An Irishman is suspected of killing a 31-year-old American nurse during an “intimate encounter” in her Budapest apartment before dumping her body in the forest, according to police.

Hungarian police said Mackenzie Michalski, of Portland, in the US state of OregonShe was murdered after encountering the 37-year-old man at a nightclub while she was on vacation in the city.

Officers identified the suspect with the initials LTM and said he cleaned out his rented apartment in the Hungarian capital and put Michalski’s body in a closet and then in a suitcase.

He allegedly rented a car and drove 150 kilometers (90 miles) to Lake Balaton, where he is said to have disposed of the body in a wooded area near the town of Szigliget.

Police video showed the suspect leading them to where he left the body.

Officers said he also searched the Internet for how to dispose of a dead body and about the competence of the Budapest police. Police said they also conducted online searches about procedures in missing persons cases, whether pigs eat corpses and whether there are wild boars around Lake Balaton.

He was arrested on Nov. 7, but claimed the murder was an accident, police said.

Ms Michalski had been reported missing two days earlier, and the suspect was identified after CCTV showed the couple together at a nightclub, where police said they danced and went to her apartment.

Crime scene photographs show a rolling suitcase, clothing and a purse along with a credit card with Ms. Michalski’s name on it.

The victim’s family flew to Hungary to help find her, but on the way he discovered that she had been killed.

“There was no reason for this to happen,” his father Bill Michalski said at a candlelight vigil in Budapest on Saturday night.

“I’m still trying to understand what happened… I don’t know if I ever will.”

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Wearing a cap she had given him, Michalski said his daughter had been to Budapest before and called it her “happy place.”

“The story…she just loved it and was very relaxed here,” he said.

A Facebook group created last week to find Michalski said she was known as “Kenzie” and worked as a nurse.

He said she will “always be remembered as a beautiful and compassionate young woman.”