Police Search Tokyo Rental Office over Body Abandonment

Tokyo, April 20 (Jiji Press)–Tokyo police searched a rental office in the Japanese capital Monday over a body abandonment case allegedly committed by the president of an information technology company, investigative sources said. The 49-year-old suspect, Katsuya Mizuguchi, is believed to have used the rental office in the Shibadaimon district in Minato Ward effectively as his company’s office, after the body was allegedly taken out of the company’s office in the Akasaka district in the same ward. The police arrested Mizuguchi Friday on suspicion of removing the body of a man believed to be a male executive of the company from the office in Akasaka around Oct. 5 to 6 last year. The body has not been found, while the executive in his 50s has been missing since September. Monday’s search, conducted in the presence of the suspect, started around 10 a.m. and apparently ended in about two hours. Investigators loaded about five paper bags into their vehicles and left. The suspect virtually lived in the rental office, the sources said. Police have been searching around the Otarumitoge mountain pass along National Highway 20 in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, where the body could have been abandoned. The suspect bought blue tarps, air fresheners and a rope often used in construction sites around the time he allegedly abandoned the body, the sources said. The rope was confiscated from the office, but there were no signs it had been used, they said. The police found bloodstains in the Akasaka office and are suspecting that Mizuguchi committed murder. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]