Police in the Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang have detained an 18-year-old man for killing his mother for her jewelry.

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The local police arrested Nguyen Kha Dat, who was born in 1997, for further investigation to prosecute him on two counts of murder and robbery, Colonel Hoang Quoc Viet, deputy chief of the police division in charge of social crimes (PC45), told Tuoi Tre(Youth) newspaper on Monday.

Dat admitted that he killed his mother, Nguyen Thi Mai Trinh, 42, at their house on the night of March 5, after the woman refused to give him the money he needed to buy a new motorbike, said the police agency.

He said that he pushed his mother so she fell backward on the floor after a fierce argument with her. After that, noticing his mother was wearing many pieces of gold jewelry, Dat thought of killing her for the items so that he could sell them for money to buy a new bike.

Dat told the police that he then took a piece of wood and hit his mother on the head two or three times.

After realizing his mother was dead, Dat took all the jewelry except for an ivory bracelet and dumped her body into a big earthen jar used to store rainwater in the back of the house. Dat also dumped all of his mother’s clothes into the same place to conceal her disappearance.

According to the findings of the police, after hiding the body Dat poured fabric softener into the jar to mask the smell.

The earthen jar in which Dat hid his mother's body for 24 days. Photo: Tuoi Tre

According to Nguyen Thi Van, 63, a neighbor, she eventually smelled a stench before the police came and found the body in the jar 24 days later.

When Van asked Dat about the unpleasant smell, he replied that the stink was coming from the clogged sewer in the rear of the house.

Trinh’s relatives held a funeral for her in her hometown in Bac Lieu Province in the southern region on Monday after the body was recovered by the police.