Police arrest couple suspected of murdering neighbor, cutting up his body

Police arrest a couple from Jerusalem suspected of “brutally” murdering their neighbor and disposing of his chopped-up body parts in order to hide the evidence of their crime, a police spokeswoman said Tuesday.

According to a statement from police spokeswoman Luba Samri, the couple — whose names are being held under gag order — had a running dispute with their neighbor, over which they planned to kill him. Channel 2 on Tuesday named the victim as 59-year-old Shlomo Sami Marciano and said that the suspects are Russian immigrants.

After murdering Marciano overnight Friday-Saturday, the couple cut up his body and placed it in bags, which they later buried in a hole in the communal garden in an attempt to cover their tracks, Samri says.

The police statement did not specify how Marciano was murdered, but police photos of the murder weapons showed knifes, an axe and a wrench, as well as other tools.

While disposing of Marciano’s body parts early Saturday morning, the couple were spotted by a pair of minors in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood where they live, who reported to police that they saw the couple wheeling a large black bag on a cart.