Photo/Illutration Police officers in January 2011 offer flowers at the site where a woman was fatally stabbed in 2001 in Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

DNA testing led Hiroshima prefectural police to arrest a man on Oct. 25 on suspicion of murdering a woman at her home 20 years ago.

Kozo Takemori, 67, unemployed and living in Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture, has denied the allegations, saying, “I don’t recall,” according to police.

Takemori is suspected of stabbing the 35-year-old woman in her stomach with a fruit knife at her home in Fukuyama around 12:45 p.m. on Feb. 6, 2001.

The victim lived with her husband and two children. She was at home with her eldest daughter, who was then 9 months old, when the attack occurred.

Police said Takemori was unacquainted with the victim. Bereaved family members also said they did not know the suspect.

Police have not released a motive for the killing.

They said Takemori emerged as a possible suspect in early October.

“Items left at the murder scene and other things have led us to identify the suspect,” a senior police official said at a news conference on Oct. 25. “But they are evidence, so I can’t say anything more at this point.

According to sources, police conducted a DNA test on blood left at the crime scene and found that it matched Takemori’s DNA.

On Oct. 25, police asked Takemori to come to a police station for voluntary questioning, and then arrested him.

The knife used in the attack was left at the home, as well as footprints of 28-cm tennis shoes that police believed the perpetrator wore at the time.

An emergency alarm system at the home was disabled, and police who were notified by a security company rushed to the scene and found the woman lying on the floor near the entrance.

Police said they had obtained no credible information from witnesses.

They released photos of items left at the crime scene, such as the fruit knife and the same model of tennis shoes. But these items were mass-produced, and no promising leads came from them, police said.

It became a cold case.

But the Code of Criminal Procedure was revised in 2005, extending the statute of limitations for murder and murder-robbery from 15 years to 25 years. The statute of limitations for those crimes was abolished in 2010.

Without the revision, the statute of limitations in the Fukuyama case would have passed in February 2016.

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