Missing Dutch couple found murdered in Spain

Murcia (Spain), May 28 (IANS/EFE) Missing since May 14, former Netherlands international volleyball player Ingrid Visser and her boyfriend, Lodewijk Severin, were found dead Monday in an orchard in this southern Spanish city.

Although the autopsies have not yet confirmed the identities of the bodies or the cause of death, the National Police are virtually certain that they are the Dutch couple, who traveled to Murcia May 13 to go to a fertility clinic.

The case has led to the arrests of four people, one of whom was released a few hours afterwards.

The first arrest was made last Saturday in Valencia, where a Spanish man was taken into custody, and on Monday morning two other people of Romanian nationality were arrested in the same city.

In an appearance before reporters, the national government's delegate in Murcia, Joaquin Bascuñana, said that police had found in a home on the outskirts of the town of Molina de Segura evidence suggesting that the murders may have been committed there.

The testimony of the arrested people led police to a plot of lemon trees in the Murcia district of Alquerias, where around 10 p.m. Sunday they found the bodies.

Bascuñana said that forensic police found partially buried items at a depth of about half a meter and, a little deeper, the bodies of a man and a woman "with all the indications pointing to their being the missing people".

The disappearance of Visser, 36 and Severin, 57, shocked the Dutch residents of Murcia, who had mobilized themselves to search for information about their whereabouts and had placed hundreds of posters with their photographs around the area.

--IANS/EFE

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