“She was shot at point blank range. Almost half of her head was missing,” Mr Dereko, 41, told The Telegraph. 

The police told the Derekos that Karina had been killed by “violent death”. Yet because the story was “so horrific”, the authorities withheld information from them, although they were informed that she had been tortured. 

They also advised Mrs Dereko against viewing images of her daughter’s remains. 

“We think it could be possible that she was raped,” Mr Dereko added.

“We have not seen the lower part of her body, just the upper part, but what we have seen at the top, we can only imagine what can be on the rest of her body.”

The full details of how their child was murdered are not known. They have been told of the address where her body was found, some distance from the apartment where she had been living. 

They know she was tortured and that she had “tears” and “wounds” on her body. 

Photographs seen by The Telegraph showed that the skin on her hands was scorched and bones were visible, although the silver rings she wore on her fingers were still there. 

All of her nails, bar one, which was painted pink, had been torn from her fingers. 

“It was like she had been trying to fight,” her step-father said. 

Karina was also found with a tourniquet around her leg, where she had tried to stem the bleeding from a gunshot wound, which were found in her legs and arms.