SAPPORO: Police will rearrest a woman and her parents on suspicion of murder as early as Monday in a high-profile case in which a man’s headless body was found in a hotel in the northern Japan city of Sapporo, investigative sources said Friday.
The Hokkaido prefectural police department found a human head at the suspects’ home in Sapporo’s Atsubetsu Ward through a search. The head was confirmed to have belonged to the man found dead at the hotel, based on his dental records and other data.
The woman, Runa Tamura, whose occupation is unknown, and her 59-year-old father, Osamu Tamura, who is a doctor, were arrested late July for allegedly conspiring to behead a 62-year-old male company employee apparently with a knife in a hotel room in Sapporo’s Chuo Ward between late at night on July 1 and early in the morning on July 2, and then taking away the man’s head.
The police also arrested Hiroko Tamura, Runa’s 60-year-old mother, who is a part-time worker, late July.
Runa was an acquaintance of the victim, who was found lying naked in the bathroom of the hotel room by an employee of the hotel around 3 p.m. on July 2. The cause of his death was hemorrhagic shock.
Footage from the hotel’s security cameras shows Runa entering a room with a man and later leaving alone.
Police believe that the daughter murdered the man, and that the father drove her to and from near the hotel.
The mother is believed to have known about the case, as the victim’s head was kept in a container in the bathroom of the family’s home in Sapporo.
Runa is said to have had a problem with the victim. Police are carefully investigating the cause of the case.
JIJI Press