bellavista, San Ġwann, and getting into a Y-plate cab, inspector Camilleri testified.

Armed with that information, investigators obtained the suspect’s account information from the cab company. The bookings were made by a user named 'Andres' and paid for in cash. He had booked a cab to San Ġwann from Triq Victor Denaro in Msida, and then caught a cab back there.

The suspect’s IP address helped police narrow the search down further, to a specific apartment. Mobile phone data indicated the suspect was moving frequently between the Msida apartment and a nearby one.

Police set up a surveillance operation and pounced when they spotted Duran exiting one of the properties at around 11.20am on December 12, three days after the body was first discovered.

Duran, wearing a prison tracksuit and assisted by a Spanish translator, sat impassively in court during Monday's hearing. 

At the end of Monday's hearing, Magistrate Astrid May Grima declared that there was sufficient prima facie evidence for the accused to stand trial on indictment.

The case will continue on January 30.

Attorney General lawyers Kaylie Bonett and Dejan Darmanin are prosecuting together with Inspectors Kurt Colombo Zahra and Wayne Camilleri. Lawyer Yanika Barbara Sant is legal aid counsel.