The Japanese city of Nagoya was the site of a brutal murder in 1988 known as the “Nagoya Pregnant Woman Ripper Murder”. (名古屋妊婦切り裂き殺人事件 in Japanese.)
On March 18, 1988, a 31-year-old man named in some media reports as “Mr. K” came home to his Nagoya apartment to find that his door was unlocked. Puzzled, he went in and found that all the lights were off. His 27-year-old pregnant wife, “Mrs. M”, appeared not to be inside. An hour before he arrived home, Mr. K tried calling his wife, but she hadn’t picked up the phone.
Before Mr. K went off to look for his wife, he decided that he’d change out of his work clothes first. After he finished changing in his room, he suddenly heard a baby crying. In the back of the front room, Mr. K discovered a horrific sight: the mutilated body of his wife, and their newborn son laying at her feet.
Not only did Mrs. M have her hands tied up and an electrical cord wrapped around her neck, but her stomach had been cut open. The killer had performed a home delivery, even cutting the baby boy’s umbilical cord. The baby had some knife wounds as well, with several cuts on his thigh, knee, and groin. Mr. K frantically looked for their phone, but couldn’t find it. He ran out the door and told a neighbor what happened. The police were called, and the baby was rushed to the hospital. Miraculously, doctors were able to save Mr. K’s son, and the boy was discharged on April 2.
Meanwhile, investigators struggled to find or even identify Mrs. M’s murderer. There were no fingerprints anywhere in the apartment, and the only traces of blood they could find was in the kitchen sink. Mrs. M’s wallet and purse were missing. The family’s phone, amazingly, was found lodged inside her stomach, along with her car keys and a Mickey Mouse keychain. Her time of death was estimated to have occurred around 3 PM. It was believed that the killer strangled her first, then cut her stomach open and took the baby out. Some speculated that the killer had a medical background, while others thought the murder might have been carried out by more than one man.
Picture of Nakagawa, the ward in Nagoya where the murder occurred.
Initially, police suspected that Mr. K was the murderer. His decision to change his clothes as soon as he got home struck them as odd, and the fact that he didn’t immediately switch on the lights was also suspicious. Mr. K, however, had a solid alibi that could be vouched by his co-workers. He was at work at 3 PM, and didn’t leave until after 7.
With Mr. K cleared, the next theory was that the murder had to do with the business he and Mrs. M ran. They sold Amway products from their home, but the authorities found no reason that this had anything to do with Mrs. M’s murder. At 1:50 PM, a customer paid her a visit and brought some strawberries over. The woman talked with Mrs. M until 3 PM, and then left after buying some deodorant.
Around the same time, a neighbor reported seeing a suspicious 30-something man lounging around in the apartment vicinity. The man, who was dressed in a suit and stood about 5 feet, 6 inches (165 CM) , knocked on the woman’s door and asked if she knew anybody named Nakamura. The neighbor, somewhat frightened by the strange man, quickly told him no and then slammed the door shut. Several other residents also saw this man, but police were never able to locate him. Mr. K and his son, sick of the media attention, left Japan in 1999 and have since lived abroad.
