Early on April 16, police arrested the father of an 11-year-old boy whose body was found in the prefecture on April 13, following a search by over 1,000 personnel.
Police arrested a 37-year-old man on suspicion of abandoning the body of his son, a student at the local Sonobe Elementary School. The 11-year-old had been missing for three weeks before his remains were discovered.
The case had left many mysteries, with no witness accounts and the boy’s body and belongings discovered in separate locations far apart. Behind the sudden arrest was an under-the-surface police investigation that gradually connected one puzzling point to another.
From around 7 a.m. on April 15, nearly 10 police vehicles arrived one after another near the suspect’s home, and dozens of investigators gathered there.
The area was cordoned off, and the quiet mountain community was enveloped in a tense atmosphere. Police began a search of the home, and the boy’s missing-person case developed into a criminal investigation.
Why belongings were found one after another
The investigation shifted dramatically on April 12. While continuing their search, police found shoes in the mountains between the boy’s home and his elementary school that resembled the black sneakers he had been wearing. The next day, his body was found in a mountain forest 4 kilometers away.
Why were his belongings and body found one after another in such a short period in this vast mountainous area?
According to sources close to the investigation, the discoveries were not a coincidence. Police were proceeding with specific targets in mind.
From immediately after the 11-year-old went missing, police had deployed a total of more than 1,000 personnel to search the nearby mountains while also beginning an investigation with the possibility of a crime in mind.
Mystery of ‘no witness accounts’
What investigators first focused on was how the boy’s disappearance unfolded.
The suspect had earlier explained that at around 8 a.m. on March 23, the day his son went missing, he drove him to a point near the school in his own car so the boy could attend a graduation ceremony.
But the 11-year-old never showed up at school. A teacher who noticed contacted the family, and the case was reported to police around noon.
What seemed inexplicable was that no one had seen the boy, who was supposed to have gotten out of his father’s car just near the school.
At the time, many students and parents had gathered to attend the ceremony, but there were no witness accounts. In addition, although there were multiple security cameras on the school’s grounds, the 11-year-old was not captured in any footage, and his movements remained unknown.
Suspicions that ‘someone threw away’ the backpack
Six days after the boy’s disappearance, a relative who had joined the search found his school backpack. The site was in the mountains about 3 kilometers northwest of the school, in an area that had been previously searched. Because the backpack showed no noticeable stains, police became increasingly convinced that someone had discarded it after the boy disappeared.
At one point, the investigation appeared to have reached an impasse. But from the second week of April, police began an intensive search focused on specific locations.
According to investigative sources, that move was driven by their behind-the-scenes work to trace the suspect’s driving route.
Police investigators intensively analyzed footage on security cameras in the area and identified the route taken by a vehicle believed to have been driven by the suspect.
By focusing their search on that route, they found the shoes and then the body. “The puzzling dots all lined up in a single line,” an investigative source said.
Although a judicial autopsy did not determine the cause of death, police concluded that the 11-year-old had been caught up in a crime. On April 15, the day after the body was identified, police searched the home and moved to arrest the suspect.
