Post by Grey on Jan 29, 2005 5:02:42 GMT -5
Source:mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/0501/0127bizarre.html
Grieving woman lives with
brother's reeking corpse for a year
By Ryann Connell
Staff Writer
January 27, 2005
Cops recently had to deal with a bizarre incident in an older part of Tokyo until now best known for its high concentration of hideouts for AUM Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult that fatally gassed the capital's subway system a decade ago, according to Shukan Shincho (1/27).
Fortunately, however, the cult had nothing to do with the baffling mystery behind the evil odors emanating from an Adachi-ku apartment, but that's not to say there wasn't some weirdness at work.
In fact, what investigators unearthed could have been even worse.
Behind the putrid smells emanating from the otherwise ordinary apartment was the body of 74-year-old Kisaburo Suzuki. He'd spent the last few years of his existence bedridden and battling illness.
And though Suzuki's corpse was found in January, almost a year after his death, he was not one of the tragic cases where a neglected old person has died alone and their body allowed to rot in oblivion. Far from it, as it turns out. The body of Kisaburo Suzuki went undiscovered for so long because there was somebody who could not bear with the thought of leaving it alone.
"Kisaburo had been cared for by his younger sister, 68-year-old Michiko, who lived in a home about 50 meters away from his. Michiko Suzuki said that her brother had died on Feb. 10 last year. She said that he was her last remaining sibling and she couldn't bear the thought of being left alone, so didn't tell anybody that he had died," a police insider tells Shukan Shincho. "Recently, Michiko's nephew, who lives with her, had begun noticing she was behaving strangely. He confronted her and she told him about Kisaburo's death. The police arrested Michiko for illegal disposal of a human body."
Kisaburo Suzuki's body was found lying on his futon. It had been covered in five or six layers of garbage bags, and a quilt laid atop it. Around the room in which the corpse lay rotting were about 50 deodorizers futilely trying to combat the foul reek the body oozed out. Residents were not surprised that something untoward had been going on in the old man's apartment.
"Looking back, I knew something weird must have been going on. The mail never built up and it seemed as though somebody had been living there, but for the past year, I never saw the lights on at night and never heard a sound come out of the place," a resident of the condominium tells Shukan Shincho. "Sometimes, the smell that came out of the joint was so bad it almost made you heave. Then, from about last summer, rats, which we've never seen much around here before, started popping up everywhere. I wanted to talk to the caretaker of the apartment about it."
Judging on what had been going on at the apartment, it seemed the discovery of the old man's body had only been a matter of time before Michiko Suzuki's nephew found out about it anyway.
Michiko Suzuki, meanwhile, has elicited considerable sympathy for her "sibling love," especially as she used to prepare meals and take them over to her brother's home morning and night, pretending she was feeding him but dumping the food instead. It's the same "sibling love" that others are now questioning.
"That family is somewhat, well, I suppose 'complicated' is the best way to say it," a friend of the Suzuki family says. "Of the five siblings, four lived together for years. The oldest brother was the only one to get married. Kisaburo, Michiko and another older brother and an older sister were all lifelong singles. They all lived for decades together as one family under the eldest brother's roof."
Michiko Suzuki had apparently been designated as the siblings' housework official and apparently had a tenuous relationship with her eldest brother's wife, the only outsider in the ironclad clan.
"The sister-in-law still goes out to work, even now when she's in her 70s. Michiko looked after all the money. I once heard, a long time ago now, that the sister-in-law was moaning about how the siblings all treated her badly and that the only time she'd ever been allowed to visit her own family's home had been upon the death of a parent. The sister-in-law also complained that every time she tried to have a conversation with her husband, his brothers and sisters would jump in and cut it off," the Suzuki family friend tells Shukan Shincho. "Over the past couple of years, though, the oldest son and eldest daughter had both passed away, robbing Michiko of her two biggest allies. When another remaining brother died, too, they kept it quiet. With Kisaburo, her final remaining ally, gone, though, it meant Michiko would be totally alone against the sister-in-law and the power in the relationship would shift. I'm not surprised she found it so difficult to accept her brother's death."
