Ex-Police Official Apologizes over Setagaya Murder 25 Years Ago

Tokyo, Dec. 30 (Jiji Press)–A former police official apologized Tuesday over the December 2000 murder of a family of four in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward as the perpetrator in the crime has not been captured yet. “Twenty-five years have passed (with the case remaining unresolved), and I feel sorry as a former police officer,” Takeshi Tsuchida, 78, former chief of the Seijo police station of Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department, said in front of the grave of the victims–Mikio Miyazawa, then 44, and his three family members. The police station in Setagaya hosts the investigation headquarters for the murder case. Tsuchida, a special adviser to a group of bereaved families of murder victims, and members of the group offered flowers and incense sticks at the grave in the city of Niiza in Saitama Prefecture, adjacent to Tokyo, the same day, praying for the victims. Miyazawa’s 94-year-old mother, Setsuko, gave up visiting the grave due to poor health, as she did last year. She hopes for the case to be resolved, after a suspect in the murder of a housewife in the central Japan city of Nagoya in 1999 was arrested this year, according to Tsuchida. In the high-profile case that occurred between the late hours of Dec. 30, 2000, and the small hours of the following day, Miyazawa, his wife, Yasuko, then 41, their daughter, Niina, then 8, and their son, Rei, then 6, were murdered at their home in Setagaya. Miyazawa, Yasuko and Niina were stabbed to death, and Rei was strangled. Fingerprints and blood apparently of the perpetrator were found at the site of the crime, and a kitchen knife believed to have been used in the attack was left at the scene. The MPD continues its investigations into the case. It has mobilized some 298,300 officers in total since the murder occurred. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]