A suspect has been arrested over the murder of an elderly Japanese couple in Jimbaran.
Identified in local reports as I Putu A, the 25-year-old was arrested early on Monday morning around 3am.
Denpasar Police Chief Hadi Purnomo confirmed the arrest.
“We are still investigating. Yes, there was an arrest,” Purnomo said on Monday, as quoted by Tribun Bali.
The charred bodies of Japanese man Matsuba Nurio, 76, and his wife, Matsuba Hiroko, 73, were found in their rented home on Sept. 4 in Puri Gading, a quiet residential area in Jimbaran. Both corpses had stab wounds.
It’s alleged that money was the main motive of the murder.
“The motive is that the perpetrator needed money to pay a debt,” Bali Police Spokseman Hengky Widjaja said, as quoted by Bali Post.
However police’s current explanation of what happened and why it happened to the Japanese couple is quite bizarre and seemingly random.
Based on what the suspect told police in interrogation, Putu A claims that he had been walking around Puri Gading around 8:30am and saw the couple’s gate was open. He then said he went in and saw a knife on the shoe rack, so he took it. He went up to the second floor and saw Matsuba Hiroko, who happened to be carrying a bag full of money, Putu A claims.
“The perpetrator directly smothered the victim, tied her and stabbed her in the neck and stomach. After that the perpetrator saw the victim’s husband, come up the stairs to the second floor. The perpetrator immediately smothered him and stabbed him in the back and slit his throat,” Widjaja said before reporters.
From there, police say the alleged offender put the victims in their bedroom and covered with them a bed sheet and added wood. Then he left and came back later around 12pm with matches, incense, and gasoline to burn the couple and try to eliminated any trace of himself from the scene, police said.
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