An unidentified woman was hacked to death with a meat cleaver and her body wrapped in a plastic bag and hidden beneath a bed in a guesthouse in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district on Saturday night, police said Monday.
The body of the victim, who was in her 30s, was found Sunday morning at the Kim Hong II guesthouse on Street 81 near Phsar Thmei, said Sim Pisith, Phsar Thmei II commune police chief. Police cannot determine the identity of the woman and are appealing for people who may have know the victim to come forward.
“We do not know where she was from,” Sim Pisith said, adding that a man in his 50s stayed with the victim at the guesthouse on Saturday night but the guesthouse owner kept no record of its customers.
Khai Chheng Huot, a nephew of the guesthouse’s owner, said the suspect and the victim had been coming to stay together at the guesthouse three times a month. “Most Cambodian clients never want to check in with their real name…they are afraid of their families finding that they bring mistresses to the guesthouse,” he said.
Kek Galabru, founder of local rights group Licadho, said two other women were separately found murdered and stuffed in plastic bags in Kandal province earlier this year.
Kandal Provincial Court on Thursday charged Nget Chan Bo, a former director of Phnom Penh’s municipal department of cult and religious affairs, with hacking a woman to death in late April and then dumping her in a plastic bag in Takhmau town. Police say Nget Chan Bo has denied the charges against him.
Sim Pisith said police do not believe the murder of the woman in Kandal province has any link to Saturday night’s unsolved killing.
