Suggesting the murder of a high school girl… “The stupefying story and true face of a couple in their 20s”.

The body of a high school girl was found in the mountains, more than 150 km away from her home. There were four stab wounds on her back. She was found with four stab wounds on her back, strangulation marks on her neck, and a thin rope wrapped around her neck.

Hanatsu Washino, 18, a third-year student at a private high school in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, went missing on the afternoon of August 28. She left the house saying, “I’m going to see a friend,” but did not come back at the appointed time. Her worried mother called 110 in the evening of the same day.

“When the police received the call, the Mukojima Police Station of the Metropolitan Police Department speculated that the high school girl might have been involved in an incident, as they could not see any significant trouble. When they checked the security camera in the parking lot near her house, they saw Ms. Washino getting into a white passenger car.

The police analyzed the footage from the security camera and found that the same car seen on the camera was parked at the Tatsuno parking area on the Chuo Expressway in Nagano Prefecture shortly after 7 p.m. on August 30. When investigators questioned the two men and two women in the car, they implied that they had killed Ms. Washino and that they had dumped her body. Shohei Komori, 27, and his wife Kazumi, 28, of Shibukawa City, Gunma Prefecture, were arrested the following day.

“Based on the two suspects’ statements, the police searched along a prefectural road in Yamanashi Prefecture. Mr. Washino’s body was found in a storage shed in Hayakawa-cho, Yamanashi Prefecture.

According to reports in various newspapers, Ms. Washino was attending a private high school’s college preparatory course and had said that she wanted to study psychology at university. She was a member of the tea ceremony club, but retired before the summer vacation and devoted herself to studying for the entrance exam. Her family consisted of her grandparents and parents, and she was said to have a quiet personality. A couple in their 20s living in Gunma Prefecture and a high school girl in Tokyo. What was the connection between the two?

A “boiled egg” on a name plate

“Mr. Washino met the suspect, Shohei, on Twitter about two years ago. Mr. Washino is good at drawing characters, and he and the suspect, who likes anime, had a lively exchange. They are said to have even met in person.

The suspect’s wife, Kazumi, was in a relationship with another man until earlier this year. Kazumi bought the house in Shibukawa City, which is over 40 years old. They had a child together, but separated due to the violence of the man she was dating. She then met Shohei on Twitter, who was in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture at the time. I heard that they got married in May this year and started living together at a house in Shibukawa City this summer,” said another reporter from a national newspaper.

The young couple had just started their newly married life. It is known that the suspect Shohei quit his job at a building materials manufacturer he had worked for while in Mie Prefecture and was almost out of work, while the suspect Kazumi worked at a nearby convenience store. Kazumi did not put her name on the name plate, but for some reason wrote “Yudetamago” on it.

The incident was triggered by the wife’s gloomy feelings. She found out about Shohei’s relationship with Ms. Washino by looking at her husband’s smartphone.

“Shohei stated that his wife suspected the relationship and was jealous. Kazumi said, ‘I wanted the relationship to end. He must have been intensely jealous when he saw the intimate exchanges on social media with the high school girl.

The couple also said that they ‘called (Washino) out to talk things over’ and ‘went into the shed and stabbed her several times, killing her. The area around the shed where the incident took place is rarely frequented by people, and the entrance to the shed was padlocked, as if the couple feared the crime would be discovered.

Killing a young woman for their own reasons is an unforgivable crime. Yasuhei Ogawa, a crime journalist and former Kanagawa Prefectural Police detective, explains the background of the incident.

“The suspects are newlyweds. When Kazumi found out about the existence of another woman (Ms. Washino), she probably became jealous and thought that her happy time would be ruined. She thought her precious husband would be taken away from her. Shohei, on the other hand, may have been living in a house owned by his wife and had a weakness. He had no choice but to listen to the suspect Kazumi and end his relationship with Ms. Washino.

Perhaps while the three of them were discussing it, they got into trouble. It was only the circumstances of the perpetrators that motivated them to commit the crime. When I think about the high school girls who died, I feel very angry.

The storage shed where the incident took place is said to be near a campground that Shohei liked. Since he was familiar with the area, it is believed that this was a premeditated crime.