On December 20, 2022, the Saitama District Court handed Kazuharu Shimada, a one-time member of the Yamaguchi-gumi felony syndicate, a 20-year jail time period over the homicide of a male worker of a restaurant in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture some 5 years earlier than.
The ruling was a milestone in a story of homicide that was coated up by tight-lipped accomplices and using a machine that’s sometimes makes negitoro, which is minced fatty tuna combined with inexperienced onions.
Obviously, this was no abnormal homicide. Up to seven individuals participated within the deadly assault of 24-year-old Tatsunari Ito. His was by no means discovered as a result of the culprits floor it within the machine and later burned it.
In addition to there being no physique, Ito was not instantly reported lacking, which means the crime was not found till police acquired a tip a number of years later.
Despite the spectacular method through which the crime was carried out, most of these concerned weren’t charged as a result of the statute of limitations had expired on a number of costs. Shimada was the one defendant charged with homicide.
The trial was tumultuous, but didn’t obtain media protection proportional to the outlandishness of the crime. For what precisely transpired, The Tokyo Reporter editorial crew has damaged the story into 4 components. To begin, we introduce the important thing gamers within the crime.
“Dismembered him with a machine”
The scene of the crime was Hawaiian Bar Lapule within the Nishi Kawaguchi red-light district of Kawaguchi. Early on March 18, 2016, seven males and one lady assaulted Ito, a bar worker on the time, till he died.
The key gamers within the crime had been Shimada and Junya Motohashi, who owned Lapule. The different contributors had been three henchman working in a bunch of criminals overseen by Motohashi, his girlfriend and his driver.
As time handed, the perpetrators in all probability surmised that that they had gotten away with homicide. In essence, the right crime. That modified in December 2018.
“It was then that the police acquired an nameless tip about ‘a person was assaulted and murdered at a bar in Nishi Kawaguchi, and the body was dumped,’” a local reporter tells weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun (Nov. 2021). “The police then began an investigation.”
In February 2019, the police first explained the situation to Ito’s father and had him file a lacking individuals report. The investigation then ramped up.
In the primary half of October 2021, police arrested the seven on suspicion of assault. Complicating issues, nevertheless, was that Motohashi dedicated suicide by hanging himself on the Kawaguchi Police Station on October 28, simply weeks after his arrest. Aged 52, he left behind a suicide observe.
The following month, the Saitama District Public Prosecutors Office indicted Shimada on costs of homicide. According to police, he made a stunning assertion throughout questioning: “After killing him, I froze him in a freezer at a market and dismembered him with a machine.”
“Apparently lost his temper”
The incident started on the night earlier than the killing. At first, Motohashi and others gathered for drinks at Lapule. It was later that Motohashi summoned the three henchmen.
“Ito at one point was the boyfriend of Shimada’s daughter,” an individual with data of Motohashi’s ring tells the journal. “Ito had been using a smartphone under his daughter’s name, but Shimada apparently lost his temper when he didn’t pay the bill [after they broke up]. Apparently, the daughter had consulted with Shimada about her relationship with Ito, and this was what led to the assault.”
At some level that night, Motohashi started to query Ito in regards to the aforementioned smartphone and allegations that he could have swindled clients on the bar.
Motohashi then took out his telephone and known as Shimada. Upon arriving on the bar, Shimada took Ito to the restroom whereas questioning him. After punching him, he instantly left the restroom. But by this time Motohashi had entered the house, and the assault started.
Scattered the pulverized stays
After the assault, which very presumably ended within the strangulation of Ito, the perpetrators carried his physique out of the bar.
“During the interrogation of the seven, they said that they froze the body, dismembered it and dumped it,” a member of the Saitama Prefectural Police tells the journal. “According to their statements, the body was frozen in a large freezer for tuna and other fish at a market in Saitama for up to five days. After freezing the body, they used a tuna-cutting machine to dismember it into between six and 8 pieces, and then they froze it again.”
One of the perpetrators additionally mentioned that they later combined it with some fish in a mincing machine for negitoro, and scattered the pulverized stays in a scrap yard.
“It is still unclear whether Ito died when he was strangled during the assault or when he was frozen,” the identical police supply says.
As to the “tuna-cutting machine,” that was a bandsaw, which is a noticed with a blade that strikes vertically at excessive velocity.
“An automatic bandsaw can be used to cut frozen tuna and meat into blocks,” one other member of the Saitama police says, “and has enough power that a human can easily be cut into small pieces.”
It isn’t a surprise then that Ito’s physique was by no means discovered.
“But since DNA found on the machine matched Ito’s,” the second officer says, “it seems that it was used to dispose of the body.”
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