WARSAW — When the body of a 30-year-old woman, bruised, beaten and raped, was discovered on Saturday in a park in the city of Ruse in northeastern Bulgaria, the grisly crime scene stunned a nation where corruption is endemic but murder is relatively rare.

The victim was identified on Sunday as Viktoria Marinova, a journalist who was the host of a new talk show called “Detector” that offered a venue for investigative reporters, and national shock over her brutal death quickly spread to international concern.

Although there was some disagreement about the extent of Ms. Marinova’s role in investigating corruption, the questions surrounding her death reflected the tense atmosphere for journalists in the region: Two reporters in the European Union — Jan Kuciak in Slovakia and Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta — have been killed in the past year because of the work they were doing to expose graft at the highest levels of government.

Bulgarian officials condemned the attack on Ms. Marinova, but they were also insistent that there was nothing to suggest that she had been killed because of her work. They said there was no evidence that she had been threatened, and noted that her car keys, her cellphone and parts of her clothing were missing.