Police said Monday that they are looking for a 48-year-old Dutchman as a suspect in the murder of a 20-year-old Cambodian woman whose body was found with her throat slashed under a bed in a Phnom Penh hotel on Sunday.
The naked body of the victim, who police declined to identify Monday, was discovered by a receptionist at the Bolina Palace Hotel in Daun Penh district after a man with whom she was staying left the hotel without paying his bill, leading staff to enter the room.
“This is murder, because the victim got killed and the suspect put the body under the bed,” said Phnom Penh municipal penal police chief Eng Sorphea. “Never has a person died under a bed by themselves.”
“The suspect is from Holland, we have already identified him, and we ask the immigration police to find and arrest him,” Mr. Sorphea said. He said he could not provide the name of the suspect or the victim.
The Dutch suspect, along with the unidentified victim, checked into the Bolina Palace Hotel on Wednesday, according to staff there. A receptionist identified the man as Stuart James Green.
On Saturday, the suspect left the hotel, taking his passport and telling the receptionist he was going to withdraw money from the bank to pay his bill, but he never returned, according to Bolina Palace Hotel owner Cham Say Heang.
“On December 29, when the receptionist was aware that [the suspect] still had not returned to pay the bill, she went to the room and saw the body under the bed,” Mr. Say Heang said.
Penal police chief Mr. Sorphea said that he was confident that the suspect had not left the country, and that he had alerted border police to the man’s identity and asked them to be vigilant.
