US man ‘cut up woman he met online and left her body parts scattered across mountains outside two Japanese cities’

A US tourist in Japan murdered a girl he met on a dating app, chopped her up and scattered her body parts across the Japanese countryside, police have alleged.

Yevgeniy Vasilievich Bayraktar, 26, was arrested on Thursday after a woman he was seen with vanished. Her severed head was found on Saturday, inside a suitcase in an Osaka flat he was renting, according to local officials. 

Police said he admitted to killing the 27-year-old woman from Sanda, Hyogo Prefecture, and then directed them to the locations of her body parts, which had been scattered in mountainous areas of Shimamoto, Osaka Prefecture and Kyoto’s Yamashina Ward.

The torso was found on the ground and the arms covered with soil at the same location in Shimamoto. Both legs were found in Yamashina. 

There were no traces of wounds besides the cuts made to dismember the body. The victim has not been identified.

Bayraktar, a US national who entered Japan in late January, was the last person seen with the woman.

The two had been in contact through a dating app that matches Japanese people with foreigners, sources said.