The police have not identified any suspects in the case of Guyanese Marisha Cheong, whose bound body was found washed up on the beach in Breezy Point in New York after she disappeared nearly two months ago; and the woman’s boyfriend said he had been doing everything he could to find her.
Cheong was last seen December 19, 2012 at the Jamaica home where she lived with her boyfriend, Latchman Balkaran, police said. Her body was found on Saturday and her hands and feet were bound with green rope and she was in her pajamas.
According to the Times Ledger, Cheong, a business-management student at Long Island University in Brooklyn, had been with Balkaran for about five years, and the boyfriend said the two were thinking of getting married.
“We were planning to get married. We were going to start a life together,” he said tearfully on Monday after police discovered Cheong’s body.
Balkaran, 26, told the newspaper that he last saw Cheong on December 19, 2012. She had the day off from school, he said, and was lying in bed when he left for work. When he came home, she was gone.
According to the newspaper, Cheong’s mother said she believes Balkaran had something to do with her daughter’s death, but the boyfriend said he has been cooperating with the police ever since she disappeared and denied any involvement.
“Everyone looks at the boyfriend and the husband. That’s understandable,” he said. “She doesn’t know what happened that day. No one does.”
Police said they have identified neither a suspect nor a person of interest in the case.
Balkaran said he had his own suspicions, but did not want to comment on the ongoing investigation and risk tipping anyone off.
He said despite the criticism from Cheong’s mother, he could understand what she is going through.
“She lost a daughter, and I lost someone I loved,” he said.
The medical examiner is working to establish Cheong’s cause of death.
