M

. Prio Santoso looked aloof as the South Jakarta District Court pronounced him guilty on Monday of the murder of Deudeuh Avisah Rini, aka Tata Chubby, and sentenced him to 16 years'€™ imprisonment.

The judges described the crime committed by the 24-year-old former teacher at a private education center as '€œa sadistic murder'€.

The panel of judges, chaired by Nelson Sianturi, declared that Prio had deliberately killed Tata at her rented room in Tebet after she told Prio that he had an unpleasant body odor when they engaged in commercial sexual activity on April 10 .

'€œWhen they were having sex, the victim told the defendant that he smelled bad saying he needed to take a bath. He then suddenly strangled her from behind,'€ Nelson said during the verdict hearing.

Nelson went on to say that after strangling Tata with a cable from a hair straightener, Prio found that Tata was still breathing and gagged her with a sock until she suffocated.

'€œWe believe that the defendant deliberately killed the victim because he was offended by being told to go to the bathroom and clean himself,'€ Nelson continued.

The judges found Prio of violating Article 338 of the Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP) on murder.

Besides murder, the judges also found Prio guilty of the theft of Tata'€™s valuables including a laptop, an iPad, three mobile phones, a power bank and Rp 2.8 million (US$202) in cash from her rented room.

Nelson said the theft violated Article 363 paragraph 3 of KUHAP on burglary.

'€œTherefore we find that the defendant committed two crimes in one incident and sentence him to 16 years in jail,'€ he continued.

The sentence was less than the 18 years demanded by the prosecutors.

Tata'€™s body was found in her rented room in Tebet, South Jakarta, the day after her murder. Several days later, Prio was arrested after the police tracked one of Tata'€™s phones stolen by Prio.

From Prio'€™s Twitter account, the police discovered that on April 13, three days after the murder, he had tried to book another sex worker.

His timeline showed that he started using the account on March 10, solely to book sex workers who used the social media platform. Prio met Tata through her Twitter account, in which she solicited her services.

During the investigation, it was revealed that Prio had met Tata in March, the first time he hired her. The night of the murder, April 10, was their second meeting.

Prio went to the boarding house after he finished work in Kedoya, West Jakarta.

Speaking after the trial, Prio'€™s lawyer Ahmad Ramzy said he would consider challenging the verdict in the Jakarta High Court, saying there was no DNA evidence that his client had murdered Tata.

'€œHowever, we need to discuss it with our client and his family,'€ he said.