Unsolved Case] “I have a memory” confessed… A convincing reason why the perpetrator of a 12-year-old robbery-homicide case has now been arrested.

Reinvestigation of the security camera footage surfaced.

A suspect in a robbery-homicide case that occurred 12 years ago has been arrested.

The arrest was announced on March 3 by the Oku Police Department of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The suspect, Shota Osawa, 44, an unemployed man from Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, was arrested. The suspect is suspected of robbing an 84-year-old woman who was walking on a street in Nishiohisa 2-chome, Arakawa Ward, around 9:30 a.m. on March 6, 2002, pushing her from behind and seriously injuring her for two months, including a fractured right arm. The bag contained 14,500 yen in cash.

Why was the case solved 12 years later?

According to the police, at the time of the incident, a man’s face was seen on a nearby security camera, but he could not be identified. However, about three months ago, a detective began re-investigating a previous unsolved case that had occurred in his jurisdiction. When the suspect Osawa surfaced after matching the security camera footage with photos of dozens of people involved in other cases, he was interviewed voluntarily on March 3 and reportedly stated, “I did it because I had no money at the time.

Osawa denied some of the allegations, saying, “I remember snatching the victim, but I don’t think I pushed him because of my personality. The statute of limitations for robbery is 15 years, and he was three years away from the statute of limitations,” said a reporter from a national newspaper.

At 7:00 a.m. on the morning of the 4th, Osawa was sent to the Oku Police Station for investigation. The police officer held an umbrella over him as he walked, frowning slightly at the cold and fine rain, and boarded the bus that would escort him to the police station.

According to Taihei Ogawa, a former Kanagawa Prefectural Police detective and crime journalist, someone takes over the investigation of unsolved cases as long as the statute of limitations has not expired.

If it is a crime like robbery, there is always someone who is in charge of the investigation, and even if he or she is transferred to another department, the investigation materials are always passed on to the next investigator. Each prefectural police department has a department that specializes in unsolved cases, but the jurisdiction also investigates unsolved cases in a different way. This is partly because information about past cases sometimes comes up unexpectedly years after the fact, so it is necessary to keep the case in mind.

In addition, there are cases where another investigator reviews the materials that have been handed over to him or her, which can bring the case closer to a resolution.

Different investigators can look at things differently. Also, forensic technology has advanced remarkably in the past few years, so there are cases where evidence that could not be analyzed at the time, such as DNA analysis or camera footage, can be found.

With the arrest last October of a suspect in the Nagoya housewife murder case from 26 years ago, the Commissioner of the National Police Agency has also issued an order to review unsolved cases. If there are cases that are actually solved, as was the case this time, investigators will be more motivated, and more unsolved cases will be solved.

There may be more cases like this in the future, where a person feels relieved that he or she was able to escape, only to be caught when he or she forgets about it.

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