Trial date set for Virginia man accused of killing his missing wife

MANASSAS, Va. (AP) — A Virginia man accused of killing his wife, whose body has still not been found, will go trial in September, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Naresh Bhatt, 37, of Manassas Park, was indicted earlier this week on charges of murder and defiling the body of his wife, Mamta Kafle Bhatt, a 28-year-old nurse. Police have said they believe her body was dismembered.

Kafle Bhatt, who went missing in late July, has been the subject of community searches. Police had long suspected that her husband killed her, but when he was first arrested in August, he was charged only with concealing a dead body. The murder charge was not filed until this week.

Bhatt, who has been jailed since his arrest, appeared in Prince William County Circuit Court wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and agreed through a Nepali interpreter to waive his speedy trial rights in favor of a Sept. 8 trial that is expected to last four weeks.

A trial that was scheduled to begin next week on the charge of concealing a dead body has been postponed and consolidated to coincide with the murder trial.

The case has attracted outsize attention, including in the Bhatts’ native country of Nepal. At Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Kimberly Irving noted that she’d received a request from Court TV to broadcast the trial, which is allowed in Virginia at the judge’s discretion.

Neither prosecutors nor the defense offered an initial opinion on whether to allow cameras in the courtroom. After the hearing, Angel Rodas, one of many supporters of Kafle Bhatt who has attended the court hearings, said she had misgivings about broadcasting the trial out of concern for her family.

“I don’t think their business should be out there for the whole world to see,” she said. “The crime scene was gruesome enough. They don’t need to relive this any more.”

Law enforcement experts say that while murder cases can be difficult to prosecute without a body, they’ve become easier in recent years because of new types of evidence, such as DNA, cellphone location and surveillance cameras.

Tad DiBiase, a former federal prosecutor and author of a 2014 book on the topic, keeps a tally of bodiless murder trials on his website. As of Sept. 2, DiBiase noted that there was an 87% conviction rate after 604 trials across the U.S.

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press