Accused multiple murderess pins it all on allegedly incestuous stepson

The Mainichi Shimbun
December 29, 2006
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/face/news/20061229p2g00m0dm016000c.html

The trial of accused mass murderess Chizuko Okamoto is turning into a sordid affair, awash with tales of incest and unrequited familial love, according to Shukan Josei (1/2-9).

Okamoto, 55, is currently being tried for the murder of her 19-year-old daughter Rikako, but is also suspected of involvement in the decades-old deaths of another three sons, two of them infants.

A stepson, 35-year-old Minehiro, was also found hanged in Okamoto's apartment in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, when Okamoto was arrested in May.

Okamoto has since laid the blame on Minehiro for the killing she is accused of committing. Yet Minehiro's biological mother says she bears no hatred for Okamoto.

"I don't really hate Chizuko," the mother tells Shukan Josei. "Everybody around me is saying that I do, though."

Chizuko Okamoto is the only link between the five bodies police discovered on that morning in May. The first corpse they found was that of Minehiro, who was hanged near the entrance. Minehiro was the son of a noodle restaurant owner -- with whom Okamoto began an affair in the mid-'70s -- and the woman now talking to the media. After breaking up with Minehiro's mother, the noodle cook married another woman. Okamoto eventually forced the noodle cook to give up that wife and moved in with him and his family, including the then-youthful Minehiro.

"After Chizuko ousted the noodle cook's wife, she had two children with him -- Rikako (the daughter she is accused of killing) and a boy, Toshihide (who went missing as a child two decades ago, but whose body was found in Okamoto's apartment earlier this year). They also had another two boys, but their infant bodies were found, too. They were all found dead," Minehiro's biological mother tells Shukan Josei.

Okamoto's Tokyo District Court murder trial has been packed with despicable details. It started with the opening hearing, which concentrated on the prosecution casting doubt on Okamoto's character.

"In prosecutors' opening statement, they said she moved into the Hiratsuka apartment in around 1997, together with Rikako. Okamoto couldn't find a job and was living off what she could borrow from friends. When people started come after her for repayment, she used excuses like her family's ill health and Rikako's death to avoid paying them," a reporter for a national daily tells the women's weekly. "Okamoto was always running away from something. Her sloppy lifestyle was laid bare for all to see."

Prosecutors called one of Rikako's old boyfriends as a witness. The boyfriend told the court of how Okamoto had threatened Rikako with a knife and the frequency with which the daughter had expressed fear for her life.

Okamoto was ready to fight back, though, and even steamier accusations were hurled in her second, and most recent, hearing.

"Minehiro killed Rikako and then he committed suicide," Shukan Josei quotes one of Okamoto's lawyers saying at the second hearing.

Okamoto also accused her stepson of molesting her as she slept. The accused killer also said Minehiro was behind all the killings that resulted in so many bodies being found in her home. She added that he killed himself because his attempts to rape his stepsister Rikako had failed.

Hearings will continue in Okamoto's case in 2007. (By Ryann Connell)

December 29, 2006

Hiratsuka mom who hid dead kids denies slaying

Daughter's strangling woman's key charge

The Japan Times
Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2006
Source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060822a3.html

YOKOHAMA (Kyodo) A 55-year-old woman charged with strangling her 19-year-old daughter in their apartment in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, last October pleaded not guilty Monday at her first trial session at the Yokohama District Court.

The murder -- one of the most bizarre crimes to surface in Japan recently -- has drawn media attention since Chizuko Okamoto was arrested May 3 after police found four other bodies as well as her daughter's in the apartment.

Okamoto's daughter, Rikako, 19, and her 35-year-old stepson, Minehiro Yamauchi, were found dead in the Hiratsuka apartment May 1, and the badly decomposed bodies of a boy and two babies were discovered the next day in cardboard boxes.

The three young children were later determined to have been Chizuko's. Okamoto has been quoted by the police as saying she kept the bodies of the three children -- a young boy and two babies -- in cardboard boxes for about 20 years before allegedly killing Rikako.

In 1984, Okamoto reported to police that the boy, 6, was missing.

The trial that began Monday only focuses on Rikako's death.

Police have determined that the stepson killed himself.

The prosecutors also decided not to charge Okamoto with abandoning the bodies of the three children as the statute of limitations has expired.

"I didn't kill her," Okamoto told presiding Judge Nobuyuki Kiguchi. She was charged with strangling Rikako around Oct. 12 last year in the apartment.

She admitted to having seen Rikako dead in the flat but declined to elaborate, saying, "I don't want to talk today."

The prosecutors claimed Okamoto decided in October to kill Rikako because she was "irritated" that her daughter was attending a preparatory school and was involved with a theater company.

Okamoto, Rikako and Yamauchi were all unemployed.

When the bodies of Rikako and Yamauchi were discovered in May, the stepson was found hanging inside the apartment, while the daughter's body was lying on a futon.

The Japan Times
(C) All rights reserved

Mom denies murdering daughter in opening of Hiratsuka House of Horrors trial

The Mainichi Shimbun
August 21, 2006
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060821p2a00m0na009000c.html

YOKOHAMA -- A 55-year-old woman, indicted for strangling her daughter, denied murdering her but wouldn't reveal how the girl died during the opening hearing of the case on Monday.

When Kanagawa police arrested Chizuko Okamoto in May, she admitted to the allegations. But Okamoto told the Yokohama District Court on Monday, "I didn't murder her."

