Marinova's slaying follows those of prominent journalists in Malta and Slovakia, with both murders linked to their work and both sparking public outrage.
In October 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese reporter who specialised in government corruption and money laundering, was killed by a car bomb near her home. And in February, Ján Kuciak, a Slovakian journalist who also reported on government corruption, was shot and killed along with his financee, Martina Kusnirova.
Bulgaria was the lowest-ranking EU member in Reporters Without Borders' 2018 World Press Freedom Index. The Paris-based group called corruption and collusion between media, politicians and oligarchs "widespread."
Marinova's last show included an interview with two journalists who were arrested last month while working on a graft probe related to EU funding.
A non-governmental organisation behind previous anti-government protests has arranged via social media what it calls a "vigil" to commemorate the murdered journalist.
"Again a courageous journalist falls in the fight for truth and against corruption," Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission, said in Brussels. The European Union pledged its support for Bulgarian authorities as they continued their investigation.
Bulgarian officials emphasised that there was no evidence yet to connect Marinova's killing to her work.
"We don't have information of her receiving any threats," Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said told reporters in Sofia yesterday. "We also don't have any information that connects the crime to her work, but we're not ruling out this version until we have proof."
Marinov added: "It's about rape and murder."
Bulgarian media reported today that the park where Marinova was killed is adjacent to a psychiatric facility and authorities were investigating whether a patient could have been Marinova's attacker.
"The best criminologists have been sent to Ruse - let's not hurry them," Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said. "A large amount of DNA has been obtained."
Marionva, a former lifestyle journalist, was a television presenter for TVN, a popular channel in northeastern Bulgaria. Last month she began anchoring a programme called Detector, which focused on political investigations.
Only one segment of the relaunched programme aired before her death. It featured the work of two journalists investigating the alleged misuse of public EU funds by a network of corporations in the region. The journalists - Dimitar Stoyanov, from the Bulgarian website Bivol, and Atilla Biro, a Romanian journalist from the Rise Project - were briefly detained by local authorities in mid-September.
Atanas Tchobanov, the editor-in-chief of Bivol, said in a telephone interview that he was sceptical of the Government's response. "We cannot downplay any possibility and any version, but if you are investigating the killing, you are looking for a motive," he said.
At the same time, he clarified that Marinova was a television presenter and technically not an investigative reporter. "She wanted to make investigative reporting," he said. "Who knows? Probably she would be a good investigative reporter one day, but she's no longer here."
- Bloomberg, Washington Post
