A street parking attendant was charged with sawing a woman in two over a parking space dispute, police said Wednesday.
The 29-year-old male suspect was arrested Tuesday night and confessed to murdering businesswoman Edna Souza, 51, in a house she was trying to rent in the middle-class Botafogo district, a police spokeswoman said.
"Only the bottom part of the corpse has been found. Today police are going in force to the city waste dump, which will be combed to try to find the upper part," the spokeswoman said.
The man, a convicted robber, allegedly dumped the two parts of the body wrapped in black garbage bags next to waste bins in two spots on the streets of the lively district. A janitor who found the bottom part alerted the police.
The parking attendant told police he had had an argument with Souza some time ago when she left her car in front of a building where parking was banned, ignoring his protests. The last time she came to the neighborhood on Monday, he followed her inside the house and killed her.
Police received information that the two had quarreled and questioned the man, who confessed the murder. He killed her with a knife and then used a handsaw to dismember the body, police said. The man said Souza had humiliated him.
