15-year-old girl among Japan ‘serial killer’ mutilation victims
TOKYO, Japan -- Three high school girls, including a 15-year-old, were among the nine people mutilated by a suspected serial killer in Japan, reports said Monday, as one woman described how she had a lucky escape.
At least three of the victims were high school pupils from different regions and one of them was a 15-year-old girl who went missing in late August, several media quoted police sources as saying.
Not all of the victims have been identified but some were tracked down via bank cards and other items left in the apartment room of Takahiro Shiraishi, where the Japanese man allegedly murdered and hacked up nine young people.
Some cellphones also lost contact near the apartment, reports said.
On the morning of Halloween, police uncovered a grisly house of horrors behind Shiraishi's front door: nine dismembered bodies with as many as 240 bone parts stashed in coolers and tool boxes, sprinkled with cat litter in a bid to hide the evidence.
He moved into the oneroom apartment in Zama, a southwestern suburb of Tokyo, on August 22.
He is suspected of having lured people with suicidal tendencies via Twitter by telling them he could help them in their plans or even die alongside them.
He reportedly went ahead with killing people even after realising what they had wanted was just to talk rather than to die.
"I had no intention of killing myself at all. None (of the victims) wanted to die actually," the private Fuji television network quoted Shiraishi as telling investigators.
He allegedly hanged victims after giving them alcohol or sleeping pills or strangling them until they fainted.
He may have continued to kill if not arrested.