TOKYO (TR) – New information has shed light on the bizarre murder-suicide involving a 36-year-old woman and her three sons in Nishitokyo City. Specifically, the fact that she and her secretly kept boyfriend took a taxi ride to Haneda Airport weeks before the bloodbath.
According to Shukan Shincho (Jan. 13), a taxi driver recalled picking up Yuka Nomura and her boyfriend, 27-year-old Shintaro Nakakubo, from a station rotary on the afternoon of December 3. Nomura, wearing a hoodie, and Nakakubo were dragging three heavy suitcases.
“Including the woman’s luggage, there were three suitcases in total. They couldn’t all fit in the trunk, so I had to put one in the middle of the back seat,” the driver said. “I wondered why they had so much luggage. I even thought they might be fleeing in the night.”
During the one-hour ride to the airport, the couple remained completely silent, staring out the windows with a “brooding, desperate atmosphere,” the driver added. Nomura paid the fare, only instructing the driver to ensure they make a flight for 7:00 p.m. Nakakubo made no attempt to pay.
Grisly scene
Fast forward 16 days to December 19. Nomura’s husband, who is in his 40s, returned to their Nishitokyo City home around 5:00 p.m. to find the front door chained from the inside. After hearing noises within the house, he immediately called the police.
Officers broke into the home to find a grisly scene on the second floor. Nomura and her 16-year-old eldest son, Haruto, had bled to death after an apparent violent struggle. An axe and a blood-stained knife were found nearby. Haruto’s body showed multiple defensive wounds, while Nomura had hesitation cuts. Her two younger sons, Rikuto, 11, and Reo, 9, were found strangled to death with zip ties on a bed.
Gruesome scars
Initially viewed as a tragic family murder-suicide carried out by the mother, the case took a shocking turn when investigators found a lease agreement inside Nomura’s car. The contract, signed the previous March, was for an apartment located about 5.5 kilometers away in neighboring Nerima Ward.
On December 22, police searched the secret apartment and discovered Nakakubo’s corpse stuffed inside a closet. An autopsy revealed he had been murdered between December 14 and 15. Shockingly, his body bore numerous gruesome scars indicating a failed attempt at dismemberment.
Security camera footage revealed that Nomura visited the apartment multiple times following Nakakubo’s estimated time of death. She was seen hauling deodorizers and an air purifier into the room, apparently trying to mask the stench of her dead lover.
While the exact motive for the massacre remains a mystery, investigators are probing the couple’s troubled relationship and what transpired during their mysterious airport trip, suspecting a fatal fallout triggered the horrifying chain of events.
