Fiancé held for Falun woman's murder

The fiancé of a woman missing in Falun in north-central Sweden, was remanded in custody on Tuesday by the Dalarna District Court on suspicions of having killed the woman he was set to marry.

• Body found in missing Falun woman case (19 Sep 09)

Thirty-four-year-old Mats Alm was brought in by Dalarna police on Monday on suspicion of murder or kidnapping.

After appearing before the Dalarna district court on Tuesday, Alm has ordered remanded in custody for the killing of his fiancé, Linda Chen.

During the two hour proceedings, Alm denied having committed the crime and gave his own version of the events surrounding his Chen's disappearance and the discovery of a body suspected to be hers.

The prosecution believes Alm is lying.

A few minutes into the remand hearing, the lead judge decided to usher all media and members of the public out and continued proceedings behind closed doors.

Alm has been questioned repeatedly by the Dalarna police, most recently on Sunday, in a detailed interrogation pertaining to the disappearance of Chen and to his own erratic behaviour last Friday by the side of national highway 80, between Falun and Rättvik.

Despite strong evidence suggesting that the body found on Friday is that of Chen, police officials remain reluctant to publicly identify the body.

"We are still treating the body as an unidentified deceased individual. We are waiting on the autopsy results to provide identification details, amongst other things," Hans-Åke Hedin, a public relations officer for the Dalarna police, told TT on Monday.

Hedin was equally reluctant to reveal any of Alm's remarks in during his police interrogation at the weekend.

"We've questioned him again, but nothing has changed. He denies everything," said Hedin.

The woman's remains have been sent to Uppsala to be autopsied. Only following the completion of the autopsy will investigators be able to identify the cause of death.

Police have yet to determine the precise location where the killing took place, however, it is believed that the woman was not murdered at the same location where the body was found.

According to Hedin, it remains unclear how long the body believed to be that of Chen had lain dead in the forest before being discovered.

Hedin also declined to comment upon the condition of the body, or to clarify whether evidence of a fire was discovered at the site, but asserted that Mats Alm had no connection to the area in which the body was found.

It was on Friday afternoon that Alm appeared on the side of the road, badly burned and disoriented, informing several individuals that he had discovered the body of a dead woman in the woods.

He was driven to the hospital and, later that evening, turned over to the police, where he was held for questioning.

The same day, the body of the dead woman was also discovered in the area.