Two teenage lovers missing for two months have been found murdered with their bodies dismembered and thrown into an overgrown lagoon.

Daniela Santiago, 17, and Nicolas Aristizabal Gomez, 18, went missing on the night of 3rd June when they both left a party with Nicolas’ motorcycle.

Their bodies were found in the hard-to-reach lagoon near the city of Cartago in Valle del Cauca Department, in southwestern Colombia on 13th August.

Lina Maria Gomez, Nicolas’ mother, told local media: “I rarely asked my son about his private life, but he loved Daniela very much. They had a normal relationship between two young people of that age.

“He told me that he was going to a rumba party, but he went out and never returned.

“He went to meet Daniela first and then meet her friends to have some cocktails around 10:00pm.”

A week after their disappearance, Nicolas’ motorcycle was found abandoned in a ravine five kilometres from the lagoon.

Victor Alvarez, mayor of Cartago, told local media that more than two months after the disappearance, Daniela’s father Juan Pablo Santiago received an anonymous call saying that the couple had been murdered and revealing the location of their bodies in the lagoon.

Mayor Alvarez later added that the remains found in the lagoon belonged to the missing couple in a statement made on 20th September.

Daniela’s father said: “We were alerted on 13th August about the discovery of some bodies in a lagoon located on the road to the Vencedores Battalion.

“From that moment on, the time of pain began, when I went there and saw the floating body of a girl I knew that she was my girl. The body had been cut into pieces.”

He added: “I found part of her with a stone tied to the back of her neck.”

Mayor Alvarez told local media that the suspected motive for the murder was revenge or settling of accounts.

The investigation is ongoing.