Stabbing Death of a Couple in Adachi-ku: Filipino Suspect Envisioned a “Japanese Dream

A woman is seen in a mass retailer store, touching a cosmetic product on the display shelf. At first glance, this seems like an ordinary scene, but in fact, she had already become a “fugitive criminal.

On January 18, the bodies of Norihiro Takahashi, 55, and his wife Kimie, 52, were found wrapped in plastic sheets under the floor of a house in Adachi-ku, Tokyo. The photo was taken by an acquaintance who happened to meet the suspect, Morales Hazel Ann Bagisha, 30, a Filipino national who was arrested on suspicion of abandoning the bodies. She describes what happened then.

I met her on the night of the 17th. She seemed to be looking for something while muttering, ‘Bansoukou, bansoukou…,’ and was somewhat irritated when I called out to her. At the time, I thought she just happened to be in a bad mood, but when I saw the news on the 19th, I was astonished.

Morales was taken into custody and arrested at a hotel in Fukushima City in the early hours of the 19th. Another suspect, Della Cruz Bryan Jefferson Lisin, 34, a Filipino citizen of unknown occupation, was arrested on January 22.

Morales, who came to Japan around 2004, was working at a Filipino club in Tokyo. A person involved at the time said.

I was working under the name “Ami” at a popular restaurant in Asakusa called “G.” She was actually married to a man who was a relative of the owner, but of course she did not tell the customers. There were nearly 20 young girls on the staff, and the prices were reasonable compared to nearby Kinshicho and Ueno, so the place was thriving every day.

During the time he was a member of “G,” there was a time when he was quite well-off, as he often received gifts of luxury brand goods, due in part to the fact that he had “big customers” like the “5.5 billion yen scammer” reported in weekly magazines and on TV. There was a time, however, when the scammer was investigated.

However, the “ground man” eventually fled the country as investigators closed in on him, and was later arrested. She also experienced a “turning point” in her own life.

She divorced the owner’s family man after a dispute over Ami’s relationship with him. Ami took the child, who was still small, and left him with a relative in the Philippines. Then, “G” was discovered by the authorities and suddenly closed. This was due to the fact that the owner of the store had illegally obtained visas for most of the girls in the store through sham marriages.

Later, Morales began working at a club in Ueno, but her reputation here was not good.

She borrowed money from a number of customers and never repaid them. She sometimes borrowed as much as 100,000 yen from a female colleague. When customers complained to the store over repayment, she was transferred to a different store. Eventually, she could no longer stay in Ueno and had to leave for another entertainment district.

One of the old-timers who works at a Filipino club testified with a wry smile, “I asked one of my customers to rent an apartment close to the club in Ueno.

She said, “I asked a customer to rent an apartment near the club in Ueno, and she said she would pay the 130,000 yen rent with her own salary. She said she would pay the 130,000 yen rent with her own salary. She said it would be difficult for a foreigner to sign a contract, so she had the contract signed in the customer’s name. The customer would believe him because he was romantically involved with her.

But they repeatedly fail to pay the rent, and the customer ends up paying the entire amount. Eventually, they lose contact with her and she runs away. She was full of debts at her other restaurants, and she was famous because it’s not every girl who defaults on her debts that much.

The other suspect, Dela Cruz, was a childhood friend of Morales’ from the same hometown and had come to Japan as a technical intern. On a video-sharing website and social networking service using her own name as the name of her channel, she was seen packing a suitcase with a large amount of canned goods and other “home tastes” at her home in the Philippines and introducing her apartment in Japan during her return visit to Japan last fall. He was also seen toasting at a yakiniku restaurant in Adachi Ward, where the suspect Morales lives, while enjoying a reunion with her two months before the incident.

From what I’ve seen in his stories and videos at his training place, he seems like a common, jovial Filipino brother, and he doesn’t seem like the type who would be very likely to commit a murder. I wonder if he believed the grudge against the victim and his wife that the woman told him, or if he was blinded by the reward. …… (A reporter from a commercial broadcaster).

The “counterfeit marriages” were the cause of the large-scale bust of “G” in Asakusa. In fact, not a small number of women working in Philippine clubs are said to be in this gray zone. This is due in part to the fact that the issuance of “entertainment visas,” which were the norm during the heyday of Philippine clubs in the 1990s and 2000s, has been viewed as a “human trafficking” issue by the United States and other countries, and the screening process was greatly tightened in 2005. As a result, the number of Filipino women coming to Japan has plummeted.

Another person involved with a Filipino club said that the marriage visa attracted attention as a reaction to the fact that it is practically impossible to obtain an entertainment visa.

The procedure for coming to Japan on a tourist visa is very strict, and there are also restrictions on working on a kinship visa,” she said. A marriage visa, which has no such restrictions, is truly a platinum card for Filipino women. It is said that a fake marriage pays about 50,000 yen per month to the broker, but if she earns money through part-time jobs, etc., it will be enough to cover the cost. The trick is that they get a visa for one year after marriage, and if the visa is extended at the next renewal, they get divorced. Previously, the extension was for three years, but now it is for one year. But there are still no work restrictions, so it’s a big deal.

According to this source, in the most malicious cases, the workers sometimes marry their clients. For the women, it is a “sham marriage,” but for the customers, of course, it is a true love affair. Eventually, the women stop coming home or become sexless, which makes the men suspicious, but they do not divorce.

If you go to the entertainment district and have a good time drinking and singing, you can easily spend over 20,000 yen,” he said. The amount of money that customers generously pay is equivalent to one month’s average income in the Philippines. It is even more so if you get a big clientele like “Ami” from the Asakusa era.
Many girls change their financial sense, but the steady ones start a business or save their money. But why did Morales repeatedly borrow money here and there?

The incident is also believed to have started when he was dating the victim and her husband’s eldest son, and his family was opposed to the relationship because of his failure to repay a large debt and past divorces.

The debt problems to the eldest son were also complicated enough to involve the police. That was one of the reasons why the case was solved so quickly, but the money items, such as precious metals in the house, were left behind. It is likely that strong resentment rather than a desire for money took precedence. ……

The series of episodes of Morales’ life are marked only by her antics, which are not at all what one would expect from her lovely facial expressions in the photos uploaded on SNS. We wonder if the “Japan Dream” for her was only a bizarre obsession with money…

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