Man turns himself in after dismembered body found in suitcase under Austerlitz bridge, Paris

Paris police made the grim discovery after being called to fire under Austerlitz bridge. Photo / 123RF

A man has been arrested after a dismembered body stuffed into a suitcase was found under a bridge in Paris.

Firemen discovered the severed corpse under the Austerlitz bridge on Saturday night after they were called to put out a rubbish fire.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office said a 34-year-old man had turned himself in to police shortly after 8am on Sunday.

“He has been remanded into custody for murder,” it added. “Numerous investigations are under way and the person concerned has not yet been interviewed.”

According to the French radio station Europe1, the man told police he had committed the crime, claiming that the victim was a disabled person for whom he was a carer and with whom he had had a dispute.

Firemen found the body after extinguishing the nearby fire at around 10pm on Saturday, according to civil security and a police source.

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The Paris public prosecutor’s office confirmed that the body had been found “at the foot of the Austerlitz bridge”, adding that a murder investigation had been opened and handed over to the criminal brigade of the Paris judicial police.

According to the Actu17 website, which broke the story, the dismembered body was in a suitcase. Le Parisien cited a source close to the investigation that the body of “an adult male” was missing “upper and lower limbs”.

Body complete but in ‘several pieces’

“The body was complete but in several pieces,” it was cited as saying. The place where it was discovered is often frequented by homeless people.

Last year, the dismembered body of a 46-year-old woman was unearthed in a wooded section of Buttes-Chaumont, a popular park in the north-east of Paris, leading police to open a murder inquiry.

The husband of the mother-of-three had reported his wife missing to the police shortly before the discovery. He was later charged with her murder, after admitting to the crime.

Four months previously, the dismembered body of a 12-year-old girl was found squeezed into a suitcase near the same park.

Lola Daviet had been sexually assaulted and murdered after school, in a crime that French president Emmanuel Macron described as “evil”.

The case triggered a fierce political row because the alleged killer, Dahbia Benkired, was a mentally disturbed Algerian woman who was in France illegally and the subject of an expulsion order.

She has been charged with the murder of a minor and is awaiting trial.