Police serves new arrest warrant on Shiraishi

March 22, 2018

Tokyo- Police on Thursday served a new arrest warrant on Takahiro Shiraishi for allegedly murdering a 17-year-old woman, the last case to be established as a murder among those involving the nine victims the suspect has admitted to killing in his apartment in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo.

The move by Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department means that Shiraishi, 27, has been served arrest warrants over the deaths of all nine people whose dismembered bodies were found in the apartment.

Public prosecutors plan to request the detention of the suspect for expert evaluation to investigate whether he was competent to take criminal responsibility for the serial murders.

The latest arrest warrant was served for allegedly hanging the woman from the city of Saitama, north of Tokyo, with a rope in the apartment around Sept. 30 last year and abandoning her body.

The suspect has told police investigators that he committed the crime for money and that he stole 20,000-30,000 yen from the woman, who was a second-year high school student, according to investigative sources.

The woman left her home at around 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 30 last year after telling her mother that she was off to do her part-time job. An integrated circuit card apparently belonging to her that was found in the apartment showed that she got on a train at a station near her home and got off at a station near the crime scene shortly after 1 p.m. on the same day.

Security camera footage showed Shiraishi and the woman walking together from the station toward the apartment. Her bloodstains were found on a wall of the apartment.

The two are believed to have exchanged suicide-related Twitter posts. Shiraishi told the investigators that he deleted all of the messages and that the woman did not seem to be willing to die, according to the sources. Jiji Press