AICHI (TR) – The arrest of a suspect in the 1999 murder of a Nagoya housewife, nearly 26 years after her death, has sent a jolt of hope through the families of victims in other unsolved killings across Aichi Prefecture, with relatives vowing to keep fighting and police promising to never give up the hunt, reports Jiji Press (Oct. 31).
Among those watching with tearful relief was Toshi Amami, 64, elder sister of Tosiyo Kato, who was murdered alongside her three children in September 2004 at the family home of husband Hiroto Kato, 67, in Toyoake City, Aichi.
The house was also set ablaze. That case remains unsolved more than 22 years on, yet Amami has spent every year since distributing flyers in search of answers. When news of the Nagoya arrest broke last year, she said she cried out in shock. “It was like sunshine blazing down, a light of hope so bright it burned,” she recalled. “I thought, let us ride that wind.” The arrest, she said, only steeled her resolve to honor the vow she made to her four murdered family members: to see the killer caught.
Tsukasa Sugiura, 62, son of Katsuyo Sugiura, a 73-year-old farmer found strangled with a mobile phone charger cord at her home in Gamagori City, Aichi, in March 2016, said the Nagoya breakthrough had changed something in him. “It made me feel strongly that even unsolved cases can be cracked, that cold cases can finally come into the light,” he said.
Yet more than ten years have now passed since his mother’s death with no arrest. “The sadness never changes, but I want to know what happened,” he said. “I want police to keep working hard, and I want the public to take an interest in unsolved cases.”
Aichi Prefectural Police Homicide Division Chief Takumi Saito struck a defiant tone, vowing that investigators would press on. “We will continue our tenacious investigation with the determination to absolutely catch the perpetrator,” he said, according to local media. H
The chief also made a direct appeal to the public, urging anyone with information, however trivial it might seem, to come forward.
