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Tokyo police have arrested a man after finding “multiple” dismembered bodies in coolers in his apartment in a city southwest of the capital.

The 27-year-old suspect, Takahiro Shiraishi, confessed to cutting up the bodies after killing the victims and hiding them in cold-storage cases covered with cat litter, a police spokesman said Tuesday. Shiraishi said he did that to hide the evidence, police said.

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Investigators found the bodies while searching for a 23-year-old woman who had disappeared last week, the spokesman said. He did not give his name, in line with police policy.

Police believe the bodies of nine people — eight women and one man — were hidden in the apartment, national broadcaster NHK and other media said. The missing woman is thought to be one of them.

Police first found the severed heads of two victims in coolers in the apartment’s entryway, then found the other seven while searching in the suspect’s apartment, local media reported.