A suspect has been arrested in the "Nagoya housewife murder case" in Japan, which had remained unsolved for 26 years.
On Oct. 31, according to local media including Nagoya TV, Aichi Prefectural Police said they arrested Yasufuku Kumiko, 69, who lives in Minato Ward, Nagoya, on suspicion of murder. Police held an emergency news conference that afternoon and said the suspect voluntarily came to a police station and admitted to the crime. Yasufuku was reportedly a high school classmate of the victim's husband.
According to police, on Nov. 13, 1999, in an apartment in Nagoya, Yasufuku is suspected of stabbing housewife Takaba Namiko, then 32, multiple times with a blade and killing her. The victim was found bleeding in the living room of her home, and her 2-year-old son who was with her at the time was not injured. At the time of the incident, her husband, Takaba Satoru, 69, was out.
Takaba said, "It still doesn't feel real," and added, "If the culprit is caught someday, I want to use it for a crime scene reenactment. I have kept the apartment where the incident occurred intact for 26 years, paying the rent every month." The entrance is said to still have bloodstains and footprints believed to be the culprit's.
In 2015 and 2020, based on eyewitness statements, police released a description poster—"female, 40 to 55, about 160 centimeters tall, medium build, shoe size 24 centimeters"—and asked for tips. During the investigation, they questioned more than 5,000 people and deployed over 100,000 personnel, but no decisive clue was found.
According to her husband, Satoru, he and Yasufuku were members of the same soft tennis club in high school, and at the time she confessed her feelings to Satoru by giving him chocolate and a letter, but he declined. He added, "I had someone else I liked then, and after entering college there was no special interaction, and we only occasionally saw each other at the court."
After the incident, Satoru led a movement with other victims' families to abolish the statute of limitations for murder, and in 2010 Japan officially abolished the statute of limitations for serious crimes such as murder. In 2020, police offered a reward of up to 3 million yen for information in the case and continued the investigation, and after 26 years they finally put an end to the long probe with the arrest of a suspect.