The Arson Murder of a Rich Couple: Shadows of a Perpetrator Who Targeted 10 Billion Yen in Assets

Itabashi Ward, Tokyo Occurred on May 25, ’09

It was well known in the neighborhood that Mr. Seta was a wealthy man. He was known to be a wealthy man in the neighborhood. He drank here and there and said, ‘I don’t trust banks, so I keep my cash at home. His wife also told me that she tripped over a stack of bills at home and hurt her foot.

This is what Mr. A, the president of a real estate company in Tokyo, told me. He was one of the suspected perpetrators of the arson murder of a wealthy couple in Itabashi by the police. The victims in the case were Eiichi Seta (74 at the time) and his wife Chieko (69), who ran a real estate rental business. They were from a family of wealthy farmers in the Itabashi area, and their assets were said to be worth 10 billion yen.

Mr. Seta had a wide range of friends and the police were investigating many people involved, and Mr. A was one of them.

Because I knew Mr. Seta, I was marked by the police for two to three months after the incident. However, many of the stores that Mr. Seta frequented have disappeared, and I don’t know if the police are still investigating. At the time, there was a man in the construction industry who used to come and go to Ms. Seta’s house. After the incident, he became unusually good with money and was even detained by the police for a while. However, that man also passed away about a year or two ago.

There was also a theory of a “Japan-China joint theft gang” as suspects. However, the key man who knew the whole story of the group had actually died in a motorcycle accident about five years ago. There is not much time left to solve the case.