KYOTO - A Japanese man arrested for abandoning the body of his stepson who had been missing for weeks has admitted to killing the boy and allegedly hid the corpse in different locations amid an extensive search by police in Kyoto Prefecture, western Japan, local police said Thursday.
According to Kyodo News, the arrest on Thursday morning marked a dramatic turn of events in the investigation, which was launched when the boy went missing on March 23 after the stepfather claimed to have driven him to school.
Yuki Adachi, the 37-year-old stepfather of 11-year-old Yuki, is suspected of hiding and abandoning the body in Nantan between the morning of March 23 and Monday afternoon.
An investigative source quoted the suspect, who was sent to prosecutors on Thursday, as having confessed to killing his stepson. An investigation is underway to determine why and how the boy came to die, as the cause of the boy's death, estimated to have occurred in late March, has yet to be determined.
His body was found Monday with no obvious external injuries in a rural area in Nantan in the prefecture.
During a press conference, the local police said that the boy was alive on the morning of March 23, the day he was reported missing. They had not received any reports of abuse or assault involving the boy.
The local police identified the suspect based on evidence including surveillance camera footage and believe that the suspect acted alone in the crime.
He initially told the police that he dropped the boy off near Sonobe Elementary School at around 8am on March 23. Although the police admitted at the press conference that he drove to near the school, they refrained from saying whether the boy was indeed in the car.
As the search intensified, a relative of the boy found his school backpack in the woods around 3 kilometres away from the elementary school on March 29, according to the police.
The police found a pair of black sneakers possibly belonging to the boy near the woods between the school and the house on April 12. - BERNAMA-KYODO