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Tokyo cops: Tooth may belong to missing boy of murdered woman

Kazumaro Sato
Kazumaro Sato

KANAGAWA (TR) – Investigative sources with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police have revealed that a tooth found in Kawasaki City may belong to a missing boy whose mother is believed to have been murdered, reports TBS News (Aug. 2).

Police searching a field found the tooth, bone fragments and other items that may belong to the son of Yukari Abe, whose body was found buried at a cemetery in Sagamihara City on June 24, 2015. The results of a DNA analysis of the items will be used to determine if in fact the items belong to the boy, according to Fuji News Network (Aug. 2).

In February, police charged Kazumaro Sato, 30, with the murder of Abe. He allegedly plied Abe with sleeping pills before strangling her inside her apartment in Shinjuku Ward in June of 2013.

Police first arrested Sato the day after Abe’s body was found on charges of abandoning a corpse. In December, a Tokyo court handed down a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for three years, to Sato.

Sato’s then girlfriend Chisaki Akiyama, 24, has also been arrested on corpse abandonment and murder charges. Police allege that Akiyama purchased the pills used in the crime. According to police, she claims Sato requested she purchase the pills.

The suspects are believed to have transported Abe’s body in a rental car from Akiyama’s apartment in Setagaya Ward to the graveyard on July 19, 2013. Abe’s corpse had been stored at Akiyama’s apartment for one month after her death.

In December of 2014, family members reported to police that Abe had gone missing. Police then launched an investigation.

The victim’s son would have been 7 years old at the time of his mother’s death. His whereabouts have been unknown, as far as information contained in government records, since 2007. Sato has denied having any knowledge about the boy.

Police searched the field over a one-month period earlier this year in Kawasaki after learning that the suspects had stopped there before abandoning Abe’s corpse in the cemetery in Sagamihara.