TOKYO: A Japanese man rented the apartment where his wife was murdered for 26 years, preserving the crime scene in the hope of uncovering her killer who turned out to be a woman with a crush on him.
The case finally broke when the suspect, a former classmate of the husband, voluntarily confessed to police in Nagoya, central Japan. The story gained public attention after being reported by NHK in early November.
The murder occurred on November 13, 1999, when housewife Namiko Takaba was found stabbed multiple times in the neck at her home. Her two-year-old son was unharmed, left beside her.
Despite a massive investigation involving 100,000 police officers and interviews with 5,000 people, authorities initially could not identify the killer.
The only early clues were that she was a woman with type B blood, approximately 1.6 meters tall, and wearing size 24 cm shoes.
Over the decades, the grieving husband continued to pay rent on the “haunted” apartment, refusing to clean up the bloodstains, spending around RM 607,000 all in hopes of solving the mystery.
His persistence ultimately led to the confession, bringing closure to a case that had haunted him for more than two decades.
