Suspect in Japan serial-killer case sought out suicidal people

TOKYO — Over the summer, the man told his father his life had no meaning. Then he went looking for others who felt the same way, and apparently killed them.

The man, Takahiro Shiraishi, was arrested Tuesday, a day after police visited his apartment almost 30 miles southwest of Tokyo and found the dismembered parts of nine bodies. Japan was riveted as the news media disclosed more grisly details from the second day of the investigation, reporting Shiraishi, 27, had confessed to finding the victims, who he said were considering suicide, on Twitter.

In Japan, a low-crime country, it is the grimmest such case since a former employee of a center for the disabled went on a knife rampage there, killing 19 people last year.

Shiraishi’s case, involving social media suicide pacts, connections to Tokyo’s notorious red-light district and neighbors who did not report a noxious smell coming from the suspect’s apartment for months, has the hallmarks of a grotesque thriller novel or horror movie.

Japan has the thirdhighest suicide rate of the world’s richest countries, after South Korea and Hungary, and its government has prioritized suicide prevention, monitoring suicide-related message boards on the internet, among other measures. The Japanese murder rate, by contrast, is one of the lowest in the world, making the news media all the more obsessed with the ghastly details of the current case.

Television reporters spent a good part of Tuesday and Wednesday training their cameras on the building in the city of Zama where Shiraishi lived, or showing footage of the suspect covering his eyes with his hands as police drove him to meet with prosecutors Wednesday morning.

With the police officially saying very little, it was left to the Japanese news media to report details leaked to members-only “press clubs” for crime reporters.

Although the police have so far charged Shiraishi only with “abandoning bodies,” news reports Tuesday described him as a serial killer who sought people who were thinking of killing themselves and who had expressed their dark thoughts on Twitter. Police are expected to charge Shiraishi with murder.

According to news reports, police discovered body parts from eight women and one man in Shiraishi’s apartment, along with a saw, ropes and an awl, apparently used to restrain and cut the bodies. The body parts, which included severed heads, were found in cold-storage containers and tool boxes, some covered in cat litter. The national broadcaster NHK reported Shiraishi had said four of the victims were teenagers.

Kyodo News reported Shiraishi, who worked as a recruiter for an escort service based in the Tokyo red-light district of Kabukicho, had confessed to sexually assaulting some of the women before killing them.

Authorities were initially led to Shiraishi’s apartment while searching for a missing 23-year-old Tokyo woman who had posted on Twitter that she was “looking for someone who will die with me.”

Her brother reported her missing late last month, and through her Twitter account found she had been exchanging messages with Shiraishi. The brother said she had been thinking of killing herself since the death of their mother in June, and that she had disappeared Oct. 23 from the group home in Hachioji, a suburb of Tokyo, where she was living.

The suspect told police he had sent a Twitter message to the woman saying, “Let’s die together,” Kyodo reported.

Police have not yet said whether the woman’s remains were among those at Shiraishi’s apartment.