Suspect Disliked Views of Nagoya Murder Victim’s Husband

Nagoya, Nov. 14 (Jiji Press)–The suspect in the 1999 murder of a Nagoya housewife has told police that she disliked the way the victim’s husband thought about women and child-rearing, investigative sources said Friday. On the same day, the Nagoya District Public Prosecutors Office obtained court approval for a psychiatric examination to determine whether Kumiko Yasufuku, 69, who was arrested late last month in connection with the alleged murder, had criminal responsibility at the time of the incident. Prosecutors apparently believe that if indicted, her mental capacity will be a key point of contention at trial. The prosecutors office is expected to decide whether to indict the suspect based on the results of the psychiatric examination by experts, which usually takes several months. Yasufuku is suspected of stabbing Namiko Takaba, 32, to death in the neck and other parts of her body in a room on the second floor of an apartment in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, on Nov. 13, 1999. Her detention period was set to end on Nov. 21. The suspect was a high school classmate of Takaba’s husband, Satoru, 69. According to investigative sources, the suspect initially cooperated with questioning but has recently fallen silent. During the initial investigation, she admitted to the charges, saying, “I’m sorry” about the victim. On the motive for the crime, police are puzzled by her statement that she disliked the husband’s views on women and child-rearing. Yasufuku was not an acquaintance of Takaba, but she knew her husband during high school and university and even stalked him at one point. She met him for the first time in some 20 years in June 1999, about five months before the incident, at a reunion of a soft tennis club they had joined. “The suspect talked to me at the reunion and said that she was working hard and doing housework diligently,” Satoru has told reporters. “I have no idea why she attacked my wife five months later.” The Aichi prefectural police are carefully investigating the case, believing that the reunion may have somehow triggered the incident. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]