French police said yesterday they were questioning a Chinese couple who allegedly killed and dismembered another couple and dumped their headless torsos in a forest on the edge of Paris.

The pair were detained at the weekend after turning themselves in to police following the discovery by a guide dog of the torso of a woman in the popular Vincennes forest on Friday, a police source said.

The couple said they "killed a man and a woman," also Chinese, the source said, and based on information from them the man's torso was found on Sunday.

The police source said the detained couple confessed to having killed and dismembered the other couple following a dispute over the dead couple's child, who they said had died earlier this month while in their care. The couple told police that the child died accidentally and they concealed the death by putting the body in a bin bag, the source said.

They said that they fled to China shortly after the killings but returned to France because they were "overcome with remorse," the source said.

A lawyer advised the couple to hand themselves in to police, which they did.

"The enigma of these human torsos, which could have gone on a long time without this confession, is perhaps being resolved," a source close to the enquiry said, adding: "We're in the realm of the sordid."

Suspicion of a murder was first raised when two joggers discovered a decomposing human leg in the woods on June 7. Forensic police were yesterday combing the area where the body parts were found.

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