SAGA (TR) – Saga Prefectural Police have launched a murder investigation after the corpse of an elderly woman was found in the mountains of the town of Yoshinogari on Sunday, reports Fuji News Network (Jan. 21).
At around noon, a passerby found the body of Sachiko Okada, a 79-year-old resident of Higashi Ward in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, at the base of a six-meter-tall cliff.
Okada was clothed in a sweater and pants. She was not wearing shoes. Police used her pacemaker to confirm her identity.
The results of an autopsy revealed the cause of death to be suffocation as a result of strangulation by a cord. She is believed to have died between three and five days before the discovery, police said.
Okada lived with her husband in Fukuoka. On October 22, she filed a missing persons report on her husband with the Higashi Police Station in Fukuoka. Four days later, an acquaintance of Okada filed a missing persons report on her.
The whereabouts of her husband are currently not known. As well, the family vehicle is missing from the residence, police said.
In addition to murder, police are treating the case as abandoning a corpse.
