Investigators have found the missing thigh of a woman – allegedly murdered by her husband and dumped in a river after being dismembered – after the defendant’s mother claimed she had killed and disposed of her.

Prosecutors believe that the mother, who shocked a court last month by claiming that she had murdered her son’s wife instead of him, helped him cut up her corpse and dispose of her body parts in a suitcase in a river.

Walter Baumann, 46, is on trial at the Bremen district court in north-western Germany accused of murdering his St Petersburg-born wife Yekaterina Baumann before her remains washed up in a suitcase on the banks of the Weser River in Bremerhaven, north-western Germany, on 1st March.

Yekaterina was in the process of divorcing her German husband and had been reported missing.

But in a bombshell twist, the defendant’s mother Ludmila Baumann claimed last month (mid-October) that it was in fact she who had murdered Yekaterina.

She reportedly said in tears that she had killed her daughter-in-law. From the witness stand, she reportedly claimed that she had drugged and suffocated Ekaterina before dumping her in the river in the suitcase.

The confession stunned the court, with many wondering whether or not she was being truthful or if she just wanted to cover for her son.

But the mother’s confession also led to another discovery, according to local media, with the police then finding a thigh in a plastic bag in the Geeste river that was weighted down with two weight plates – just as Ludmila Baumann had claimed.

The thigh was the only piece of the victim’s body that had not been recovered.

Prosecutors believe that Walter Baumann called his mother and she then helped him dismember the body. The mum was allowed to leave court a free woman, while the case against her son continues. But local media reports that they are now looking into Ludmila Baumann’s claims.

Walter Baumann allegedly drugged and strangled Yekaterina before dismembering her corpse and placing the body parts in rubbish bags. Prosecutors allege that he then put them in a large suitcase that he then took by car to the river before dumping it.

Before her death, Ekaterina – from Saint Petersburg, Russia – had twice moved out of the family home to a shelter for women but had gone back on both occasions.

The suitcase contained most of her body parts, but her right thigh had remained missing until Ludmila Baumann’s confession.

Baumann had proposed to her just one week after meeting her for the first time on holiday in Turkey in 2009. Ekaterina was a student at the time.

The two married in Bremerhaven in 2010. Their daughter Viktoria was born in 2017.

Friends had earlier told German media that after Baumann’s daughter was born: “Viktoria was his little princess, his wife was worth nothing to him anymore.”

The case is ongoing.