American arrested as body parts found scattered across Japan

An American man suspected of murdering and dismembering a Japanese woman is in custody in Japan.

The suspect, Yevgeniy Vasilievich Bayraktar, 26, was arrested last Thursday on suspicion of confining the woman in a low-cost apartment he was renting in Osaka.

Two days later the woman’s head was found in a suitcase at a different short-term rental property in Osaka. Bayraktar is “believed to have stayed in a number of condos rented to tourists since arriving in Japan” in January, according to Kyodo News.

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Bayraktar also provided information that helped the police find other body parts in mountainous areas of Kyoto and Osaka, reports The Japan Times. A woman’s torso and “a pair of soil-covered arms” were found in Shimamoto while legs were found in Yamashina.

“Although the body parts have yet to be positively identified, police suspect they are from the missing woman,” says The Asahi Shimbun. Police said the suspect has admitted to disposing of her body and that they plan to rearrest Bayraktar on suspicion of “desecrating a body and abandoning a corpse”.

Bayraktar was the last person seen with the 27-year-old victim. The pair had been in contact through a dating app that matches foreigners with Japanese people, says Kyodo News.

Surveillance footage from one of the Osaka condominiums showed the man and missing woman entering the building. The woman did not reappear in the footage, but “he was seen repeatedly going in and out of the building alone with a travel bag”.