Posts Tagged ‘okinawan news’

An update to this story was requested, and I’m happy to oblige.  Over the weekend a little more information came out in regards to this rather bizarre story I posted up here on Friday.  I initially wrote “a few more facts” although in light of the information I decided that maybe “facts” wasn’t such an appropriate word.  Here is some of the story I found, with my commentary to follow:

The husband and father, Morihiro Gushiken, says he last heard from his wife on January 11th, when she sent him an email from his daughter’s cell phone telling him “I am going to visit a relative with our daughter”.

After a few days, a worried Gushiken telephoned the relative, only to learn his wife and daughter were not there. He then reported the two missing on January 27th. Although Gushiken lived apart from his wife, he tended to the woman’s cat, and on February 17th the 45-year-old Gushiken entered the wife’s home and discovered a foul odor. Moments later, he tracked the smell to a decomposing body in a closet.

The body was so decomposed, police say, that Gushiken did not recognize it as being his wife. Identification was made by DNA. Police intensified the search for the still-missing daughter, finally tracking her down at a hotel in Hiyane District of Okinawa City, where she was living with a man in his 20’s. Interviews with the teenager turned up inconsistencies and contradictions in stories, with the girl first telling police he’d told her friends “my mother died in a car accident in the middle of January.”

The girl changed her story with police, saying “she strangled herself and I found her dead.” Asked why she ran away and began cohabiting with an older man instead of reporting her mother’s death, she said “I found my mother dead in the room, but I didn’t know what to do, so I just put the body inside the closet.”

Police say their investigation is continuing, and that they still believe the girl knows more than she’s admitting. The young man, meanwhile, is being investigating for having relations with an underage girl.

So police believe the girl knows more than she’s admitting.  They really are sharp as a dart here in Okinawa!  Don’t think it takes someone with a Masters in criminal psychology to deduce that.  So we’ve got the mother who died in a car accident in January, but then who strangles herself about a week later and died yet again.  Daughter found her dead mother and wondered if she should call the ambulance or police.  Thinking that her mother had already been resurrected once from this car accident, she decided the closet would be the best place for her to regain her strength and come back to life naturally.  I’m no Colombo, but somehow the story doesn’t seem completely watertight.

Am a little surprised they said the body was so decomposed they couldn’t recognize it.  I can imagine some decomposition, but it was only around 3 weeks later and the temperature isn’t so high in Okinawa yet to cause that much decomposition.  Admittedly, I am basing my knowledge on watching CSI Miami which probably isn’t the most effective way of learning about times and causes of death.  Possibly more efficient than the methods Okinawan police use, but still not great.

So we still don’t know who this mystery guy is the girl was living with when police found her, but I had to laugh when they story said he was being investigated for having relations with an underage girl.  It’s like the police are saying, “We’ve got to get one charge out of this, surely!”.  I really hope more information on this will come to light, namely who this guy is and what actually happened to the mother.  If I find more I will keep you updated.

Just as I thought the rest of the day might be relatively uneventful, Okinawa saves the day.  Just finished reading a news story that started off rather strangely, and en almost each passing sentence gets more dark and twisted.  Have a read for yourselves.

Missing daughter of woman found dead in closet in Okinawa home turns up in hotel

OKINAWA – Police on Friday found a 15-year-old high school girl who had been missing since her mother’s body was found in a closet in their home in Kitanakagusuku, Okinawa, on Tuesday. The girl was found with an adult male in a hotel in Okinawa City, police said.

According to police, the 46-year-old mother was found dead inside the closet by her 45-year-old husband on Tuesday. He told police his wife and daughter had been missing since telling him they were going to a relative’s house on Jan 27.

Police said the family lives in the same house but have been virtually separated and have not seen each other for years, because the first and second floors of the house were blocked off to prevent interaction. The father lives with his 78-year-old dad on the first floor, while the mother and daughter live on the second floor. They enter the house via the window and the front door respectively, police have learned.

Well, where can I possibly start on this one?  Probably the living arrangements prior to the woman’s death.  By the sounds of it, the woman and her daughter have been entering the family home through the window for some years now, due to the fact that the father has blockaded the main door.  You would think that after about 2 days of doing this, both parties would realise how utterly ridiculous this state of affairs is.  But no, this goes on for days.  The days turn into weeks, the weeks into months and the months into years.  Maybe the mother and daughter just found the door too passe, and wanted a more interesting way of entering their residence.

The next one confused me a little.  It said that the mother and father have separated and haven’t had contact for years.  But then the story goes on to say the mother and daughter had been missing since the father told them they were going to see a relative at the end of January.  So either they have contact or they don’t, but something there doesn’t add up.

Nothing is also reported about how the woman ended up in the closet.  Am assuming she was murdered and put there rather than her just deciding to go in there and getting lost and not being able to get out.  Unless she had just given up hope and went into the closet to die.  You can imagine her giving her daughter a Lawrence Oates-esque remark before her final voyage, “I am just going into the closet and may be gone for some time.”

And the wonderful reporting continues where nothing is said about who the girl was with and why she had been missing since January 27th.  I would love to hear the rest of this story and try to find some answers to the most bizarre of questions.  Can anyone beat this for a bizarre story of the day?