FUKUOKA (TR) – Fukuoka Prefectural Police have launched an investigation after the discovery of a missing woman’s corpse in a river in the town of Kasuya on Monday, reports Jiji Press (July 9).
At around 11:30 a.m., the brother-in-law of Teruko Murao, 38, found her body floating in the Sue River in the Nakabaru area.
The body did not exhibit any signs of external wounds. The results of an autopsy revealed the cause of death to be suffocation, the Kasuya Police Station said.
Two days before the discovery, Murao, a company employee, told her husband by telephone that she was on her way home. However, she never arrived. The following day, her family lodged a missing persons report with police.
Since police found Murao’s bicycle near where her body was discovered, it is believed that she was killed nearby.
The case is being treated as murder and abandoning a corpse, police said.