A 43-year-old Singaporean man, who is a suspect in the death of a missing Singaporean woman in Spain, has been brought to court in Spain on 19 April 2024.

More details about the case have also been revealed.

A few days ago, news of the death of a missing Singaporean woman, who had allegedly traveled to Spain alone, shocked the nation.

The missing Singaporean, Ms Audrey Fang Dirou, a 39-year-old architect, was found with more than 30 stab wounds.

Her body was discovered some 150km away from her hotel, in a lorry park at the Abanilla municipality in the Murcia region by a man going to have breakfast at a restaurant.

She had traveled alone to Xabia, Spain, from Singapore on 4 April and was due to return on 12 April .

This was not her first time traveling alone.

Her family last spoke to her on 9 April , and she was last spotted on the hotel’s closed-circuit television walking out of her hotel at around 8:45 pm Spanish time that day with her personal belongings still in her hotel room.

The suspect, a Singaporean man, was detained on 16 April by the Civil Guard, one of Spain’s two national police forces, in Alicante province, and they later transferred him to their colleagues in Murcia.

Spanish media reported that he was staying in a hotel in Alicante, where he was arrested.

The Civil Guard stated on 19 April , “Police collected information and images from CCTV cameras at the hotel and found out that she was picked up by a vehicle when she left the hotel the day before her death.”

The footage was too dark to get precise information about the car, but the police managed to identify the make and model by analyzing its size and design details. By tracing the car’s route, the police were able to determine that it had started its journey at a car park near a hotel in Alicante, a city in southeastern Spain.

“From there, the car traveled to the hotel in Xabia and later to the town of Abanilla,” the Civil Guard added. “Once this was established, a surveillance operation was set up, which culminated in the arrest of the suspect in his hotel room in Alicante on April 16. Murder squad detectives arrested a 43-year-old man from Singapore.”

They also released the CCTV footage online.

According to a spokesperson from the Civil Guard to The Straits Times, the car he drove was apparently a rented car, and he might have known Ms. Fang, and “they may have been in a romantic relationship.”

Ms Fang was due to start a new job in May.