By CHIFUMI SHINYA/ Staff Writer
July 24, 2023 at 19:12 JST
The entrance of the suspects’ home in Sapporo is covered with a tarpaulin during a police search on July 24. (Masanari Matsuda)
SAPPORO--Police on July 24 arrested a woman and her father in connection with the discovery of a headless body in a hotel here three weeks ago.
Runa Tamura, 29, and her father Osamu, a 59-year-old doctor, were held on suspicion of damaging, abandoning and illegally possessing a body, police said.
Police believe the victim, a 62-year-old Hokkaido resident, was known to Runa, who lives in Sapporo.
The daughter and father pair are suspected of decapitating the man in a hotel in Sapporo’s Susukino entertainment district late on July 1 or early on July 2, the police said.
They are also suspected of taking the victim's head to another location. It remains missing.
The man died from a stab wound in the body. His head was apparently cut off after death, investigative sources said.
The victim’s body was naked. No clothing or belongings such as a cellphone or wallet were found.
There were no signs of a struggle in the hotel room, and the victim had no defense wounds, the sources said.
Security camera footage showed the victim entering the hotel with a shorter person carrying a large suitcase around 10:50 p.m. on July 1.
The second person left the hotel alone, carrying the suitcase, at around 2 a.m. on July 2.
A peek through the music industry’s curtain at the producers who harnessed social media to help their idols go global.
A series based on diplomatic documents declassified by Japan’s Foreign Ministry
Here is a collection of first-hand accounts by “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors.
Cooking experts, chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life.
A series about Japanese-Americans and their memories of World War II
