Son confesses to killing mother, sticking her body parts in fridge

A man in his mid-30s in Belgium has confessed to killing his mother and sticking parts of her body in a fridge found in a canal in the country’s east, prosecutors said Friday.

The refrigerator with its grisly contents — two arms and two legs — was found Tuesday bobbing in a canal on the outskirts of the city of Liege, triggering a murder investigation.

That led detectives to discover the rest of the woman’s body — her head and torso — in a trash container thrown in a nearby river.

A tattoo on the torso helped identify the victim as a woman in her 70s, a spokeswoman for the Liege prosecutors’ office told AFP.

Her son, born in 1988, was arrested just before dawn on Thursday in a hotel close to Brussels’s airport.

He apparently was preparing to take a flight to South Korea, the spokeswoman, Catherine Collignon, said.

Under questioning by police, the man “confessed”, she added, and the investigating judge ordered him charged and taken into custody.

Early indications in the investigation suggest the mother and son had regular arguments after he moved back in with her after the Covid pandemic.

The killing was said to have occurred in Seraing, a southwestern neighbourhood of Liege, where the woman lived with her two children and a grandchild, according to local media.

The suspect was said to have confessed to the killing to someone in his entourage, who shared the information with another person who spoke to police.