ORLANDO, Fla. — A body found in Tampa Bay has been identified as the second missing University of South Florida doctoral student from Bangladesh, a sheriff said Friday.
Nahida Bristy’s remains were found Sunday in a garbage bag discovered by a kayaker whose fishing line got snagged, said Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister. The positive identification on the badly decomposed body was eventually made using DNA and dental records, he said.
The body of her friend, fellow USF doctoral student Zamil Limon, was in another garbage bag that was found two days before that on a bridge over the bay. Limon’s roommate, Hisham Saleh Abugharbeih, 26, was taken into custody the same day and faces two charges of first-degree murder. He’s been held in jail since then on no bond.
Chronister said the suspect showed no emotion when investigators presented him with details of the killings.
“He was nonreactive,” Chronister said. “He was callous and showed no emotion when we showed him the information we had.”
The two students were murdered around the same time and place, though detectives need to investigate further before they can decide that conclusively, the sheriff said.
The sheriff said detectives didn’t yet know a motive for the killings.
“I hope we find that out,” Chronister said.
Chronister said content on Abugharbieh’s phone had been erased, but a forensic examination revealed disturbing searches in the days before April 16, when Bristy and Limon went missing. The searches included phrases like, “Can a knife penetrate a skull?” and “Can a neighbor hear a gunshot?”
The suspect had also purchased Lysol wipes and heavy duty contractor-grade trash bags and other equipment, he said.
“This was calculating. That’s what makes this so premeditated,” Chronister said.
A search of the apartment that Abugharbieh and Limon shared with a third roommate showed large traces of blood in the kitchen, leading down the hall to Abugharbieh’s room and inside his room, the sheriff said.
The luminol-based spray even revealed blood in the shape of a human body curled up in the fetal position, next to Abugharbieh’s bed, he said.
Limon was last seen at the off-campus apartment complex where he lived with Abugharbieh, and Bristy at a campus science building on that same day. Limon was studying geography, environmental science and policy, and Bristy was studying chemical engineering. Abugharbieh had dropped out of the university.
Reached by email earlier this week, Jennifer Spradley, an attorney in the public defender’s office in Tampa, said the office wouldn’t comment on Abugharbieh’s case.
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Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho contributed to this report.
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