Employees at a waste removal plant discovered the headless and decomposing body on Monday and called police.
Officers arrested Edwin Ramirez-Mejia on Thursday on charges of second-degree murder and abuse of a dead body, the Miami Herald reported. Police said the woman, identified as Silvia Karina Castillo-Castillo, was Ramirez-Mejia's aunt.
Ramirez-Mejia told officers that he met with his aunt at his Miami apartment on Friday to discuss a business they owned in Guatemala "until something went terribly wrong," according to the Herald.
After giving investigators conflicting statements, Ramirez-Mejia later confessed to taking a large kitchen knife, cutting off his aunt’s head, and placing it in a bag.
He then put both the head and the rest of her body in a trash container outside his apartment, the Herald reported.
The suspect told police that he and his aunt fought over her boyfriend and that she attacked Ramirez-Mejia with a knife. A struggle ensued, and Ramirez-Mejia said he cut her several times, took her to the bathroom "and started to cut her neck," WPLG-TV reported.
Ramirez-Mejia is currently jailed without bond.
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