FUKUOKA (TR) – Fukuoka Prefectural Police have arrested a 29-year-old woman here on suspicion of murdering two of her newborn sons by suffocating them with her thighs and subsequently abandoning their bodies, reports FBS Fukuoka TV (Oct. 5).
Miaki Umezaki, a resident of Okawa City, faces charges of murder and the abandonment of a corpse, police announced on the 5th.
According to investigators, Umezaki gave birth to a baby boy at her home in mid-June of last year. She is accused of killing the infant shortly after birth by squeezing his chest between her thighs until he suffocated. She allegedly hid the corpse in a closet before placing it in a plastic bag and dumping it in a local irrigation canal.
In a second incident just over a year later, Umezaki gave birth to another boy at her residence between 7:20 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. on July 25. Police allege she suffocated the newborn by squeezing his neck with her thighs, then wrapped the infant’s body in a jacket and concealed it in her closet.
During questioning, Umezaki largely admitted to the allegations surrounding the June 2023 case. Regarding the July incident, she confessed to the murder but claimed a memory lapse regarding the concealment of the second body.
“There is no doubt I gave birth, but I suffered from anemia and don’t remember well,” she told police.
The grim investigation was launched on June 27 of last year when a maintenance worker cleaning a water gate in the Nitta area of Okawa City called 110 after spotting what appeared to be a baby’s remains.
Officers responding to the canal, which feeds into the Chikugo River, discovered the naked corpse of a newborn boy with his umbilical cord still attached. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
