Police said that ex-members of the Inagawa-kai, aged 28 and 37, worked with a third man, a member of a motorcycle gang, to commit the string of thefts from a base of operations in Kanagawa Prefecture.
In one case, the members of the group posed as employees of a delivery company while robbing 170,000 yen in cash from a safe inside the home of a woman in Ome City, Tokyo in July of 2012, according to the Sankei Shimbun (Aug. 4). Tokyo police arrested the ex-gang members and the other man in June of the following year.
During a subsequent investigation into the matter, however, police concluded that a fourth participant in the crimes had gone missing the year before.
In the latest revelations, the ex-gangsters told police that they killed their missing colleague (then 33 years old) in Yamato, Kanagawa, carved up his body and buried the pieces under the floorboards of a home in Ito, Shizuoka Prefecture in April of 2012.
“We didn’t like his attitude,” one ex-gang member is quoted by police.
In July, Tokyo and Kanagawa police launched a joint investigation into the matter. A search of the residence in Ito is now under way with investigators aiming at charging the ex-gang members with abandoning a corpse.
