Maizuru High School Girl Beaten to Death: Ex-Principal Keeps ‘True Culprit’ in His Heart

Maizuru City, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, May 7, 2008

I still go to the site every year in May to offer flowers. I still go to the site every May to offer flowers. The case has not been solved, so I have nothing to report. ……”

This is what Kohei Kitagawa, former principal of Kyoto Prefectural Higashi Maizuru High School, told me. In 2008, Miho Kosugi, then 15, a first-year student at the school’s Ukishima branch, was found naked and dead. There were traces of a persistent beating on her head, and the local residents were shaken by this extremely brutal incident.

In April ’09, the prefectural police arrested a man in his 60s. He was charged with murder and indecent manslaughter, but was acquitted by the Supreme Court in July 2002. He was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder just four months after he was acquitted in the Maizuru case. He died in prison in 2004 at the medical prison where he was serving his sentence.

Mr. Kitagawa, the reporter in charge of the Kyoto Prefectural Police, said.

I still believe that A is the culprit. I still think A is the culprit. Higashi Maizuru is a place where almost no incidents occur, but during the time he lived there, there were several incidents such as assault cases and underwear theft. Even so, he was acquitted. At that time, security cameras were still inaccurate, so we could not be sure until the end. It’s a pity.

How has the investigation been going since A’s acquittal? The reporter in the previous article spoke.

Currently, there is no investigation headquarters. As long as there is no new information about the real culprit, the investigation will not be reopened.

Will there ever be a day when the bereaved families are vindicated?

From the January 7-14, 2022 issue of FRIDAY