A 34-year-old man, identified by police as Nur Kholik, was arrested yesterday in Sidoarjo, East Java, on suspicion of murdering a 39-year-old woman named Sunarti on Thursday.
Kholik’s alleged crime did not take long to uncover. In fact, police say his victim’s feet were actually sticking out of the shallow grave he had made for her corpse in a public cemetery, which is how she was found by shocked visitors on Friday.
Authorities quickly came to remove and identify the body and soon after their investigation led them to arrest Kholik. Police say he confessed to murdering Sunarti, who was the wife of one of his friends. According to his confession, the two had been having an affair and he became violent after she insulted his manhood, causing him to strangle her to death while in a car.
Kholik explained that he had then tried to bury his victim’s body at the cemetery at around 10pm, when it was quite dark.
“So I did not realize (her feet were still sticking out),” Kholik said at the Kediri Police Station yesterday as quoted by Kompas.
Police said Kholik confessed to committing the murder and cover-up by himself. He used a car to transport the body to the cemetery and used a hoe borrowed from his aunt to dig a grave directly on top of another burial plot. He even supposedly stole some flowers from a neighboring grave to place atop his victim’s grave.
The investigation into the murder is still going but police said that Kholik could be charged with first-degree murder, in which case he could face life imprisonment or the death penalty.
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