"Someone is Dead in Your Room " Phone Call Leads to Discovery of Mysterious Death

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An unsolved mysterious case that really happened in Japan last year (2013). It is intriguing as well as a little confusing.


"On the evening of 26th June 2013,  a 46 year-old man was found hanged in a public housing complex apartment in Sakai-city, Osaka."

At first glance, there seems nothing out of ordinary about the case.
However, the dead man was not the resident of the apartment, and the true owner of the room - a man aged 21 - is somehow missing.

Moreover, there was a "mystery man" at the scene who disappeared immediately after the body was found.
We also have a report of a "man with a Kanto accent"** who called the apartment's owner to inform him that someone was dead in his room.

There are many unclear circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body, bringing to our mind the phrase "Truth is stranger than fiction."


The Persons Involved

A: 46 years-old. On the night of 26th his body is discovered inside B's apartment.
B: 21 years-old. The true owner of the apartment where A is found. As of 28th, he is still missing.
C: B's mother. She is vaguely acquainted with A.
D: C's common-law husband and the first person to hear from B about the "dead body" in his room.
E: C's daughter and B's older sister.
F: 24 years-old. E's husband and B's brother-in-law. He is the one who finds the body and calls the police.
G: F's co-worker. Together with F, he finds the body.
H: A man in his 40s. He is in the room when F and G find A's body. While the call to the police is being made, he disappears from the scene.


The image, captured from the actual news on TV, shows a policeman standing in front of the apartment in which the hanged body was found.


The Summary of Events

It all began on 26th when the apartment's owner B received a mysterious call from a "man with a Kanto accent":

"Someone is dead in your room."

Any other person would have run back home straightaway to check the truth of the matter.
However, B did not do so but instead called his mother's home.

Curiously, the people in C's household did not go check out the apartment immediately either. Like a game of Chinese Whispers, B told D, D told C, and then C told her daughter E, and E in turn told her husband F the story of the "dead body."
Finally, F, taking his co-worker G with him, went to B's apartment to investigate.

Around 11 in the evening, when F and G arrived at B's apartment on the 10th floor of the complex and rang the doorbell, a stranger H, believed to be in his 40s, opened the door.
When F and G told the man about the phone call, H said,

"There is indeed a dead body in this room,"

and invited them in. F and G checked the room and found A, whose body was naked from the waist up and who was hanging by the neck by an electrical cord from the curtain rail.
They immediately called the police, but meanwhile H had disappeared.

The Sequence of Events

The apartment's owner B receives a call from an unidentified man who says "Someone is dead in your room."

The owner B makes a call to his mother C's home.

The story gets passed around from Mother C's partner D → Mother C → Sister E → Brother-in-law F

Brother-in-law F and his co-worker G go check out the apartment.
When they ring the doorbell a stranger H appears, who says to them "There is indeed a dead body in this room."

A's hanged body is found in the room.

Brother-in-law F calls the police. Meanwhile H disappears.

The owner B also disappears and cannot be reached.


Some Questions

Why A, who was found dead, was in the house of B, who was a complete stranger to him?

In response to the interview by TV Asahi, C revealed:
A was C's "old  friend." C's family had been planning on moving in with B and A had been asked to help them and stay overnight in the apartment.

When asked who H was, C replied she had no idea.

Who was the man with a "Kanto accent," who first informed B of the "dead body"?
Some speculate that it was H, but we are yet to ascertain his identity.

The owner of the room B might hold the key, but he has since disappeared and currently cannot be reached.
C also explained to TV Asahi that "we have received calls from him (B), but when we try to call him he doesn't answer the phone."

The case is full of unsolved mysteries that the police is probing both murder and suicide angles.


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** Kanto accent - Osaka is in the Kansai region, so normally the people there speak with a Kansai accent.  A man with a"Kanto accent" would sound a little out of place.

Sources (all in Japanese):
J cast News
Naver Matome

Comments

This would make a good basis for a detective novel :D
BlackCat said…
I'm very curious as to where B was and what he was doing away from his apartment. And why did he just "disappear"?

I'm not quite sure if the caller and H are the same person though.
I think maybe A called H over to help with the family moving in? It seems logical, but he seems calm about there being a body. Why didn't he report it? Is he somehow involved? He did "fled" from the scene. But then again, maybe H contacted B through obtaining his number from A? IF not, then who contacted B and knows about the body?

Regarding A's death, was it really a suicide? Don't you agree that it's weird that he's wearing nothing from the waist up? I want to know what had actually happened to the body.

