Crime & Courts

Sapporo Woman, Parents Arrested on Murder Charge

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo
An inspection is conducted at the hotel where a man’s headless body was found on July 8 in Chuo Ward, Sapporo.

The Yomiuri Shimbun

17:44 JST, August 14, 2023

SAPPORO — A 29-year-old woman and her parents were arrested Monday on suspicion of murdering a 62-year-old man who was found decapitated in a hotel room in Sapporo’s Susukino entertainment district, police said.

The Hokkaido prefectural police had already arrested the unemployed Runa Tamura, her 59-year-old doctor father Osamu, and her 60-year-old part-timer mother Hiroko — all from Atsubetsu Ward, Sapporo — on suspicion of destruction, possession and abandonment of a corpse.

According to a police announcement, the three were suspected of conspiring to fatally stab the company employee from Eniwa, Hokkaido, with a knife in the hotel room in Chuo Ward, Sapporo, sometime between the night of July 1 and the early morning of July 2. An autopsy revealed that the victim died of hemorrhagic shock.

The police arrested Runa and Osamu on July 24 and Hiroko on July 25, and the man’s severed head was found in the second-floor bathroom of the suspects’ house.