Around September 2005, Okamoto came to dislike her 19-year-old daughter, Rikako, going to a preparatory school for university entrance examinations and taking part in school cultural activities.

Okamoto wielded a knife at Rikako several times in September and October to try and stop her from going out and studying. She decided to murder her daughter sometime around October last year, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said that Okamoto strangled Rikako with rope at an apartment in Hiratsuka on Oct. 12.

Investigations into the case began in May after the mother of a 35-year-old man, who was a half brother of Rikako, visited the apartment in Hiratsuka to find the body of Rikako and the man who had hanged himself.

During their investigations, police found the bodies of three infants in the apartment. DNA analysis found that Okamoto was the mother of the infants. (Mainichi)

August 21, 2006

Woman held over bizarre house of horrors case claims dead boy was her son

The Mainichi Shimbun
May 13, 2006
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060513p2a00m0na011000c.html

HIRATSUKA, Kanagawa -- A woman under arrest for murdering her daughter said that one of the five bodies found in an apartment was that of her son, on whom she filed a missing person's report 22 years ago, according to police.

The five bodies -- those of a child, two babies, a man and the woman's daughter -- were found in an apartment in Hiratsuka before Chizuko Okamoto, 54, was arrested for the murder of her daughter.

Okamoto told police officers that the child's body was that of her son, Toshihide Okamoto, who went missing 22 years ago at age 6. Okamoto hasn't said how the son died. Officers are carrying out DNA analysis to confirm whether the child is her son.

The child's body, found in a cardboard box, was dressed in a checked shirt, which resembles a shirt worn by Toshihide when he went missing in 1984, police said.

Okamoto also said the two other corpses of babies were her children born between her and her live-in-partner about 20 years ago. The bodies of the babies are severely decayed, making it difficult to confirm their age and gender.

Oakamoto filed a missing person's report on Toshihide with police in December 1984. In January 1985, the Hiratsuka Police Station began investigations into the whereabouts of the boy. At the time, Okamoto tearfully told a television program that she wanted her son back. (Mainichi)

Woman says 3 bodies in Hiratsuka apartment are her children

Kyodo article on Crisscross, Japan
Saturday, May 13, 2006 at 16:55 EDT
Source: http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/372521

YOKOHAMA — A 54-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of killing her 19-year-old daughter in their apartment in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, has said three other bodies found at the apartment — two babies and a young boy — are those of her children, police sources said Saturday.

Chizuko Okamoto was arrested May 3 after the police found the bodies of her daughter Rikako and her 35-year-old stepson Minehiro Yamauchi in the apartment on May 1, and the bodies of a boy and two babies hidden in cardboard boxes the next day. She told police the body of a boy is her son Toshihide, whom she reported as missing in 1984 when he was 6 years old. She also said the bodies of the babies, apparently newborns, were also her children.

© 2006 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.

Clothing on body found to match that of missing child from 1984

The Mainichi Shimbun
May 6, 2006
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/archive/news/2006/05/06/20060506p2a00m0na034000c.html

HIRATSUKA, Kanagawa -- A shirt found on the body of a child, which was discovered along with five other bodies -- including that of a woman slain by her own mother -- in an apartment here, is identical to that worn by the killer's missing eldest son, police said Saturday.

The son was about 120 centimeters tall at the time of his disappearance, almost equal in height to the body.

Investigators said the body is likely to be that of Toshihide Okamoto, the eldest son of 54-year-old Chizuko Okamoto, who went missing in 1984 at the age of 6.

Local police are grilling the elder Okamoto, already under arrest for the murder of her daughter, over how Toshihide went missing.

Toshihide went missing on the morning of Dec. 28, 1984 after playing with a soccer ball alone on the premises of his family home in Hiratsuka, according to investigators.

At the time, he was wearing a long-sleeve shirt with yellow and black checks, a navy-blue vest and moss-green trousers. Investigators have managed to confirm that the pattern on the shirt on the corpse is almost identical to the one on the shirt that Toshihide was wearing, even though its color has faded.

Prefectural police are poised to conduct an autopsy on the body, but investigators have said it will be difficult to confirm his identity if the bone marrow has desiccated.

Chizuko is under arrest for murdering her 19-year-old daughter, Rikako, whose body was found in an apartment in Chigasaki along with the three children and her half-brother, Minehiro Yamauchi, 35. Chizuko has admitted to having murdered Rikako. (Mainichi)

Woman busted for strangling daughter with rope in apartment

The Mainichi Shimbun
May 3, 2006
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/archive/news/2006/05/03/20060503p2a00m0na008000c.html

HIRATSUKA, Kanagawa -- A woman was arrested early Wednesday for murdering her daughter, who was found dead at an apartment here Monday along with the victim's brother and three young children, police said.

Chizuko Okamoto, 54, a jobless woman, is accused of strangling her daughter, 19-year-old Rikako, with a rope at the apartment in Hiratsuka on Oct. 12 last year.

Since Minehiro Yamauchi, 35, the victim's brother by a different mother, was found hanged in the room, police initially suspected that the five died in a murder-suicide.

However, investigators have found a note that they believe was handwritten by the suspect, indicating that she murdered her daughter.

Kanagawa Prefectural Police are set to conduct an autopsy on the bodies of the three young children in a bid to determine the cause of their death, while questioning Chizuko over how Yamauchi and the children died. Police have not determined the children's relationship with Yamauchi and Rikako.

Chizuko told investigators that she was living at Yamauchi's apartment until around March. (Mainichi)