Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tokyo police search for another body based on confession by yakuza

Police are searching a forest in Saitama Prefecture for the body of a real estate executive who went missing in 1998
Police are searching a forest in Saitama Prefecture for the body of a real estate executive who went missing in 1998

SAITAMA (TR) – Following a confession by gang boss currently on death row for a murder in 2003, Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Wednesday began searching in a mountainous area of the town of Tokigawa for a corpse that is believed to be that of a man killed in a separate case, reports the Mainichi Shimbun (July 6).

About 60 investigators are scouring a wooded area for the remains of Mamoru Saito, a 49-year-old real estate executive who went missing in 1998.

Officers are working off a tip provided by Osamu Yano, a 67-year-old former head of the Yano Mutsumi-kai, a one time affiliate gang of the Sumiyoshi-kai.

Yano is currently on death row for ordering two members of his gang to carry out a shooting that left four people dead at a “snack” hostess club in Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture on January 25, 2003.

This is the second such incident involving Yano that has emerged this year. In April, police using information provided by the mobster found the body of Shizuo Tsugawa, a 60-year-old real estate executive, in a mountainous area of Isehara City, Kanagawa Prefecture.

Yano told police that he killed Tsugawa in 1996 over a dispute the gang had with him over a redevelopment project near Isehara Station.

In the case of Saito, he went missing after a meeting in the Ikebukuro area of Tokyo’s Toshima Ward on April 5, 1998. According to information released in a court-related report in September of 2014, Yano said Saito was abducted and strangled to death over money problems that included a loan of 86 million yen.

A male acquaintance of Yano later dumped Saito’s body. During questioning, the acquaintance revealed the location to police.

In March and April of 1997, Saito was called to the National Diet to testify in connection to a fraud trial involving Tatsuo Tamobe, then a member of the House of Councillors.