Mutilated torso found in Tokyo apartment
As outrage sparks in the Yokosuka area about a US Sailor (still, strangely, without a name) being arrested on suspicion of murdering a taxi driver on March 19th, a more gruesome crime is coming to light. And it’s not the fact that 2 sons of US soldiers have been arrested for stealing Y8,000/$80 from a taxi driver, which seems to be the main headline on Japan Today. It is that a mutilated body part, believed to be the torso of a Philippino woman has been found in a Tokyo apartment. This story comes from Kyodo news here in Japan:
Mutilated body part thought to be of Filipina found in Tokyo condo
Friday 04th April, 09:27 AM JST
A paper bag containing a mutilated body part suspected of belonging to a Filipino woman was found in a unit of a high-rise condominium building in Tokyofs Minato Ward on Thursday night, police said Friday.
The unit on the 26th floor of the building in the Odaiba district is shared by a Japanese man and several Filipina women who work in the same location in the Roppongi district, according to police.
One of the women, in her 20s, failed to report to work Thursday night, so another woman, 20, returned home at around 7:30 p.m. and encountered the man carrying a mutilated body with him, police said. The 20-year-old woman reported to a nearby police box at around 9:55 p.m., police said.
Police said they suspect the mutilated parts belong to the woman in her 20s and are looking for the man, who is in his 40s, who later disappeared after the 20-year-old woman returned from the police box.
The woman in her 20s was sleeping when the other women left the condo at around 8 a.m. Thursday, according to police.
Police officers found in the bag a square chunk measuring around 30 centimeters each side believed to be a human waist apparently severed by a knife. Blood-stained futon bedding was found in the kitchen of the unit that also has three rooms and a living room, they said.
A male employee at the same workplace as the women said, eeShe never failed to call whenever she takes a day off, but she didnft on April 3.ff
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Although this was a story for a few minutes on a couple of the news programmes this morning in Japan, it is seemingly not important enough to be shown on the Japan Times website. Of much more importance seems to be the story that the movie “Yasukuni” will be shown in Osaka in May. This story brings back strong memories of both Lindsay Hawker and Lucie Blackman, the most high profile but certainly not the only foreign women murdered in Japan in recent years. It is too early to determine who the suspect for this is but I will be keeping an eye on this story and how/if it develops.
Regarding the taxi cab driver murder, one Yokosuka resident was quoted as saying, “I canft walk around the city comfortably if incidents like this happen”. I can understand foreign females feeling the same way at the moment looking at this incident. Let us hope the police manage to track the woman’s killer and find the rest of her body so her family can try to get some closure. With recent events like the Tokyo DJ who killed a US man but who was acquitted as the victim was “picking a quarrel with everyone”, a lot of the foreign community isn’t really holding their breath with any of the NPA investigations and judicial system at the moment. Let us hope they prove us all wrong.
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seems to be a bit of a craze at the moment as body parts have been found on a beach in the uk this week - not pleasant for the person who finds them but I guess if you are going to hack up a body you dont really care