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The bodies of a mother aged 34 and her 10-year-old daughter have been located inside freezing appliances in an apartment in western Austria.

The victims, a Syrian woman and her child, who had been missing for a number of months, were found on the end of last week. The freezers were concealed behind a false wall in the flat, situated in the Innsbruck area.

Two men, a Austrian man, 55 and his brother aged 53, were detained in the month of June. The older man, a colleague of the Syrian woman, informed law enforcement last week that there had been an accident—but denied homicide.

Speaking to the media recently, a official for the state prosecutor announced the two suspects were being held on "serious suspicion of murder".

The names of those involved have not been released by authorities, in following national regulations.

Their going missing was first reported by the woman's cousin, who is based in Germany, on the 25th of July last year.

Investigators revealed the male associate told them at the time she had taken an extended trip with her daughter to visit her parents in the nation of Turkey.

The victim's bank card was then found to have been used abroad several times.

But when investigators examined the woman's home, her smartphone was located.

An individual also reported listening to a disturbing sound in the flat, and shouts of "mum" on the occasion the two were presumed to have gone missing.

A wider criminal probe was started, with authorities discovering various messages transmitted via the mother's device—among them a resignation letter to her employer and texts to the 55-year-old suspect.

Authorities said a significant cash transfer was also transferred to the man.

A senior police official informed media representatives on Tuesday that a storage unit had been leased before the vanishing and a freezer had been installed within.

The two suspects extracted the cooling unit from the unit on the very day the mother and daughter went missing, the official revealed. And a shortly afterward, they acquired a second unit.

Officials state they believe this points to the fatalities were planned in advance.

"How they died was not identifiable due to the advanced decay of the bodies," Tersch commented.

Mayr—of the public prosecutor's office—said the specific order of occurrences is yet to be determined, but the bodies were expertly concealed and were not found during a earlier inspection.

Although the brothers were taken into custody in the summer, it was only on the 12th of November that the suspect confessed to an occurrence and to concealing the remains. He disputes any plan to cause death, authorities said.

At the same time, his brother acknowledged a concealment but disputed awareness of a murder.

The two suspects are at this time in detention before court proceedings in jails in Innsbruck and Salzburg, situated at a distance.

Through a combined announcement, Austria's Minister for Women and Justice Minister declared the "alleged double murder... constitutes the abrupt and violent termination of two individuals and exposes a cruel system".

"Female individuals are falling victim to homicide due to the sole reason that they are women and girls," they continued.

"Gender-based killings are a strongly established and society-wide problem that we must address decisively."