HYOGO (TR) – Hyogo Prefectural Police have sent a 46-year-old doctor to prosecutors after he confessed to cutting up his wife’s body and disposing of her remains in a river, reports Nippon News Network (Oct. 2).
Kenji Shimomura was handed over to prosecutors on Friday on suspicion of the mutilation and abandonment of a corpse.
“I dismembered her in the bathroom, put her in a bag, and threw her in the river,” Shimomura told investigators. “I did it all by myself.”
The gruesome act allegedly took place at a detached house in Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, where the suspect lived with the victim, his wife Mami, who was 41 at the time.
Neighbors painted a contrasting picture of the couple. One local resident described Shimomura as having a slightly delinquent vibe with brightly dyed hair, noting that he “probably didn’t socialize much with the neighborhood.”
Meanwhile, Mami had been spotted by locals about a year and a half ago, walking with two young boys.
“She was walking with a child about the same age as my nephew and an even younger boy. We greeted each other, and she gave off a cheerful, slightly flashy impression,” a female neighbor in her 20s recalled. “She looked younger than her age. I thought we were in the same generation, so I was surprised to hear she was in her 40s.”
The crime only came to light after Shimomura himself filed a missing person report for his wife. Investigators quickly zeroed in on the doctor after finding glaring inconsistencies in his story.
Police now believe Shimomura intentionally fed authorities false information when filing the missing person report in a calculated attempt to delay the discovery of his crime.
