Editorial note: Police subsequently issued a statement in which they said that the man they suspect murdered Charlene Farrugia is not the man they questioned 11 years ago.
The man now suspected of killing his girlfriend in her Qawra apartment 11 years ago had been questioned at the time by police over her disappearance but raised no suspicions.
Charlene FarrugiaPolice sources said investigators had found little to connect him to her disappearance in November 2008.
Last Saturday, John Paul Charles Woods, 39, confessed to murdering his ex-girlfriend, 25-year-old carer Charlene Farrugia, dismembering her and hiding some of her body parts, which the police then found in the bastions near Valletta.
Mr Woods was under the influence of drugs and alcohol on Saturday. The police have since been trying to extract more information from him but sources said he has clammed up and is tight-lipped over the motives, the weapon used and details of what took place that day.
Police investigators are at a loss about the possible motive, beyond what Mr Woods has already said about Ms Farrugia: that “she drove me up the wall”.
But the police are getting very little more.
They believe the woman is likely to have been killed in an apartment in Qawra before her body was dismembered and transported to Valletta in her own car.
The sources said only parts of the legs and skull were found when officers descended on the site on Saturday. While officers believe the human remains belong to Ms Farrugia, it will probably be weeks before DNA testing confirms their suspicions.
The sources added that without a confirmation that the body parts are hers, the police will not take the matter to court.
Still, Mr Woods is in prison now: he has just been sentenced to seven years over an attempted theft at a shop and for breaching two probation orders, so the police are not bound to arraign him within the 48-hour arrest window.
Ms Farrugia, a carer at residential home Dar tal-Providenza, went missing on November 7, 2008. She lived in Qawra and was last seen wearing blue jeans, a black shirt and white jogging shoes and driving a grey Toyota Platz.
Her car was recorded entering Valletta on CCTV around the capital but it never appeared to leave. The police believe the car could be hidden inside one of the many garages in the capital city.