A 37-year-old Irish man has been arrested in connection with the murder of an American nurse in Hungary, police say.
Mackenzie Michalski, 31, from Portland, Oregon, was reported missing after a night out in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, on Tuesday.
Officers said the suspect was identified through CCTV footage and later confessed to killing Ms Michalski, but claimed her death had been an accident.
In a statement, put out on Saturday, police said that the suspect, an Irish citizen, whom police identified by the initials L.T.M., had confessed to the killing but said it had been an accident. Police said that he had attempted to cover up his crime by cleaning the apartment and hiding Michalski’s body in a wardrobe before purchasing a suitcase and placing her body inside.
He then rented a car and drove to Lake Balaton, around 90 miles southwest of Budapest, where he disposed of the body in a wooden area outside the town of Szigliget in the country’s west.
Officers said Ms Michalski was killed during an “intimate encounter” with the suspect, but did not provide any further details.
They were able to establish that the pair had met at a nightclub, danced together and then travelled to the man’s rented apartment.
He was arrested there on Thursday evening, and has been remanded in custody.
After being questioned, the suspect showed detectives where he had disposed of Ms Michalski’s body, the police statement said.
It added that the man had placed the nurse’s body in a wardrobe while he cleaned his apartment – in a bid to “remove traces” of the alleged murder – before driving to the woods.
Ms Michalski was reported missing by friends when she failed to return to their accommodation.
During the course of their investigation, police said they uncovered evidence which “gave rise to the suspicion of murder”.
Following Ms Michalski’s disappearance, the man made a series of online searches – including “what does a dead body smell like after it decomposes?”, “how do the police handle missing person cases?”, and “removing rotting meat smell”.
He is also alleged to have searched whether pigs eat dead bodies and about the appearance of wild boar along Lake Balaton – a body of water near Szigliget.
In footage released by Hungarian police, a man in handcuffs can be seen guiding officers through woodland. Sniffer dogs and forensic investigators are present.
A Facebook group, called Find Mackenzie Michalski, says the 31-year-old often went by the nickname Kenzie.
On Saturday, her friends held a candlelit vigil close to the US embassy in Budapest.
Source: bbc.co.uk
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