Zama man arrested after police discover 9 dismembered corpses in his apartment
Police arrested a 27-year-old man in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture, after finding nine bodies in his apartment, investigative sources said Tuesday.
The Metropolitan Police Department found the bodies and body parts while investigating Takahiro Shiraishi in connection with the disappearance of a 23-year-old woman in Hachioji, western Tokyo. The woman is believed to have met the man after writing on a suicide site on the internet that she wanted to kill herself.
“It’s true that I tried to hide the bodies of the people I killed to destroy evidence,” Shiraishi was quoted as saying by the police.
The police arrested the man, whose occupation is unknown, on an initial suspicion of discarding a corpse. Police suspect one of the bodies may belong to the 23-year-old woman.
The body parts, contained in cooler boxes in the man’s apartment, include at least two severed heads, they said. The police plan to carry out DNA tests in an effort to identify the deceased, the investigators added.
The woman was captured by a surveillance camera walking with the man in Zama near Sobudai-mae Station on the Odakyu Line, the police said.
An investigation was launched after the woman’s older brother reported her missing to the Takao Police Station in western Tokyo on Oct. 24, saying he had not been able to contact her since Oct. 21. The brother later learned of the suicide site after logging in using her name and password, and found she had been in touch with the suspect.
The apartment is in a residential area along the railway tracks of the Odakyu Odawara Line, about 600 meters from Sobudai-mae Station. There is a day care located nearby. The suspect reportedly started living in the wooden, two-story apartment in late August.
Security camera footage showed the victim and the suspect walking together at JR Hachioji Station and Sobudai-mae Station.
A man who lives on the same floor as the suspect said that noticed an “odd smell” when he walked past the apartment in August.
“I thought it smelled like sewage,” the neighbor said. “It was something I never smelled before.” The man added, however, that he hadn’t heard any strange noise or voices coming from the apartment.