Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tokyo cops: Suspect dressed in drag to attack ex-girlfriend

Keitaro Saga
Keitaro Saga

TOKYO (TR) – Sources with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police revealed last week that a 50-year-old man in custody for allegedly abandoning the body of a former girlfriend was dressed in women’s clothing while attacking her, reports the Mainichi Shimbun (Oct. 27).

On the night of September 16, Keitaro Saga, a resident of Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, dressed in a wig and women’s shirt in order to apprehend Shiori Nakamoto, a 24-year-old employee at consulting company Cosmo Ship, at her residence in Tokyo’s Meguro Ward.

That night, Saga staked out Nakamoto’s apartment building until she came home from work at around 11:00 p.m. “Dressed (as a woman), I waited a few hours in the apartment building,” he is quoted by police. “I then entered her unit after calling out to her.”

Saga told police that they got into a fight over an unpaid loan he had extended to her. The suspect then bound her body with adhesive tape. “My intention was to intimidate her,” he said. After removing the tape, he stabbed her with a fruit knife.

“I then cut up her body with a saw,” the suspect was quoted in a previous report. “I scattered parts of the body in a river and sent others down a drain in her apartment in dumping it.”

Based on Saga’s testimony, police have searched the Arakawa River in Toda City, Saitama Prefecture, and the Tone River in Noda City, Chiba Prefecture.

Police have also obtained security camera footage from a discount store that shows the suspect in a wig purchasing a knife and garbage bags that are believed to have been used in the cutting and dumping of the victim’s corpse.

According to TV Asahi (Nov. 2), police this week found what appears to be human skin in a sewage pipe about 250 meters from Nakamoto’s apartment.

Met last year

In November of last year, the suspect met the victim while she was employed part-time in so-called “night work.” They subsequently lived together until the relationship ended this past March.

In July, the victim consulted with police about stalking by Saga, which included instances of violence. Saga was subsequently arrested under the Anti-Stalking Law.

However, Saga was released from custody 11 days later after agreeing in writing to not approach Nakamoto. In attempting to rectify the matter, police advised Nakamoto to move and quit her job.

Atsushi Funabashi, the president of Cosmo Ship, told Jiji Press (Oct. 27) that Nakamoto had told him about Saga’s arrest for stalking while adding that she still considered him “a little frightening.”