The mother of a murdered Romanian man whose badly beaten body was found in a suitcase dumped in a Dublin canal last month will help detectives to formally identify him.
Mrs Marianna Moraru was due to arrive in Dublin from Bucharest late last night.
While positive identification is not complete, it seems certain the dead man is Mrs Moraru's son, Mr Adrian Bestea (21). The body was found on July 20th in the Royal Canal near Croke Park by two teenage boys.
Mr Bestea arrived in Ireland in 1999 and had worked in construction. His application for refugee status had been rejected and it is understood he was appealing this decision.
Detectives are continuing their murder investigation and particularly want to speak to a young Russian woman believed to have been the victim's girlfriend.
Gardai will examine Mr Bestea's medical and dental records and Mrs Moraru will be asked to give blood to allow a DNA test to be conducted. They have already searched apartments where Mr Bestea had lived in Mountjoy Square and Sherrard Street in the north inner city as well as Sandymount, in south Dublin.
The victim was wrapped in a duvet and packed into a suitcase but had not been mutilated or tied up. One theory is that the killer or killers used the suitcase to remove the remains from an apartment where the murder took place so as not to raise the suspicions of neighbours.
There is speculation that the victim may have owed money but it has not been established if this was the motive. Mrs Moraru has said the last time she spoke to her son - on July 3rd - "he was happy and had no problems". He had told her he was going to marry his Russian girlfriend.
Det Supt Cormac Gordon from Store Street Garda Station in Dublin said investigators were "getting good assistance from the Romanian community in Ireland".