‘Frozen woman’ murder shocks Croatian village

PALOVEC, Croatia: Shock and bewilderment have seized a small Croatian village where the body of a missing woman was found inside her sister's freezer at the weekend, a macabre discovery that has cracked open a 20-year-old cold case.

Jasmina Dominic had not been seen since she disappeared as a 23-year-old student in 2000. On Saturday she was finally found inside the freezer on the ground floor of the home of her sister Smiljana Srnec in Palovec, a small but well-off village of neat, two-storey homes in northern Croatia. The gruesome revelation has horrified the community and transfixed the country, with prosecutors pointing the finger at the elder sister who has been living in the house with the freezer all these years.

"Who is Smiljana Srnec?", one of the country´s main newspapers, Vecernji List, asked in a headline on Tuesday morning, publishing a picture of the 45-year-old smiling with short hair and glasses.

An eerie unease has shrouded Palovec, which is home to around 900 people, most of whom have farms or work in a nearby shoe factory.The blinds have been closed at Srnec´s white house while a car remains parked in the driveway.According to local media, it was Srnec´s son-in-law who found the body and alerted police on Saturday."No one in the village can sleep. We are all in the state of shock," said a 62-year-old neighbour who asked to remain anonymous.