NANTAN, Kyoto (Japan): The smartphone of the arrested father of an 11-year-old Kyoto Prefecture boy who has been found dead had a history of searching for ways to abandon a body, investigative source said Sunday (April 19).
The police department of Kyoto Prefecture, western Japan, is investigating the routes the 37-year-old father, Yuki Adachi, took in his car, believing that he attempted to delay the discovery of the boy’s body.
The Kyoto police arrested Adachi on Thursday on suspicion of abandoning the body of his son, Yuki, in a forest area in the city of Nantan in the prefecture.
Their first names are spelled the same in English but are written and pronounced differently in Japanese.
An analysis of the father’s smartphone found a history of searching for how to abandon a body around March 23, when the boy, a student of Sonobe Elementary School in the city, went missing, the investigative sources said.
The suspect is believed to have relocated the boy’s body multiple times in Nantan using his car.
The police department suspects that the father temporarily left the body in an area near a public restroom about 2 kilometers northwest of his home in the city.
The body of the boy was found Monday in a forest area about 8 km northeast of the home.
While the cause of his death remains a mystery, the boy is estimated to have died in late March.
It remains unknown what happened to the boy after he was last seen having breakfast by a relative on the morning of March 23.
The suspect initially told police that he drove his son to a point near the elementary school and that the boy then went missing. In voluntary police questioning before his arrest, however, the suspect said he strangled his son to death after dropping by the school.
The Kyoto police are investigating the father’s car as part of their probe, suspecting that he knows about the circumstances regarding the boy’s school bag and sneakers possibly worn by the victim, which have been found in different forest areas in the city. - Jiji Press
