Slain Jerusalem couple identified as Yehuda and Tamar Kaduri

A couple found dead Sunday in a Jerusalem apartment was identified on Monday morning as Tamar and Yehuda Kaduri, 68 and 71, respectively.

They were discovered in an apartment in the southern Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of Jerusalem, with their bodies showing signs of violence, including stab wounds, in what police suspect is a double homicide.

Family, neighbors and friends said they hadn’t heard from them since Thursday.

A family friend told reporters that Yehuda, a successful accountant, had been taking care of his wife in recent years.

Their neighbor said people felt something wasn’t right when Yehuda didn’t show up for Shabbat prayer service on Saturday.

“He would normally say ahead of time that he would be missing,” the neighbor told reporters. “He had a heart of gold.”

A friend told Army Radio that on Thursday morning Tamar liked her post on Facebook, and that it had been the last sign of life from her.

“We would speak on Facebook every few days,” the friend said. “In one of the conversations she told me that her family members became religious and she remained secular and that it was very difficult for her.

“I’m totally shocked, I lost a good friend.”

The couple is survived by three children.

Police officers outside the apartment building in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood where two people were found dead on January 13, 2019. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

The victims’ daughter reportedly had been unable to contact her parents for a few days and called emergency services, who broke open the door to the apartment on Mordechai Elkahi Street.

Medics subsequently pronounced their deaths at the scene.

Police suspect the couple were murdered. According to Hadashot TV news, although the couple both apparently had stab wounds, the cuts alone were not considered significant enough to have caused their deaths, and there were other indications of violence. The report also said that the object used to stab the couple did not appear to be in the apartment.

Further details of the investigation have been gagged by a court order, including whether the incident was connected to a stabbing on the same street last week.

In that incident, a teenage girl said she was stabbed by a man as she waited at a bus stop to go to school on Wednesday morning. The girl, who was lightly injured, was taken to the hospital with stab wounds to her hand and neck. She said she was stabbed with a sharp object by a person she did not know, according to police, who opened an investigation. The assailant escaped and is yet to be found.

The girl’s mother, Merav Bezalel, told the Ynet news site on Sunday that she was positive the two incidents were linked.

“I was sure of it the moment I saw the ambulance. It’s very scary,” she said, adding that until she saw the ambulance, she thought her daughter’s stabber had been caught.