Japan - Takahiro Shiraishi,27, Kills and Dismembers 9 People

Police arrested a 27-year-old man in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture, after finding nine bodies in his apartment, investigative sources said Tuesday.

The Metropolitan Police Department found the bodies and body parts while investigating Takahiro Shiraishi in connection with the disappearance of a 23-year-old woman in Hachioji, western Tokyo. The woman is believed to have met the man after writing on a suicide site on the internet that she wanted to kill herself.

“It’s true that I tried to hide the bodies of the people I killed to destroy evidence,” Shiraishi was quoted as saying by the police.

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Over the summer, the man told his father that his life had no meaning. Then he went looking for others who felt the same way, and apparently killed them...Although the police have so far charged Mr. Shiraishi only with “abandoning bodies,” news reports on Tuesday described him as a serial killer who sought people who were thinking of killing themselves and who had expressed their dark thoughts on Twitter. The police are expected to charge Mr. Shiraishi with murder...

The Mainichi report said that he had found his first victim on Twitter and had asked to meet up, but that she had come with her boyfriend. The three went out for a drink.

Mr. Shiraishi told the police that he later invited the woman to come alone to his apartment, where he killed her. When her boyfriend came looking for her, Mr. Shiraishi told the police, he killed him, as well.

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