3 arrested on suspicion of murder at Nagoya hotel

The Yomiuri Shimbun

12:26 JST, December 9, 2022

NAGOYA — Two women, including an 18-year-old student, and a man have been arrested on charges of murdering a female university student at a Nagoya hotel, the Aichi prefectural police announced Thursday.

Mayumi Watanabe, 39, a part-time employee from Date, Fukushima Prefecture; Kenta Suzuki, 48, who identified himself as a temp worker living in Anjo, Aichi Prefecture; and the 18-year-old female university student from Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture were taken into custody on Wednesday and Thursday.

According to police, the three are suspected of killing 20-year-old Yuri Kako, of Tokai, Aichi Prefecture, by suffocation at a hotel in Nagoya’s Naka Ward sometime around Tuesday.

Sources close to the investigation said the four reserved two hotel rooms and stayed there on Monday night. The following day, a hotel employee entered one of the rooms and found the body with a bag covering the head, making acute respiratory failure the suspected cause of death.

Police found no noticeable external injuries nor disarray among the clothing. There were traces of drug use in the room, and the police are further investigating the circumstances of the death and the relationships between the four.