TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested a 49-year-old woman after she confessed to moving the corpse of her newborn to various coin-operated lockers for up to five years, reports the Asahi Shimbun (Sept. 24).
At around 11:00 a.m. on Monday, Emiri Suzaki, 49, of no known occupation, arrived at the Ogu Police Station to confess to giving birth to the child “about four or five years ago and leaving the corpse in a locker.”
Officers from the Shitaya Police Station working off the testimony of Suzaki found a corpse wrapped in a plastic bag inside a tote bag placed in a locker at JR Uguisudani Station. The decayed body was of unknown gender, police said.
Officers subsequently arrested Suzaki on suspicion of abandoning the corpse on September 13.
“The baby was a stillbirth, and I went into a panic,” she told police during questioning. After initially leaving the body in a locker, the suspect repeatedly moved the corpse to different lockers, paying the necessary fee each time, police said.
I deciding to surrender, Suzaki added that she lost the key to the most recent locker at the residence of an acquaintance. “I thought that I should give myself up,” she said.
