Photo/Illutration Seiha Sekine, left, with Ryutaro Takarajima in Tokyo’s Taito Ward in September 2023. (Provided by a source)

A Tokyo couple whose burned bodies were found in April had sleeping pills slipped into their drinks before they were lured to a vacant property and strangled, investigative sources said.

New charges were filed June 14 against two men already under arrest in the slayings of restaurant operator Ryutaro Takarajima, 55, and his wife Sachiko, 56.

Police say the crime was masterminded by Seiha Sekine, 32, the common-law husband of the couple’s daughter who lives in the capital’s Setagaya Ward. They named his primary accomplice as Ryo Maeda, 36, a real estate company executive who lives in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture.

Tokyo police believe Maeda provided a vacant house where the couple could be killed quietly.

So far, six people have faced charges in the case, ranging from destruction and abandonment of the couple’s bodies to outright murder. 

According to investigative sources, Sekine and Maeda have remained silent during questioning.

Police believe Sekine and Maeda conspired with the other four suspects to kill the couple in a garage of a vacant house in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward. The slayings were carried out sometime between midnight on April 15 and the wee hours of April 16, police said.

Autopsies showed the couple had ingested sleeping pills before they were strangled, according to investigative sources.

Security camera footage in Shinagawa Ward caught Takarajima standing unsteadily while chatting with Sekine and Maeda around 11 p.m. on April 15.

Investigators believe sleeping pills were slipped into the couple’s drinks before going to the vacant property where Kang Gwang-gi, 21, and Kirato Wakayama, 20, carried out the crime.

Investigators believe the couple were killed when they were in no state to fight back.

The couple owned more than a dozen restaurants in Tokyo’s Ueno district, and Sekine managed several of them.

An investigative source said June 14 that Sekine had rowed with the couple over how to run the restaurants and decided to kill them so he could run the eateries the way he wanted.

Maeda was in charge of introducing properties to the couple when they looked for locations to open a new restaurant.

On the day of the incident, Maeda took the couple out under the guise of introducing properties and brought them to meet Kang and Wakayama at the vacant house that he managed, the sources said.

The couple’s partially burned bodies were found near a river in Nasu, Tochigi Prefecure.

(This article was written by Minami Endo, Shomei Nagatsuma and Hiromichi Fujita.)

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