TOKYO • A Japanese man arrested after police found nine dismembered corpses rotting in his house has confessed to killing all his victims over a two-month spree after contacting them via Twitter, media reports said yesterday..
TOKYO • A Japanese man arrested after police found nine dismembered corpses rotting in his house has confessed to killing all his victims over a two-month spree after contacting them via Twitter, media reports said yesterday.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 27, also confessed that he « assaulted » all of his eight female victims, the Fuji TV network said, using a Japanese media euphemism for sexual attacks.
Shiraishi has reportedly admitted hacking the flesh off the bodies and throwing it out with the trash, then sprinkling cat litter over the remains to cover up the evidence.
In all, some 240 pieces of bone belonging to nine people, including heads and limbs, were discovered inside coolers and toolboxes at his apartment, the Tokyo Shimbun said.
The grisly case has stunned Japan, which has an extremely low crime rate, and pictures of the nondescript house in a quiet residential area were splashed across the front pages of the country’s newspapers.
The suspect used to work as a part-time scout in a prostitution ring based in Shinjuku’s seedy Kabukicho district, reported local media. He was arrested in February for being involved in organised crime but was given a suspended prison term.
In June, Shiraishi told his father « there is no meaning in life », and « I do not know what I am living for ».
Details have emerged as to how investigators tracked down the suspected killer and trapped him using the same medium – Twitter – he himself used to lure his victims.
