Photo/Illutration A man, bending between two police officers, is arrested by police in connection with a burglary in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward on Dec. 5. (Provided by an eyewitness)

The address of a Tokyo murder victim was found in a message of a cellphone seized in connection with a separate incident in the capital, reinforcing a belief among police that criminal gangs are operating in a coordinated manner, investigative sources said.

Investigators with Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department suspect there is a link between the Jan. 19 murder of 90-year-old Kinuyo Oshio at her home in Komae, western Tokyo, and a burglary and injury case in Nakano Ward last month.

Police suspect that a single criminal group is likely behind several burglary cases reported around the Kanto region, given that Oshio’s information was also found on the cellphone of a suspect taken into custody for a case that occurred in Chiba Prefecture.

According to the sources, a group of six men broke into the house of a man in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward on Dec. 5, striking him in the face and injuring him. They made off with cash, and damage from the incident was estimated at 30 million yen ($232,000).

The MPD arrested an unemployed man in his 30s the same day in connection with the case. They also arrested a 21-year-old from Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Jan. 21, when he was visiting Tokyo, on suspicion of involvement in the case.

When police checked the cellphone they seized from a car used by the 21-year-old, they discovered a text dated on the day before Oshio’s murder that showed “Komae” and other information concerning the incident.

Police also found texts exchanged about the Oshio case before and after the cellphone message.

The man told investigators that the cellphone did not belong to him, according to sources. 

MPD investigators also believe that three men, all aged 19, are involved in five of a series of burglaries that occurred in the Kanto region this month, according to the sources. The men were initially arrested as suspects in a theft.

Police in Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures are trying to determine if the perpetrators behind Oshio’s murder were also linked to these five cases.

Apart from Oshio’s case, seven robberies took place in the Kanto region between Jan. 9 and Jan. 14. Of the seven, features of five cases, including those in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, and Tsukuba in Ibaraki Prefecture, appeared similar to a robbery at a jewelry shop in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward in December.

In all the incidents, a group of three men bound the victims with adhesive tape and used a hammer after entering the buildings when people were inside.

Security camera footage showed that the assailants also used a similar vehicle to flee, according to the sources.

One of the three men arrested between Jan. 17 and Jan. 18 in connection with the robbery in Shibuya Ward told police that he responded to an ad on an Instagram site through which he received direct messages from the person orchestrating the criminal acts.



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