When Praveen Mandanapu, a computer programmer from India, reportedly discovered that his wife Divya Mandanapu, had disappeared from her Ashburn, Virginia, home a little more than two years ago, it was he who gave police the information they needed to figure out what happened.
Yesterday, Loudoun County Commonwealth's Attorney James E Plowman told a jury that Praveen Mandanapu admitted strangling his wife and dismembering her body on June 12, 2004, because he was 'overcome with his own guilt and thought he should die for what happened and for what he did to his wife'.
On the first day of what is expected to be a weeklong trial, Mandanapu's attorney contended that the police had coerced his client's confession.
Mandanapu, 34, who immigrated to the United States from India a decade ago, was charged with first-degree murder days after he allegedly used a meat cleaver to dismember his wife's body in the garage of their house and then stuff her body parts into suitcases.
He allegedly threw the suitcases into dumpsters in Loudoun and adjoining Fairfax counties.
A maintenance worker, emptying trash discovered a suitcase holding Divya Mandanapu's nearly decapitated body in a dumpster in South Riding, five miles from the couple's home.
At first the police thought the body belonged to a woman of West Asian or Asian descent who had shoulder-length black hair. The picture became a little clearer, after Divya Mandanapu's co-workers at the Leesburg branch of Middleburg Bank reported her missing.
Shortly, a remorseful Praveen Mandanapu left his Ashburn home on a summer day in June 2004, looking for the means to end his life.
Loudoun County's Attorney Jim Plowman said Mandanapu was just trying to cover his own tracks.
Plowman said Mandnapu had strangled Divya Mandanapu on June 12, 2004, and then dismembered her to fit her remains in a suitcase that he discarded in a trash bin at a South Riding apartment complex.
Mandanapu's defence attorney, James Connell III, said Mandanapu and his wife were arguing and that she had threatened to leave him.
Connell acknowledged that Mandanapu had argued repeatedly with his wife before she was killed over money she was sending to her family in India.
But Connell also said Mandanapu was genuinely distraught when his wife threatened to leave him and later dismayed by her disappearance. That started a whirlwind of emotions for Mandanapu that led him to attempt suicide. Mandanapu, his attorney said, eventually was tricked into confessing because former Loudoun Sheriff's Office Investigator Mike Grau, a 'bad cop', made a death pact with the suicidal man.
When the jury hears all the evidence, it won't match up with what Mandanapu told investigators in three separate interrogations, and it will be apparent enough that Mandanapu shouldn't be found guilty of first-degree murder, Connell said.
Connell indicated in his opening statements that he will attack the credibility of one of the sheriff's office investigators, Grau, who later resigned after being charged with stealing weapons from an evidence room, and the interrogation practices used over the three separate interviews.
