He had hidden her body in a suitcase. A man of Irish nationality was arrested in Budapest (Hungary) on Thursday, suspected of the murder of an American nurse visiting the country, the city's police headquarters reported this Saturday, November 9.
The victim, Mackenzie Michalski, disappeared on the evening of Tuesday, November 5 after going to a nightclub. This 31-year-old woman, from Portland, Oregon (United States), had not returned to the apartment where she was staying with her friends. They then raised the alarm.
The identity of the arrested man, aged 37, has not been revealed. The Hungarian authorities, however, confirmed this Saturday that he had confessed to the murder of the thirty-year-old, but spoke of “an accident”. He was identified thanks to video surveillance cameras. The young woman's personal effects were found at her home, including a credit card in her name.
This Irish national allegedly met the victim in the nightclub before the two went to his home, where they had consensual sex, he told Hungarian investigators, according to the police headquarters' account . It was on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday that he then killed Mackenzie Michalski, without apparent motive. He also did not give details of the modus operandi.
The 37-year-old man then tried to erase the traces of the young woman's murder, then hid her body in a wardrobe while he went to buy a suitcase. With it, he transported the body of his victim aboard a rented car to a wood in Szigliget, a village located on the shores of Lake Balaton, a two-hour drive from Budapest. After his arrest and his confession, he led the police to the scene where the American's body was located.
During the investigation, Hungarian police also found several Internet searches in the man's history which left little doubt about his involvement: “What happens after reporting a missing person? “, “What does a corpse smell like after it has decomposed? » or “Do pigs really eat corpses?” “. The suspect had notably looked for the presence of wild boars around Lake Balaton in order to find out if the mammals could thus get rid of the body of his victim.
