Piecemeal murder

“I saw suitcases with legs sticking out”

A local resident saw the victim's legs sticking out of the suitcase.(Bild: Martin A. Jöchl)

Investigators are still in the dark following the discovery of body parts in a suitcase in Vienna. A DNA analysis should at least clarify the identity of the victim. 

So far, we don't know who he is, where he comes from and what he "did" to die. All we know is that someone was not at all squeamish about getting him out of the way. The man who was found in Quellenstraße in Vienna-Favoriten at 3 p.m. on Friday was dead and the question of who was to blame was relatively clear - it wouldn't even have required an ordered autopsy.

"I saw a half-open suitcase as I walked past, with the legs sticking out. It wasn't a pretty sight. You could tell from the size of the shoes that it was a man," a local resident told the Krone.

The crime scene investigators recovered the contents of the suitcase.(Bild: Martin A. Jöchl)

The dead man's hands and feet bound with duct tape
And really: the sight on this bitterly cold afternoon on the garbage island was probably not an everyday occurrence, even for hardened murder and crime scene investigators. Because a man's body parts had been stuffed into the (supposedly dark blue) piece of luggage. As reported, the dead man's hands and feet were bound - tied up with duct tape.

The case is reminiscent of the most recent mafia murder in Vienna, when an angler fished body parts out of the Marchfeld Canal at the end of 2023. The victim was a food delivery man who had been reported missing.

There is wild speculation about the case in the neighborhood
All the bones in the man's body are said to have been broken before he was neatly dismembered, wrapped in plastic and dumped on the garbage island. The gruesome discovery leaves no one in the neighborhood cold: "Something always happens here, but I've never seen anything like this," says the Slovakian landlady. There is a lot of speculation at the moment. Who is the dead man? Is the murderer here among us?