NANTAN, Kyoto (Japan): The Kyoto prefectural police on Thursday (April 16) arrested Yuki Adachi on suspicion of abandoning the body of his 11-year-old stepson Yuki in Nantan, Kyoto Prefecture.
The boy went missing in March, and his body was discovered on Monday.
Adachi, 37, has admitted to police that he abandoned the body. According to investigators, he also provided the police with a statement during voluntary questioning before his arrest, indicating that he had killed the boy.
The prefectural police will investigate the developments leading to Yuki’s death.
According to a police announcement, between the morning of March 23 and Monday evening, Adachi carried the boy’s body to more than one place in the city, including mountain forests, and abandoned the body. Investigators identified the stepfather on security camera footage and through other sources.
Although Yuki’s body was discovered in a forest on Monday, new suspicions have emerged that he was abandoned at other places in the city after his death. On Thursday, the prefectural police set up an investigation headquarters for the charge of abandoning a body, so as to uncover the entire picture of the crime.
According to sources close to investigators, Adachi admitted his involvement in the boy’s death during voluntary questioning by police on Wednesday. An autopsy of Yuki’s body found no visible wounds and the cause of the death was unknown, but death by murder was apparently not ruled out.
Adachi is the boy’s stepfather and has legally adopted him. The boy’s mother married Adachi, and they lived together as a family of three. Yuki did not show up at elementary school on March 23, and the school contacted his mother at about 11:50 a.m., after which it came apparent that he was missing.
It has been confirmed that Yuki was alive on the morning of March 23.
Adachi called the police at about noon on the day, saying, “I drove my son to school, but when I returned to school to pick him up, I was told that he hadn’t come to school.” There was no footage of the boy on the school’s security cameras.
The prefectural police told reporters that they are still investigating whether anyone else was involved in the case. Adachi reportedly made no statement about any accomplice.
On March 29, six days after Yuki went missing, his schoolbag was discovered in a mountain about 3 kilometers west from the school. On Sunday, a pair of black sneakers resembling his shoes were recovered from a mountain about 6 kilometers southwest from the school.
The prefectural police suspect that these items were abandoned by the boy’s stepfather and are trying to clarify everything that happened, including how the boy died. - The Yomiuri Shimbun
