crime

69-year-old woman arrested for keeping dead husband’s corpse at home

6 Comments

A 69-year-old woman in Muroran, Hokkaido, has been arrested on suspicion of abandoning the body of her dead husband at their home for nearly a year.

According to police, Yuko Yamaguchi kept her husband’s corpse at their house for nearly a year since February 2015 until Jan 2 this year, failing to report his death to the local authorities, Fuji TV reported Monday.

The case came to light when the couple's oldest daughter came for a visit and asked where her father was. Her mother then told her that her father was dead and that his body was in the bedroom.

Neighbors were quoted by police as saying that Yamaguchi had been telling them that her husband Hideo, 70, was working out of the city, whenever they asked her about his whereabouts.

Police said Yamaguchi had continued receiving her husband’s pension.

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6 Comments
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Sad and morbid.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

wow. She kept the cash and the stiffy.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

If he was at home with her all that time, she never truly abandoned him. Makes the headline and the opening sentence pretty contradictory. Leave someone's body in the woods and you abandoned it. Keep it at home and you abandoned it. Makes sense.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

she never truly abandoned him. Makes the headline and the opening sentence pretty contradictory.

It's lost in translation, is all. The Japanese word used in these cases is 遺体遺棄 (itai iki). 遺棄 can mean to abandon as in to leave in a place and walk away; it also means in this context to leave a body not properly/officially dealt with and disposed of, e.g. by cremation. I can't think of an English word that adequately covers both meanings. In a headline I suppose abandon takes up less room than fail to contact the relevant authorities and see to it that a corpse is properly disposed of - which would equally apply if the body was dumped in the woods..

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Police said Yamaguchi had continued receiving her husband’s pension.

Sincere question. Don't widows continue to receive pension? I only ask because they throw that in as perhaps a motive to not report the death.

I can't understand how people continue to live to corpses.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

has been arrested on suspicion of abandoning the body of her dead husband at their home for nearly a year.

This is a stupidly worded law: If she kept the body at home, she can hardly be accused of abandoning it. "Failure to report death" would be more appropriate here.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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