Nine headless bodies found in Tokyo flat; man held

Zama, Japan: Japanese police have found nine mutilated bodies hidden in containers with their heads cut off and flesh stripped in a suburban Tokyo flat, media reported on Tuesday.

Tokyo police have arrested 27-year-old Takahiro Shiraishi who reportedly confessed to hacking the flesh off the bodies and throwing it out with the trash, then sprinkling cat litter over the remains in an effort to cover up the evidence.

According to local media, Shiraishi told police he had chopped up the bodies in a bathroom, while a saw was found in his room.

The suspect reportedly told investigators he had “dumped cut flesh and organs in the trash,” prompting fears he was a serial killer as police believe he killed all nine victims, according to NHK. Police and journalists swarmed around the nondescript apartment in the quiet residential neighbourhood of Zama, as locals struggled to comprehend how an act of such violence could have occurred so near them. “It’s really cruel. He used a saw to dismember the bodies or something. He must be abnormal to have done such things,” said neighbour Hideaki Hosogaya. 

The Sankei Shimbun newspaper quoted another neighbour as saying he had smelled an odour he had “never smelled before”. “I thought it was the smell of sewage,” he said.

Police used blue tarps to block views inside the two-storey building, and covered windows of the second-floor room where the bodies were discovered.