A 25-year-old suspect admitted that she had murdered her 21-year-old brother, investigative sources said Wednesday, after his dismembered body parts were found Monday in a house in Shisui, Chiba Prefecture.
She said they had disagreement over "a trivial matter" and she killed him, but didn't know how to dispose of the corpse. She was trying to dump it after dismembering it into pieces, she added.
The body parts were partly frozen when they were discovered, the sources said.
Police believe that the suspect, Emi Takeuchi, who was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of dismembering and technically abandoning the corpse, tried to freeze the body in an effort to prevent it from decaying and delay its discovery, the sources said.
The police are trying to determine if the deceased is Takeuchi's brother, Ryo, 21, who had been missing since the end of August. The two had been living in the house together.
According to the sources, the body was found cut up into more than 10 pieces that were found in the living room, packed in several plastic bags. None of them was found in a refrigerator, they said. Bloodstains were found in many of the rooms in the house.
An autopsy showed the deceased was a man in his 20s to 40s who was cut up by different kinds of knives, the police said. He appears to have died several days ago, they said.
The suspect, who had been working part-time until Saturday, was absent from work on Sunday due to health reasons, according to her employer.
The police said earlier she admitted dismembering the corpse about two weeks ago.
