The defendants, a nurse and a security guard, are accused by the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) of the death of a man last March, with the aim of seizing the money he had received in compensation for his mother's death.

The nurse's defence lawyer asked for the case to be opened, considering that she had not participated in all the stages of the crime, and the decision was known on 2 December in the court in Portimão.

The investigating judge decided to bring the case to trial "as it was, considering that the defendant's first statement was more consistent," the lawyer told Lusa.

The two women are charged by the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) with the crimes of aggravated murder, desecration of a corpse, two crimes of illegitimate access, a crime of computer fraud, simple theft and use of a vehicle.

The women are said to have lured the young man to the home of one of them, where they kept him kidnapped for two or three days in order to extort money from him, since he had received 70,000 Euros in compensation for the death of his mother, who was run over in the Albufeira area in 2016.

According to the MP, the defendants, Mariana Fonseca, 24, a nurse, and Maria Malveiro, 21, a security guard, "will have gone to the victim's house, a computer engineer, located in the area of Silves, where they will have disguisedly given him drugs to put him to sleep and strangled him until they killed him".

After having removed several valuables from the young man's home, including his mobile phone, they took him "in his own car to the accused's house, situated in the Lagos area".

On 21 March, the suspects will have cut and dismembered "the corpse of the victim", keeping it "in several rubbish bags", which in the following days "they threw over a cliff in Sagres and hid in the vegetation in Tavira".

The MP indicated that, during those days, the defendants had made withdrawals and payments with the victim's debit card and mobile phone.