Bodies Found in Locker 4 Months Ago Identified

More than four months after their decaying corpses were discovered in a Northridge storage locker, two men and a woman were identified Thursday by Los Angeles police, who said all of the victims had been beaten and one had also been shot.

Police issued an arrest warrant for 30-year-old Harnoko Dewantono of Indonesia, who is suspected of committing the murders. The victims were identified as Eri Tri Harto Darmawan, 26, Gina Sultan Aswar, 30, and Surish Michandani, who police said was about 45.

Investigators said Dewantono--whose nickname is “Oki”--has been in the United States on and off for several years on a student visa, although it is unclear if he was ever enrolled at a college or university, Detective Ted Ball told a Downtown news conference.

“We linked him to the crime through physical evidence found in the storage locker,” Ball said.

Police declined to describe the evidence and refused to speculate on a motive for the killings. Investigators did say that Dewantono knew the victims either socially or through business dealings, but they are unsure whether the victims knew each other.

Police said the suspect had sold Michandani a now-defunct Woodland Hills dry-cleaning business. Dewantono knew the others socially, police said, and may have been Aswar’s roommate before she disappeared in 1992.

“There are a lot of gaps in what we know, but we hope some member of the public who knew the victims or knows the suspect will come forward and help us out,” said Lt. Al Moen, head of the LAPD’s major crimes investigation section.

The identification process took about a month and relied heavily on modern forensics. After an anthropologist determined the sex, height, race and other physical characteristics of the victims, medical examiners identified Darmawan by rehydrating his fingers to get fingerprints. Dental records were used to identify Aswar, coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier said.

All three had been badly beaten on their heads, and Michandani had also been shot, authorities said.

Michandani has not been identified officially by coroner’s investigators, but police say they are certain he is the third victim. All three victims lived in Los Angeles, and all were reported missing in 1991 or 1992, police said. An Indonesian Consulate official said Darmawan and Aswar were Indonesians traveling on student visas. Police said Michandani was from India, but had lived mostly in Kuwait.