Japan man rents wife’s murder flat for 20 years to preserve crime scene, spends US$145,000
Grieving husband of multiple stabbing victim refuses to clean up bloodstains; police reopen case, female killer confesses
A grieving husband in Japan paid rent on the empty “haunted house” in which his wife was murdered for 26 years in the hope of uncovering clues about who killed her.
His hopes were finally realised when the suspect gave herself up to police in Nagoya, central Japan. She was the man’s classmate at secondary school and had a crush on him.
The case attracted public attention after it was reported by the news outlet NHK in early November.
The murder took place on November 13, 1999, when housewife Namiko Takaba was found dead at home. She had been stabbed in the neck with a sharp object multiple times.
Her two-year-old son was left uninjured by her side.
The authorities put 100,000 police officers on the case and 5,000 people were interviewed to no avail.
The only clues investigators unearthed were that the suspect was a female with type B blood, she was about 1.6m tall and had been wearing shoes 24cm in length.