Police arrested a man in his 40s in Kawasaki on Thursday for allegedly murdering another man in 2003.
The arrest came after a skeletonized body was found in a bamboo forest in the city in 2010.
The suspect, Yoshiyuki Sakai, 46, was arrested on suspicion of murdering Toshiaki Seino, then 26, in or near Kawasaki around Oct. 31, 2003. He has denied the allegation, according to police sources.
Sakai and Seino had worked at the same alcoholic beverage store, but Sakai quit the store a few months before the alleged murder, the sources said.
Seino worked until the day before the incident, but then went missing, and his father filed a missing person report with the police.
In April 2010, a police officer found a skeletonized body while on patrol, and the body was identified as that of Seino.
The body had several scars that appeared to have been inflicted with a knife, and a forensic autopsy determined that the cause of death was bleeding or damage to internal organs, leading the police to launch a murder investigation. Sakai emerged as a possible suspect after the police searched Seino's personal connections.
"We would like to quietly wait for the truth to come out," Seino's bereaved family said in a statement released through a lawyer.
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