HYOGO (TR) – A forty five-year-old man serving a life-in-prison time period for the homicide of an elementary faculty woman in Okayama Prefecture twenty years in the past was arrested final week for tried homicide in a second case.
At round 6:20 p.m. on September 28, 2006, Kunihiko Katsuta, 45, is alleged to have repeatedly stabbed the second woman, aged 9, with a knife and critically injured her in Tatsuno Metropolis.
The woman suffered critical accidents that took two months to heal, police stated, based on the Mainichi Shimbun (Nov. 8).
Throughout voluntary questioning by the Hyogo Prefectural Police, he stated he was “trying round for women.” As properly, he admitted to stabbing the woman with a knife, however said that he “didn’t intend to kill her.”
It was additionally revealed that he defined that he had hugged one other woman simply earlier than the incident. Police consider that he was focusing on women he didn’t know. Each women had been focused on their method house from cram faculty, and police are rigorously verifying his assertion.
On November 8, police despatched Katsuta the Kobe District Public Prosecutors Workplace on suspicion of tried homicide. As he was delivered to the workplace, he hid his face with a hood.
Homicide of Yuzuki Unose
Katsuta is at the moment serving a life time period for the homicide of the primary woman, aged 9, in Tsuyama Metropolis, Okayama Prefecture in 2004.
As properly, Katsuta has made an announcement to police that hints at his involvement within the homicide of a 3rd woman, Yuzuki Unose.
In October 2007, Unose, then aged 7, was stabbed within the chest and abdomen by an unknown assailant in entrance of her house in Kakogawa Metropolis, Hyogo Prefecture. The woman, who was within the second grade at elementary faculty, later died.
Since then, police have been unable to resolve the case, which is being handled as homicide. Nevertheless, it has been revealed that Katsuta has made statements implicating himself in that homicide.
Police beforehand stated that Katsuta has additionally been convicted and sentenced to jail for punching different women within the abdomen in 2000 and 2009.
“Not the offender!”
After his apprehension within the Tsuyama case, Katsuta despatched a sequence of letters written in pen with three totally different colours to Fuji Information Community.
In a letter dated November 2021, earlier than his sentencing, he claimed to have had nothing to do with the crime, calling it a false accusation. Nevertheless, he additionally wrote that he has behaved abnormally towards younger women.
In that letter, he confessed to having stolen a lady’s shirt in Tsuyama, strangling a lady in Okayama Metropolis and stalking a lady in Kurashiki Metropolis.
On prime of that, in October of final yr, he despatched one other letter to the community that included an outline of the homicide of Unose. Within the textual content, he says Hyogo police assume that he was behind the crime. “After all, [I’m] not the offender!” he wrote.
Investigative sources stated that voluntary police questioning started after the decision was finalized within the Tsuyama case in September final yr. Throughout that session, Katsuta initially denied involvement within the different two incidents that occurred in Hyogo Prefecture. It was later revealed that because the questioning continued, nevertheless, that he modified his assertion to confess his involvement.
