Police suspect person murdered roommate, hid body in wall of Haifa home

Police believe a man whose badly decomposed body was found Wednesday concealed in the wall of a Haifa apartment was murdered — but the prime suspect is also now dead.

The body, wrapped in a plastic bag, was discovered by a handyman who was called in to refurbish an apartment on Halutz Street in the port city.

Investigators are examining the possibility that a 54-year-old tenant of the apartment who died last week, apparently of a drug overdose, murdered his roommate some 18 months ago and then hid the body in the wall.

The body has been identified as that of a 61-year-old man. Police have not confirmed his identity but believe he matches a person who has not been in contact with his family and who has not been seen since around the time the suspected homicide took place.

That person “disappeared more than a year and a half ago, and since then we don’t know what happened to him,” another tenant in the building told Channel 12.

“It’s just crazy that it happened here, and now suddenly we’re starting to understand the foul smell experienced in parts of the building.”

Locals told media that many of the apartments in the street have a high turnover of occupants who do not have a stable lifestyle.

Police launched an investigation into the incident Wednesday after officers were called to the scene in Haifa’s Hadar neighborhood.

The body was sent to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for examination.

After the death last week of the now-suspect, the landlord came to inspect the apartment. There, he found a concrete bulge where the tenant’s bed had been, which raised his suspicions, so he called a handyman to remove the bulge.

“I didn’t know there was a body there. I asked myself, ‘Who would put concrete like this on a home floor?’” Ahmad Dhawafta, the handyman, told reporters. “When the plastic bag was found, my hairs stood on end because I was so scared.”

“I didn’t see the bones because everything was covered with concrete, only the head was uncovered. I opened it, and at first I thought it was a doll. I didn’t know if it was the head of a person or a doll, a man or a woman. I went quickly to the landlord and told him we need to call the police,” Dhawafta added.

Also Thursday, a murder charge was filed against a 26-year-old resident of Tel Aviv on suspicion that he killed a man and then dumped his body in the Jordan Valley.

The scorched remains of Yair Hadad, 51, of Rehovot, were found last month in a palm grove.

According to the charge sheet, filed at the Jerusalem District Court, the suspect first became acquainted with Hadad last month when they met in Tiberias. The next day the two traveled south together in Hadad’s car. Prosecutors allege that at some point the suspect stabbed Hadad to death. He then set the body on fire in an effort to destroy evidence, prosecutors said.

Though there was a gag order on many details, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court clarified publicly last month that both the suspect and the alleged victim were Jewish and that the police believed it not a case of terror, as had initially been speculated.