Prosecutors question Takahiro Shiraishi, who reportedly admitted cutting up bodies and throwing parts out with the rubbish

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A Japanese man arrested after police found nine dismembered corpses in his house has confessed to killing all of his young victims over a period of two months after contacting them via Twitter, according to media reports.

Takahiro Shiraishi, 27, has also confessed he “assaulted” all of his eight female victims, the Fuji TV network said, using a Japanese media euphemism for sexual attacks.

Prosecutors were questioning Shiraishi, who has reportedly admitted cutting up the bodies and throwing parts out with the rubbish, then sprinkling cat litter over the remains in an effort to cover up the evidence.

In all, 240 pieces of bone belonging to nine people, including heads and limbs, were discovered inside coolers and toolboxes at his apartment, the Tokyo Shimbun said.

The grisly case has shocked Japan, and pictures of the nondescript apartment building in a quiet residential area were splashed across the country’s front pages.

“Killing room” was the headline in the Nikkan Sports tabloid. “One murder a week” wrote the Sports Nippon.

Details also began to emerge of how investigators tracked down the suspected killer and trapped him using the same medium he used to lure his victims – Twitter.

Police were led to Shiraishi while investigating the disappearance of a 23-year-old woman, who had reportedly tweeted she wanted to take her own life.

Her brother managed to hack into her Twitter account, noticed a suspicious handle, then tweeted about his sister’s disappearance, media reports said.

One female follower told him that she recognised the Twitter handle. The brother asked her to contact the person, while he also reported the case to police, the Yomiuri daily said.

The woman managed to convince Shiraishi to come to a train station, where investigators waited and followed him to his house, media say. Immediately after he returned to his apartment, police knocked on the door and found a white bag belonging to the missing sister, the Yomiuri said.

“When investigators asked the whereabouts of the sister, Shiraishi said ‘inside the cooler’, pointing at it,” the Yomiuri said.

Shiraishi has reportedly told police that four of his victims were teenagers, four others were about 20 years old and the other was in his or her late 20s. There were eight female victims and one male.

He contacted his victims via Twitter and killed most of them on the day he met them, he is reported to have told authorities.

He moved to the flat in Zama, a south-western suburb of Tokyo, on 22 August and contacted victims by tweeting that he would help their plans to kill themselves, the Mainichi Shimbun daily reported.

Shiraishi told police he killed his first victim, a female acquaintance, shortly after moving there, and spent three days dismembering her body, the Yomiuri Shimbun said. He then killed her boyfriend who asked about his missing girlfriend, the Yomiuri said, citing unnamed police sources.

Police believe that Shiraishi acted alone, the Tokyo Shimbun said. However, his motives remain unclear, and investigators are questioning whether it is possible to kill a person almost every week without neighbours noticing sounds of altercations or screams.

Neighbours have since reported noticing a foul smell emanating from the flat.

Shiraishi told investigators he kept the body parts because he was afraid he might get caught if he discarded them. He has been charged with improper disposal of one body but police are searching for evidence he killed all nine.

While Japan prides itself on its low crime rate, it is no stranger to high-profile violent crimes. In Japan’s bloodiest case for decades, Satoshi Uematsu is accused of killing 19 people and attempting to kill or injure 24 others at a disability centre near Tokyo in July 2016. In 1997, a 14-year-old schoolboy decapitated an 11-year-old and placed the head at the gates of his school.