A killer accused of choking his girlfriend to death before hiding her body in a suitcase under a hotel room bed at a beach resort is being hunted by police.
Suspect Vicente Palomino Rosales, 25, is said to have confessed the murder to his mother in a phone call before the body was discovered on 26th October.
Victim Sandra Karin Villena, 32, was found by horrified hotel cleaners after they detected a foul smell coming from the room in the beach resort village of Montanita, on Ecuador’s Santa Elena Peninsula.
Peruvian national Sandra and her partner had arrived at the hotel on 19th October.
She was last seen on 22nd October and was found dead on 26th of October.
Local police chief Geovanny Benitez told the media that Vicente Palomino had left the hotel on 22nd October.
Peruvian media have said that Vicente Palomino deleted all of his photographs on Instagram shortly afterwards.
Benitez said: “On Wednesday they entered and were seen until Saturday.”
But after that, the couple were no longer seen together at the hotel.
Sandra’s mother, who has not been named but who lives in Peru, reportedly told Peruvian media that the couple had been in Ecuador on holiday.
The woman’s body was removed from the hotel and taken for forensic examination. The authorities confirmed that the woman’s body was whole and had not been dismembered, contrary to what initial local media reports had said.
The suspect’s mother, who has been named as Frida Maria Palomino Rosales, reportedly contacted the authorities too after her son allegedly confessed that he had murdered Sandra.
It is currently unclear why it took more than three days for her body to be discovered.
The suspect’s mother claims that he called her at approximately 1am on Sunday, 23rd October and sobbingly confessed to her that he had murdered his partner.
She claims that he said: “I cannot bear this guilt and so that her parents [of Sandra Villena] feel calm, I will eliminate myself. I will enter a church to confess.”
Peruvian media have reported that the suspect had priors for physical and psychological violence committed against women, specifically against his former partner, named only as TNLA, in 2018.
The Ecuadorian authorities are still looking for the suspect.
