http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080625TDY02310.htm
4 family members murdered / Man kills wife, son, daughter-in-law,
granddaughter with sledgehammer
CHIBA--A 77-year-old man has been
arrested on suspicion of killing four members of his family at their home in
Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, by bashing them with a sledgehammer, police said.
An elderly man called the police at about 7 a.m. Tuesday and claimed he
had murdered his family. Police officers arrived at the house of Yoshio Kiuchi
and found four members of the Kiuchi family bleeding from head injuries. Kiuchi,
who reportedly had health problems, was found lying unconscious.
The victims are Kiuchi's 75-year-old wife, Tokiko; his 49-year-old son,
Shigeru; Shigeru's 44-year-old wife, Miyuki; and Manami, the 4-year-old daughter
of Shigeru and Miyuki.
According to the police, Kiuchi killed his wife with a sledgehammer
while she was preparing breakfast in the kitchen between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., and
then attacked Shigeru and Miyuki in a tatami-floored room. He then allegedly
bludgeoned Manami to death on the second floor of an adjacent building.
The sledgehammer's handle was about one meter long, and the steel head
was about 20 centimeters long, the police said. Kiuchi kept the sledgehammer in
a shed.
The police found a bloodstained sledgehammer in the kitchen of the main
building.
Kiuchi suffered no injuries, but his pajamas were blood-soaked,
according to the police.
A 59-year-old relative of Kiuchi, who resides in the neighborhood,
said, "I heard that Kiuchi had been in ill health, but I never thought something
like this would happen."
The Kiuchi family's house is an area where houses are scattered amid
paddy fields, about four kilometers southeast of JR Abiko Station. Kiuchi worked
as a farmer until about 2000.
Kiuchi was quoted by the police as saying: "I'd had troubles with my
family mainly due to my health problems. My wife had told me I was a nuisance,
so I thought several times about killing her. When I got up this morning, I
decided to go ahead and do it. I killed all my family members because I thought
it would be a load off my shoulders."
The family's neighbors said they did not know of any problems with the
family.
A 76-year-old woman sometimes talked with Tokiko at an elderly people's
community group, saying: "She was a nice person. I hadn't noticed anything
strange about her."
A 56-year-old female neighbor was stunned by the incident, saying, "We
don't even get minor crimes like theft in our neighborhood, so this kind of
brutal incident is very frightening."
A woman in the neighborhood said: "I heard Kiuchi had been bedridden
due to heart trouble. He wasn't hospitalized, but he had been staying at home to
recuperate and sometimes had to go to hospital."
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