Body-in-suitcase murder: supreme court upholds 20-year sentence for husband
The Supreme Court of Cassation upheld 20 years in prison for the victim's husband and the acquittal of his father. Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment.
Symbolic image · Photo: Bin im Garten / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
Bulgaria's Supreme Court of Cassation has issued a final 20-year prison sentence to the husband of a woman whose body was found in a suitcase, for the 2021 killing. The killing was ruled premeditated and committed in an especially tormenting manner, and the sentence is the maximum under that provision, BNT reported. The court rejected the prosecution's request for life imprisonment.
The court also upheld the acquittal of the convicted man's father, finding insufficient evidence that he helped commit the murder and that his actions afterward did not make him an accomplice. Some evidence against him was excluded because his right against self-incrimination was violated during a reconstruction.
The case had a long history: Sofia City Court originally sentenced both men to life, and the appeals court upheld that in 2024. The supreme court overturned it over serious procedural violations; at retrial before the appeals court the father was acquitted and the son's sentence reduced.