A wooded area where the body of a female teacher was buried (Image: Kyodo News)“I’m going to Kushiro.” She told her husband and children that she was going to Kushiro, and left by car. However, she was found not in Kushiro, but in Obihiro, about 150 km to the east. Her body was found under the ground, still wearing clothes.   Asako Miyata, 47, a resident of Kitami City, Hokkaido, left her home before noon on May 29. By the evening of the same day, she was communicating with her family on LINE, but on the following day, May 30, she could not be reached. Her husband, concerned, called the Hokkaido Prefectural Police. “My wife has not come home. I have lost track of her whereabouts.” On the 31st, he filed a missing persons report. When the police interviewed the husband, a man emerged in the line of investigation. He is a man named Shuri Katagiri (35), who works at Obihiro Agricultural High School in Obihiro City. When the police interviewed him voluntarily on June 1, he admitted to having met with Ms. Miyata and stated: “I strangled her and killed her. I carried her body in my car, dug a hole with a shovel, and buried her.” Together with Katagiri, the police searched a wooded area in Obihiro City and found Miyata’s body under the ground. There were marks on the neck as if she had been strangled. The cause of death was asphyxiation. The police arrested Katagiri on suspicion of abandoning the body, but is also investigating the murder. The first time in 39 years