December 30, 2008
PARIS (AFP) - A Portuguese chef arrested in connection with the brutal Paris murder of two Thai prostitutes has confessed to killing them, police said Monday.
The 36-year-old, who was arrested Saturday in a Paris hotel during a Christmas trip to France from his home in Luxembourg, admitted during questioning that he had killed them, police said.
Police said Sunday they had found what appeared to be the murder weapon in his hotel room as well as the two women's mobile phones and 1,500 euros (2,150 dollars) stolen from them.
The cook had phoned the women in response to an advertisement they had placed, police said.
"The individual said he had gone to the scene, that he had a rendezvous with them and that things ended badly. But many questions remain unanswered," said a police spokesman on Sunday.
He said it was unclear if the act was premeditated, what circumstances had led to the murder, and if the alleged killer had used drugs.
The women, who had arrived in France last year and had been living here illegally, were found stabbed to death last Tuesday in their Paris flat.
The bodies were found by a neighbour. One woman was lying bleeding in the stairwell of the apartment building where they lived and worked. The other was inside the flat.
The murder led former French president Jacques Chirac's Vietnamese adopted daughter to hit out last week at violence against France's Asian community.
Anh Dao Traxel, who was taken in by Jacques and Bernadette Chirac when she arrived in France amid the exodus of Vietnamese "boat people" in 1979, demanded a thorough inquiry into what she dubbed "a horrible and barbaric" crime.
Traxel raised the possibility that the crime may have had a racist motive and said that if this was the case her father's successor President Nicolas Sarkozy ought to condemn it as he would an attack on any other minority group.
