Writer's story makes him prime suspect in prostitute's murder

A philosophy graduate and would-be novelist who wrote a tortured story about a young man who murders a prostitute in Turin has been arrested by Italian police on suspicion of carrying out an almost identical killing.

Daniele Ughetto Piampaschet, 34, has denied murdering Anthonia Egbuna, 20, and dumping her body in the river Po in November. Details of her death are eerily echoed by his manuscript, entitled The Rose and the Lion, in which the protagonist kills a Nigerian prostitute rather than share her with other men, believing it is "the only way to preserve her purity intact".

In a case echoing the film Basic Instinct, police found the nine-page manuscript among Egbuna's possessions and traced it back to Piampaschet, a regular customer of hers who had become obsessively jealous, investigators believe.

In letters found with the manuscript, Piampaschet wrote to Egbuna: "I love you but I am tired of your work … When will you leave the streets? Please, leave them, we can earn money differently."

In his story, the prostitute, also called Anthonia, and the protagonist, a young man who lives in the same area as Piampaschet, spend "carefree hours" together, but the man loses sleep dreaming of her other customers, "each one dirtier and more lurid than the next".

One night he arrives to pick her up, they argue and she refuses to get into his car. Enraged, the man forces her in and then strangles her behind a bush on the same street in Turin where the real-life Anthonia worked.