Spain: Suspect shows girlfriend's body via webcam

[April 05, 2011]  MADRID (AP) -- A man accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend used a webcam to show her body to his father, who notified authorities before the young man could harm his girlfriend's younger sister, police said Tuesday.

Dorel Marcu, 21, allegedly strangled his 19-year-old girlfriend and then told his father after showing him the corpse that the victim's sister "would face the same fate," Spanish national police said.

Spanish officers detained Marcu after the father, who was in Romania, called Romanian police, who contacted Spain. The 13-year-old sister was not hurt, according to a Spanish police spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with department policy.

Romanian regional police spokeswoman Luciana Baltes told The Associated Press that the father contacted police on Monday from the Transylvanian city of Copsa Mica, some 300 kilometers (188 miles) northwest of Bucharest.

She said Marcu showed the body to the father and said, "I will kill her sister."

"He alerted us and we moved very quickly," she said.

Officers also found the girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter unharmed in their apartment in the Madrid suburb of Torrejon de Ardoz.

Authorities were investigating whether Marcu thought his girlfriend's unborn baby was not his, district police commander Emilio Alcazar said.

An autopsy was planned.

Marcu was being held on suspicion of homicide, and a judge will determine whether to charge him, the police spokeswoman said.

Baltes said the Romanian couple had been living in Spain for 18 months.

[Associated Press; By CIARAN GILES]

Associated Press writers Alan Clendenning in Madrid and Alison Mutler in Bucharest, Romania, contributed to this report.

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