TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Tuesday planned to re-arrest a former gangster who while on death row has confessed to participating in the killing two real estate executives, reports NHK (July 4).
Police planned to arrest Osamu Yano, a 68-year-old former head of the Yano Mutsumi-kai, a one time affiliate gang of the Sumiyoshi-kai, on charges of murder in the death of Shizuo Tsugawa, a 60-year-old real estate executive. In April of last year, police using information provided by the former mobster found the body of Tsugawa in a mountainous area of Isehara City, Kanagawa Prefecture.
Yano is currently on death row for ordering two members of his gang to carry out a shooting that left four people dead at a “snack” hostess club in Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture on January 25, 2003.
The incident involving Tsugawa is the second to be revealed by Yano. Last year, he also told investigators that the body of Mamoru Saito, a 49-year-old real estate executive, was dumped in Saitama Prefecture. In November, a search crew found human bones in a mountainous area of the town of Tokigawa that were later confirmed to belong to Saito.
Saito went missing after a meeting in the Ikebukuro area of Tokyo’s Toshima Ward on April 5, 1998. According to information released in a court-related report in September of 2014, Yano said Saito was abducted and strangled to death over money problems that included a loan of 86 million yen.
Yano was arrested for the murder of Saito in April of this year.