It says that B has the key to the apartment, right? Why did it mention this? Does it mean that B still has the key? So it must follow that A borrowed the extra key from the front desk right? But that doesn't make sense if B asked A for help with his family moving in. *Maybe I'm just over thinking about this
@Black Cat: "hold the key" is an idiom which means "to provide the explanation for something that you could not previously understand"
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/hold+the+key
Mimi said…
Wonderful! It's so mysterious I can't think of an explanation.

Did A have a motive to kill himself? He was asked to stay overnight, why did he kill himself there? How did he get in if B was a complete stranger to him? Did B leave his key somewhere outside so A got in? Why would you ask someone to stay overnight at a place that you're moving into? Even if he agreed to help, I find that rather odd. What did A's family say about his possibility of committing suicide? Or does he have no relatives?

Did B know that A was staying in his apartment? And B wasn't spending the night with A at the apartment? Where was he at the time? Was he far away and staying at another place? Couldn't he have called A to confirm about the dead body? Well perhaps he did try to call but couldn't get through, so he called his mother's house instead, so that they could contact A. But instead of contacting A, D told C and C told E. Since C was acquainted with A and she knew he was staying overnight there, why didn't she call A straight away? Did they think it was a prank or something, so they didn't take it seriously? And informed each other about it until F wanted to check it out? That's rather strange.

Did A have a Kanto accent? Or lived in that region for some time? Did A have friends from the Kanto region? Did B have friends with a Kanto accent?

If the person who called B was H, then F and G could confirm to that, right? Since they met him, they should know if he talked with a Kanto accent or a Kansai accent. Didn't they think it was weird to find H in a house with a dead body? They didn't question him or anything and immediately called the police?


Was the apartment spacious? Why would C's family (assuming that consists of C and D) move in with B? I think that people in their early twenties would want to live without their parents in a small place, enough for one or two people to live there. Regardless if they are working or a university student. Since they were moving in, perhaps the place was indeed spacious after all. And B was well-to-do to acquire a big apartment at the age of 21 years old. Or it was an old apartment owned by the family or friends that they gave B to use.

A was naked from the waist up, were his clothes neatly folded? Did they find his clothes and shoes in the apartment? I believe that when Japanese people (or people in general) commit suicide they will take off their clothes and fold them neatly nearby, and place their shoes neatly too. But this would differ in some cases, right? And, why was he naked only to the waist up?

B was acting kind of suspicious. Why did he disappear like that? Was he not going to work or school? Since he was completely unreachable, I think not. If he had nothing to do with the incident, why did he disappear in such a manner? Was he in some kind of trouble? Did he ever come back to the apartment? His belongings are still there? Were his personal documents and passport still there?
Mimi said…
What's the relationship between A and H? And what's the relationship between H and B? What was H doing in B's apartment? Both of them vanished after the body was found. If B didn't go to work or school, he must have been living somewhere else, with somebody supporting him. Have they traced the use of his credit cards and ATM cards? Could his friends be helping him? But since he was unreachable, I doubt his friends knew anything either. (Could it be H!? O_O I don't know...)

F and G rang the bell to the apartment because they knew A would be staying there, right? If not, why did they ring the bell? Did B said he was coming home? Then they wouldn't need to come, right? If they knew that A was staying there, did they try to call A before coming there? Did they know how A looked like? I mean, if they knew how he looked like, and somebody else opened the door, shouldn't they have asked something like, "Is A here?", "Who are you?" and introduced themselves. Instead, F and G told the man about the phone call. So they couldn't have known how A looked like, right?

If that was so, then, when somebody opened the door, they would assume it was A. Which is why they told him about the phone call right away. However, wouldn't a normal person, who never saw this person before, asked for identification? F and G could've asked things like, "Are you A?" before proceeding to inform him about the phone call. If they did, what did H say in response? Didn't they feel it was weird for some unidentified man to be opening the door to B's house? Did they assume H was A's friend, staying over with him to keep him company? Did A ever told C about this?

And when they found the body, did they knew it was A right away? If F and G didn't recognize A, they must have asked H if the hanging body was A, right? Did H confirm this? If they do know how A looked like, didn't they feel suspicious towards H who opened the door? And didn't ask him why he was there and all the relevant stuff? As F was calling the police, what did G do? Did he just stand there agape at the body? Didn't he feel the need to ask H for answers? Considering that they didn't keep an eye on H, that's when H disappeared. The person who first found the dead body is definitely suspicious...

B could also make up the story about the phone call. Did they trace the number that called him? And F and G could also make up the story about H. Since nobody else saw him except the both of them. But then again, why would they make up such stories. G was a mere co-worker after all, right? They wouldn't need to create false tales.

