BUDAPEST, Hungary — A 31-year-old American tourist was killed while on vacation in Hungary’s capital, and the suspect, a 37-year-old Irish man, has been arrested, Hungarian police said Saturday.
The victim, Mackenzie Michalski from Portland, Oregon, was reported missing on Nov. 5 after she was last seen at a nightclub in central Budapest. Police launched a missing person investigation and reviewed security footage from local nightclubs where they observed Michalski with a man later identified as the suspect in several of the clubs the night of her disappearance.
Police detained the man, an Irish citizen, on the evening of Nov. 7. Investigators said that Michalski and the suspect met at a nightclub and danced before leaving for the man’s rented apartment. The man killed Michalski while they were engaged in an “intimate encounter,” police said.
The suspect, whom police identified by the initials L.T.M., later confessed to the killing, but said it had been an accident. Police said that he had attempted to cover up his crime by cleaning the apartment and hiding Michalski’s body in a wardrobe before purchasing a suitcase and placing her body inside.
He then rented a car and drove to Lake Balaton, around 150 kilometres southwest of Budapest, where he disposed of the body in a wooden area outside the town of Szigliget.
Video released by police showed the suspect guiding authorities to the location where he had left the body. Police said the suspect had made internet searches before being apprehended on how to dispose of a body, police procedures in missing person cases, whether pigs really eat dead bodies, and the presence of wild boars in the Lake Balaton area.
He also made an internet search inquiring on the competence of Budapest police.
Michalski’s parents are currently in Budapest, police told The Associated Press.
According to a post by an administrator of a Facebook group called “Find Mackenzie Michalski,” which was created on Nov. 7, Michalski, who went by “Kenzie,” was a nurse practitioner who “will forever be remembered as a beautiful and compassionate young woman.”