Nine human heads found in Tokyo flat

They had been stored in various coolers and containers; suspect admitted to disposal of organs in trash

Japanese police have found nine bodies with their flesh stripped off and heads severed in containers in a suburban Tokyo flat, media reported yesterday.

Police confirmed to AFP they had arrested 27-year-old Takahiro Shiraishi, who lives in the apartment in the quiet residential neighbourhood of Zama.

Police originally found two heads inside a cool box at the entrance to the apartment before making the grisly discovery of the other body parts, according to Jiji Press.

“During the course of the investigation, the heads of nine bodies have been discovered” inside various coolers and containers in the apartment, private TV network TBS said. For the time being, police arrested Shiraishi on a charge that he dismembered one body and placed it inside a cooler, a charge that he was not contesting, according to a spokesman at Tokyo Metropolitan Police.

“He has said, ‘I dismembered a body and placed it inside a cooler and poured cat litter over it. It was meant to hide the body that I killed and to hide evidence’,” the spokesman told AFP, declining to elaborate.

Mostly women

According to TBS, Shiraishi told police he “dumped cut flesh and organs in the trash”.

The bodies were of eight women and one man, media reported. Jiji Press said Shiraishi had told police he chopped up the bodies in a bathroom and a saw was found in his room. The police spokesman could not immediately confirm these reports.

TBS said the body parts had been stripped of flesh. Teams of investigators swarmed over the apartment as dozens of journalists joined curious neighbours on the narrow street.