It was the morning of April 23rd, 1994, and a cleaning woman at Inokashira Park in Tokyo was emptying out the garbage cans when she came across a plastic bag that smelled particularly foul. At first believing it contained rotten fish, she opened the bag to take a peek inside, but was instead horrified to behold what was clearly a human ankle.
When authorities arrived at the scene and catalogued the contents of the bag, they discovered a total of twenty-four pieces of a human body, including a shoulder, two feet, two hands, and several other fragments sliced neatly into eight-inch chunks, all of which had been drained of blood and thoroughly washed. No head, torso, or genitalia was ever found.
Days later, the victim of this appalling murder was identified as thirty-five-year-old architect Seiichi Kawamura, who lived not far from the park. He had last been seen leaving a nearby karaoke bar alone at around eleven p.m. on the night of April 21st. His family had reported him missing on the morning of the 22nd when he had failed to come home after his night out.
An autopsy determined that Seiichi’s body had likely been cut apart with an electric saw and possibly a knife like those commonly used by fishermen. It was also suspected that his killer or killers had begun cutting him up while he was still alive. No trace of drugs or alcohol was found in his system, and because of the state of the remains, an exact cause of death could not be determined.
After the grisly crime went public, a handful of witnesses reported seeing a man who resembled Seiichi going into the park, and then later seeing two suspicious men carrying a bag around the park at roughly four a.m. Another witness also claimed they heard what sounded like a car hitting something near the park on the night Seiichi was murdered, leading some to speculate that perhaps Seiichi had been struck by a vehicle and then the driver had cut up the body to hide the crime. The lack of blood found at the scene and the intricacy of the post-mortem mutilations, however, seem to rule out this possibility.
Other theories have it that perhaps the architect had been targeted by the Yakuza for some reason, or had fallen afoul of an organ-dealing gang. There have also been rumors that he had been involved with some bizarre religious cult and was ritualistically murdered by them when he attempted to leave the sect.
The horrific crime, known as the Inokashira Park Dismemberment Incident, remains a baffling unsolved homicide in Japan, and it seems no progress at all has been made on the case since it occurred more than a quarter-century ago.
Crime Immemorial 