TOKYO: Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department has confirmed a man on the international wanted list over a 2003 murder case to have died in South Africa, JIJI Press learned Thursday. The death of the suspect, Tomoyuki Matsui, was confirmed as a result of a DNA test, investigative sources said.

Matsui had been on the wanted list for charges including murder over the case in which the mutilated body of Shinya Kogawa, 26, a former restaurant employee, was found in the town of Okutama in western Tokyo in October 2003.

The MPD is expected to finish its investigation of the case by sending papers on the dead suspect to public prosecutors shortly, according to the sources.

The Japanese side was informed by South African investigative authorities in June 2020 that Matsui, who was believed to have played the main role in the murder case, had died in the African country, the sources said.

The department dispatched investigators to South Africa on July 24 this year, after data on fingerprints of the dead person sent from the South African authorities matched those of Matsui.

A DNA test conducted in South Africa confirmed that the body, which had already been buried, was that of the suspect, the sources said.

According to the MPD, Matsui was suspected of strangling Kogawa with a belt in a car parked at a campsite in the village of Tabayama in Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo, in September 2003.

Matsui, who fled Japan after that, is believed to have killed himself at a beach in South Africa, where he was living a life on the run, around December 2017. An apparent suicide note reading, “I’m very sorry for causing trouble,” was also found.

Eight people were arrested over the 2003 case.

JIJI Press