British trader in Hong Kong questioned over murders

The two women were found dead on the 31st floor of an upmarket apartment in Hong Kong with stab wounds - one of them of decomposing inside a suitcase on the balcony.

A Hong Kong policeman checks the crime scene where the bodies of two women were found in a flat in an upmarket district at Hong Kong's Wanchai on November 2, 2014. A Bank of America Merrill Lynch emplShow more

HONG KONG // Hong Kong police were questioning a 29-year-old British man who works for Bank of America Merrill Lynch on Sunday, after the discovery of two female corpses, including one in a suitcase.

The women were found dead on the 31st floor of an upmarket apartment block in the popular expatriate district of Wanchai in the early hours of Saturday morning – when many revellers were out celebrating Halloween.

Police were called to the scene where they found a naked woman with knife wounds to her neck and body in the living room. The other woman was decaying inside a suitcase on the balcony.

Police said on Sunday that a man remained in custody but had not been charged. He works for Bank of America Merrill Lynch as a securities trader, a source said.

The woman found in the living room, described by police as a foreigner aged between 25 and 30, was declared dead at the scene, with the cause thought to be a cut to her throat.

The victims are believed by police to be sex workers of South East Asian origin, local reports said.

One of the victims was thought to be a 25-year-old Indonesian, the government in Jakarta said. Its consulate in Hong Kong was coordinating with police to identify the victim.

A resident described the smell that had been emanating from the building as “disgusting”.

“It was the smell of a dead body. Maybe the police were moving it,” said the man, who lived on the 11th floor.

Police said the man being questioned lives in the apartment, and was the one who called officers to the scene.

Britain’s foreign office confirmed that a British national had been arrested in Hong Kong.

“We are in touch with the local police and stand ready to provide consular assistance,” it said.

On Saturday, police officer Wan Siu-hung said: “There was a female that was unconscious, with knife injuries and was naked.”

Police then discovered the body of the second woman on the apartment’s balcony, he said.

“From what we can see it was intentionally hidden because it was put in a travel suitcase,” the officer said, adding that maggots were found in the corpse.

“This body belonged to a person who has passed away for quite some time.”

Hong Kong, a city of seven million, has low crime rates and only 14 cases of homicide were reported in the first half of the year.

But in 2003, the public was gripped by a lurid case dubbed the “Milkshake Murder” in which American housewife Nancy Kissel killed her banker husband.

Kissel, now serving a life sentence, was convicted of drugging her husband – a senior executive at Merrill Lynch – with a sedative-laced strawberry drink before clubbing him to death with a lead ornament at their luxury home.

* Agence France-Presse