An Austrian influencer whose was stuffed in a suitcase and then buried may have been alive and fighting for life when her sick killer tried to hide the remains, police said.
Stefanie Pieper, 32, was found with injuries on her face that could have come from attempting to bludgeon her way out of the suitcase that became her coffin when she was buried last year.
“It is quite possible that she was still alive when she was placed in the suitcase,” the Graz Public Prosecutor’s Office said, according to the Sun. “The autopsy could not definitively determine when the young woman died.”
“However, it is equally possible that she was killed by strangulation beforehand,” they added.
Pieper’s body was found about a week after she is believed to have been killed, with investigators initially ruling that she was strangled and suffocated to death.
She was last seen alive at a Christmas party on Nov. 23, when she left and sent a friend a series of eerie texts warning of “a creep in the stairwell.”
Pieper then failed to show up for a photo shoot the next day, with the photographer going to her apartment to check on her.
He notified police when she wasn’t there.
Pieper’s 31-year-old ex-boyfriend — identified so far only as Patrick M. — was quickly arrested and questioned, and days later, police went to a spot in a Slovenian forest where the body was ultimately uncovered.
The ex-reportedly confessed to the crime, with an attorney claiming he was high on cocaine at the time and had been left despondent by his actions.
“My client is completely broken; he deeply regrets his crime,” the attorney said, according to the Sun.
“He can’t understand how he could have been capable of killing the woman he loved more than anything,” they added.
The suspect was extradited to Austria after being arrested in Slovenia.
He remains in custody and is expected to go to court this year.
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