A security guard has been arrested one day after a body was found outside an Airbnb villa where missing Florida woman Carla Stefaniak was staying.
The father and brother of Carla Stefaniak identified the body as the 36-year-old Florida woman Tuesday night.
Authorities said Tuesday that they found what appeared to be the body of Stefaniak – who had gone to the Central American country to celebrate her 36th birthday and that a suspect, Bismarck Espinosa Martinez, had been detained.
The body was found in a wooded area Monday as investigators combed through the region where Carla Stefaniak spent her last night in Costa Rica last week.
An autopsy revealed that the victim suffered a blunt force wound to the head and lacerations on the neck and arms, authorities said. Search dogs found the partially decomposed body, which was wrapped in plastic bags and half-buried, near the Airbnb apartment that Stefaniak had rented.
