Man Charged with Murder of Researcher Leyla Namiranian

In the US, the former boyfriend of Chesterfield County, VA-based researcher Leyla Namiranian has been charged with her murder, more than three years after her disappearance and despite the fact that her body has not been found.

Namiranian was last seen on April 4th 2012 after leaving the offices of tobacco giant Altria (previously named Philip Morris), where she served as Director of Marketing and Consumer Research. She was divorced and had been living alone at the time of her disappearance, and officers investigating the mystery found her car parked in the garage, with no signs of a struggle inside the home.

According to police, unsealed search warrants contained information saying Namiranian was afraid of her former partner Michael Anthony Edwards, and that she had told friends he had tried to choke her. Police also found blood in the trunk of Edwards' car, and authorities seized a number of items including duct tape, a bottle of 409 cleaner, Clorox and towels.

Phone records show that Edwards had been outside Namiranian's home for about five hours on the night before she disappeared, and detectives later found a mobile phone belonging to Namiranian by a main road, and another in a ditch a mile north - both sites close to where Edwards worked.

Two days ago, the facts of the case were presented to the Richmond metropolitan Grand Jury, which returned a first-degree murder indictment. Edwards is now in custody in Henrico, VA, and it has emerged that in 1990, he was convicted of stabbing a woman and assaulting her daughter.

Chesterfield police have never previously tried a homicide case without a body - and do not have a definitive view on how the alleged victim died. Prosecutors in two other parts of the state have won convictions in homicide cases with no body in the past year, but such successes are rare.

Chesterfield police Capt. Chris Hensley commented: 'It has been concluded that Leyla Namiranian is deceased, even though we have not recovered her remains', adding that the decision to charge Edwards stemmed from an accumulation of evidence over time, rather than being triggered by a specific new development.