A Brazilian man accused of murdering and chopping up a British teenage girl after a four-day cocaine binge tried to bribe officers to let him go, police said.

Mohamed D'Ali Carvalho Santos, 20, was recorded by police offering to bribe them with £22,000 to let him off the charge of killing 17-year-old Cara Burke.

However, instead of taking the bribe, detectives broadcast the attempt on national television - with one saying: "The biggest reward we could receive is to see a psychopath like yourself behind bars."

Police also said Santos bragged about the murder in a text message to his brother, Bruce Lee, who lives with their mother in London.

The message, accompanied by a smiling face, read in English: "The bitch is in the bag."

The mobile phone was also used to photograph Miss Burke's severed head after he allegedly placed it on top of her torso along with a bloody butcher's knife.

Miss Burke's torso was discovered stuffed in a suitcase and dumped on a riverbank in the central Brazilian city of Goiania on Monday.

Police believe Santos killed Miss Burke on Saturday after she threatened to tell his parents he was a cocaine-addicted drug dealer.

He told reporters an argument started after Miss Burke threw a plate of cocaine on the floor.

Police said after the murder he went out to a funk concert before returning to cut up the body.

Lawyer Odair de Meneses said his client had confessed, but could not be held fully responsible because he had been taking drugs "non-stop" for four days before her death.

Santos has reportedly said he cut up the body because he was desperate to remove it from the apartment.

He is quoted as saying the dismembering process was "just like cutting beef, except for the bleeding".

Firefighters are continuing the search for Miss Burke's head and limbs, which Santos reportedly said he put into bin bags and threw them from a bridge in a remote area.


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