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Body dumped in cemetery confirmed to be Shinjuku woman

Yukari Abe
Yukari Abe

TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police last week confirmed that a body discovered buried in a cemetery in Kanagawa Prefecture is that of a 25-year-old woman who went missing two years ago. Police are now attempting to locate her son, reports the Sankei Shimbun (June 26).

On Thursday afternoon, police found the body of Yukari Abe, a resident of Shinjuku Ward, wrapped in a blue sheet between the graves of the cemetery in Sagamihara City’s Midori Ward. The results of an autopsy were inconclusive as to the cause of death, but with trauma to the neck area evident investigators believe she died due to suffocation.

The following day, police arrested Kazumaro Sato, 29, Abe’s former boyfriend, and Chisaki Akiyama, 23, for allegedly abandoning the victim’s corpse.

In July of 2013, the suspects are accused of transporting Abe’s body in a rental car from Akiyama’s apartment in Setagaya Ward to the graveyard.

According to Jiji Press (June 26), Abe’s corpse was stored at Akiyama’s apartment for one month after her death. When a police officer visited the residence to investigate a strange smell, the suspects told him that a dog had died.

The victim’s seven-year-old son remains missing. Sato has told police he does not know his whereabouts. An examination of medical records revealed that the son has been unaccounted for since September of 2007, which is around the time that Abe began dating Sato, according to Fuji News Network (June 28).

In December of 2012, Abe told her family in Ome City, Tokyo that she had problems with debt. Two years later, family members reported to police that she had gone missing. Police then launched an investigation.