Grieving woman lives with
brother's reeking corpse for a year
By Ryann Connell
Staff Writer
January 27, 2005
Cops recently had to deal with a bizarre incident in an older part of Tokyo until now best known for its high concentration of hideouts for AUM Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult that fatally gassed the capital's subway system a decade ago, according to Shukan Shincho (1/27).
Fortunately, however, the cult had nothing to do with the baffling mystery behind the evil odors emanating from an Adachi-ku apartment, but that's not to say there wasn't some weirdness at work.
In fact, what investigators unearthed could have been even worse.
Behind the putrid smells emanating from the otherwise ordinary apartment was the body of 74-year-old Kisaburo Suzuki. He'd spent the last few years of his existence bedridden and battling illness.
And though Suzuki's corpse was found in January, almost a year after his death, he was not one of the tragic cases where a neglected old person has died alone and their body allowed to rot in oblivion. Far from it, as it turns out. The body of Kisaburo Suzuki went undiscovered for so long because there was somebody who could not bear with the thought of leaving it alone.
"Kisaburo had been cared for by his younger sister, 68-year-old Michiko, who lived in a home about 50 meters away from his. Michiko Suzuki said that her brother had died on Feb. 10 last year. She said that he was her last remaining sibling and she couldn't bear the thought of being left alone, so didn't tell anybody that he had died," a police insider tells Shukan Shincho. "Recently, Michiko's nephew, who lives with her, had begun noticing she was behaving strangely. He confronted her and she told him about Kisaburo's death. The police arrested Michiko for illegal disposal of a human body."
Kisaburo Suzuki's body was found lying on his futon. It had been covered in five or six layers of garbage bags, and a quilt laid atop it. Around the room in which the corpse lay rotting were about 50 deodorizers futilely trying to combat the foul reek the body oozed out. Residents were not surprised that something untoward had been going on in the old man's apartment.
"Looking back, I knew something weird must have been going on. The mail never built up and it seemed as though somebody had been living there, but for the past year, I never saw the lights on at night and never heard a sound come out of the place," a resident of the condominium tells Shukan Shincho. "Sometimes, the smell that came out of the joint was so bad it almost made you heave. Then, from about last summer, rats, which we've never seen much around here before, started popping up everywhere. I wanted to talk to the caretaker of the apartment about it."
Judging on what had been going on at the apartment, it seemed the discovery of the old man's body had only been a matter of time before Michiko Suzuki's nephew found out about it anyway.
Michiko Suzuki, meanwhile, has elicited considerable sympathy for her "sibling love," especially as she used to prepare meals and take them over to her brother's home morning and night, pretending she was feeding him but dumping the food instead. It's the same "sibling love" that others are now questioning.
"That family is somewhat, well, I suppose 'complicated' is the best way to say it," a friend of the Suzuki family says. "Of the five siblings, four lived together for years. The oldest brother was the only one to get married. Kisaburo, Michiko and another older brother and an older sister were all lifelong singles. They all lived for decades together as one family under the eldest brother's roof."
Michiko Suzuki had apparently been designated as the siblings' housework official and apparently had a tenuous relationship with her eldest brother's wife, the only outsider in the ironclad clan.
"The sister-in-law still goes out to work, even now when she's in her 70s. Michiko looked after all the money. I once heard, a long time ago now, that the sister-in-law was moaning about how the siblings all treated her badly and that the only time she'd ever been allowed to visit her own family's home had been upon the death of a parent. The sister-in-law also complained that every time she tried to have a conversation with her husband, his brothers and sisters would jump in and cut it off," the Suzuki family friend tells Shukan Shincho. "Over the past couple of years, though, the oldest son and eldest daughter had both passed away, robbing Michiko of her two biggest allies. When another remaining brother died, too, they kept it quiet. With Kisaburo, her final remaining ally, gone, though, it meant Michiko would be totally alone against the sister-in-law and the power in the relationship would shift. I'm not surprised she found it so difficult to accept her brother's death."