There are so many things I want to ask... I think some information are being left out by the police and media, or perhaps there weren't much information at all. I can't read Japanese so I can't check out the sources.

Anyway, mysteries like this are really great. ^_^ I think the Kobe child murders are rather mysterious as well. Although it was solved, there were still weird pieces left unexplained, such as the murder was done by a left-handed person, but the convicted was a right-handed person. The juvenile convicted confessed to the crimes too. But his account of the murders differed from the true account.

Keep up the good work, Saya! Everyone have a nice day.
Nunu. said…
Hmmm... I'm thinking A was probably having depression, and killed himself at B's house, and H is somebody who knew A. H probably knew where A was and went there to check on him and found him dead. And made the call to B. Though, not sure how H knew B's number.

The report did not say that marks that indicate foul play were found on A's body, so I don't think he was murdered.

B probably worried he'd be blamed for A's suicide and ran away.

This theory is the one that makes most sense to me from the rest in my head.

nunu
Anonymous said…
Hmm curious.

Is B still unreachable until NOW? How's the case now, closed/no progress at all/still in investigation but with some progress?
Anonymous said…
Huh... Why B didn't go check his apartment immediately?

Imagination :

B : 'Mom? There is someone calls me saying that there is a dead body on my room'

C : 'Oh dear, that's horrible. Are you sure it's not a prank call? Btw, have you eat regularly? Did you take care of your health?' [lol]

B might already had some bad experience on his room and that's why he believe the call is true hence he didn't want to go to check it?

I love mystery like this! It makes my imagination going wild! X3
BlueRio said…
Am I the only one who thought that B and H are kinda related to each other?? at first I was so sure that H is the murderer..however B also dissapeared and cannot be reached..or H planned all of this and before he dissapeared and he might threathened B not to tell everyone that he is the murderer since B might feel suspicious of H...so B take the decision to run away so that he can refrained himself from being investigated by the police and tell them the truth...
BlueRio said…
ooh I just read that A was C's OLD FRIEND...so B , H and C might related too...what if C have some grudge on A so he/she planned to kill A by paying H too make his/her plan succesful but B was feeling suspicious of C and H...Just like what I said before it's either C or H threathened B not to tell everyone the truth or B was kidnapped by C or H so that he won't tell the truth..that's why B can call other people but he won't answer his phone when people called him....
Gabe said…
.... or maybe we're all just over thinking this? Maybe B killed A because there's a total stranger in his apartment and killed him out of panic? C is A's old friend and she asked A a favor to help her family move to B's house but B doesn't know A, correct? And H is probably A's acquaintance or something to help him with the moving- He's probably the first person who saw the body.

But- he doesn't want to get involved so he sneaked out when there's a chance. So maybe H and A was involved in some illegal activity and involved B in some way so that B killed A? Why did B tell his mother about the phone call and not check his own apartment first? Maybe it's to buy time so he could disappear? And maybe C felt something is wrong with that phone call so that she called E? And maybe E's scared so she called F? And F decided to check it out with G?

Well that's just my thought on this lol.
Oh my, this is quite the mystery indeed! The creepiest thing about it, to be honest, is someone completely unrelated to B being in his apartment.
My guesses point towards either mafia (yakuza?) or a professional assassin. Maybe B was involved with some dangerous persons.
Anonymous said…
Yeah my thoughts are somewhat similar to Gabe's...

Maybe it's that simple,
Maybe H just ran away when F and G entered, and B just doesn't want to get involved.
Charm said…
woo this gives me the creeps
tickledpink23 said…
I love how F & G go to the apartment and a complete stranger opens the door and lets them both in. Even CONFIRMING that there is indeed a dead body in the room. Now this is what blows me away, neither F or G found it odd that someone who clearly isn't B not only answers B's door and lets them in, he escapes during the phone call and neither F or G didn't question WHO H was, WHAT he was doing there, WHY he was there and HOW he got into B's apartment in the first place!!!
(ಥ_ಥ)
Where is the logic!?
nyanya said…
I think this is some kind of premeditated murder. It had to do with the whole 'moving' thing, I guess. The family seems to know something but they stick to the plan. It is obvious that the F and G didn't freak out when a stranger open the door for them inside F's brother-in-law apartment. I mean c'mon! They were too ignorant to be human being. In fact that they didn't asked why H was there in the first place. (They surely had times since they came together)
By today date..is the case still unsolved??
mintiel said…
It's always fun coming to your blog and reading through everything.
Though, I'm intrigued. Since this was an actual case, was it ever solved?