A search farther along the river turned up female clothing that appeared to be the right size for this woman. Amid these items was a wallet with identification. The name of this woman was Blanka Bockova. Now that they knew who she was and where she lived, they could attempt to recreate the hours before her demise.
Ms. Bockova, it turned out, worked at a butcher shop in Prague. With that information, the police could talk to her employer and turn up some acquaintances. That helped to create a timeline. She had finished working at the shop on September 14, the day before her body turned up, and had gone to the high-class Wenceslas Square for a drink, and possibly a pick-up. According to those who knew her, she liked to party and meet new people. She might even turn a trick here and there, but she was not a prostitute by trade.
According to the
FBI Files, Bockovas friends finished their drinks in a bar that Tuesday night around 11:45 p.m. and decided to head home, but Bockova had wanted to stay. She urged them to go ahead and told them she would find her own way home. When they left, she was talking to a well-dressed man around 40 years of age, a suave stranger whom none of them knew. They offered a vague description, but it was not much to go on.
That was the last anyone had seen of Bockova, so clearly she had been killed some time between midnight and 7:30 a.m. when her body was discovered. The police needed to find this stranger, but no amount of questioning produced any more leads. The man was not a regular. They might be able to identify him if he was found, but no one knew his name or where he was from.
