Police dog finds body in suitcase in Belgrade canal
Service dog Aki located a closed suitcase in the Vizelj canal between Borca and Padinska Skela. Turkish national K. E., 25, was arrested at the airport on suspicion of aggravated murder.
A sealed plastic suitcase holding a woman’s body was pulled from the Vizelj water canal, on the stretch between the Belgrade suburbs of Borca and Padinska Skela. The suitcase was marked by Aki, a service dog from the Police Brigade of the Interior Ministry, working with handler Vladan Kovacevic. Inside was the body of Lyudmila Turkova Konstantinovna, 28, a Russian citizen from Saint Petersburg.
Belgrade police traced the suspect shortly afterwards. K. E., 25, a Turkish national, was stopped at Nikola Tesla Airport as he was trying to leave Serbia.
The Interior Ministry, known in Serbia as MUP, announced the arrest on July 31. The suspect is charged with aggravated murder. According to the ministry, the killing took place on July 26, in the early morning hours, in a rented flat in Borca. The body was then packed into the suitcase and carried to the canal, where it was hidden.
What the cameras show between July 25 and July 27
Lyudmila arrived in Belgrade on July 25 to visit friends. Her friend Darija says the last confirmed contact came the same day at 11.15 p.m., when she said she was heading to a club in the Palilula district. Five minutes later, at 11.20 p.m., she texted her mother that she was with friends and that she was fine.
Surveillance cameras recorded Lyudmila and the suspect entering the rented flat in Borca together, holding hands, on July 26 at 5.30 a.m. A second recording, from July 27 at 6.56 a.m., shows the suspect leaving the building alone, dragging a large suitcase wrapped in a blanket.
More than twenty four hours separate the two frames. If the woman was killed in the early hours of July 26, as the ministry states, the body stayed in the flat for close to a full day before it was moved into the street. That gap is what sets this case apart from a sudden confrontation followed by immediate flight.
How was the suitcase found?
The search was run by the Police Brigade, using service dogs. The suitcase was closed and submerged, so walking the bank produced nothing. Aki marked the spot, and officers pulled the case out of the water.
Interior Minister Ivica Dacic praised the unit and the officers who train and handle the dogs.
Without this service dog, the search for the body would have taken hours, perhaps days.
The find matched the part of the ministry’s statement dealing with the disposal of the body. According to MUP, the suitcase was carried from the rented flat in Borca to the water canal and hidden there, and that is the only stretch of the suspect’s movement after the morning of July 27 the ministry has described so far.
Who is running the case
The case was handled by officers of the criminal police directorate, known as UKP, and its department for violent and sexual crime, traffic offences and human trafficking, acting on the orders of the Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The suspect was placed in police custody for up to 48 hours. After that he is brought before the prosecutor along with a criminal complaint, and the office decides how the case proceeds. Until the court rules, K. E. remains a suspect and the offence he is charged with is treated as alleged.
