An extremely horrific ritual murder has terrified the residents of the village of Vlado Trichkov, near the town of Svoge, northeast of Sofia.

The 59-year-old Elena Tomova living in a faraway villa in the village was found dead by her son-in-law. The murderer choked her to death, cut a cross with a knife on her body, cut off her left breast, wrapped her in her bed as if she was sleeping, and finally drew a cross on her head with blood.

The murderer left without taking anything but did draw crosses all around the woman's house.

The woman was discovered in this condition by her son-in-law Saturday night but the case was reported two days later. On Wednesday, Elena told her daughter that she was going to see some "pleasant" man on Thursday

According to the investigators, no one has seen the man in question but apparently the woman trusted him.

Tomova is known to have been a devoted follower of Jehovah's Witnesses; she last attended one of their meetings on August 23, the bTV channel reported based on the notes that the woman took in a notebook, discovered by the police, who also found a number of Jehovah's Witnesses' brochures that Tomova must have studied carefully as she underlined certain passages.

No suspects for the murder have been identified yet. The residents of the village are convinced that the murder has to do with Tomova's involvement with the religious sect of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Tomova's villa is at the very end of the mountain village of Vlado Trichkov, and it can be reached only by a jeep or on foot. The neighbors describe her as a modest and peaceful woman.

One more mysterious detail of the case is that on the last page of her notebook, Tomova wrote, "It seems like I will have to die so that mine (i.e. my people/relatives) would start."

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