Hyogo doctor arrested on suspicion of dismembering wife’s body

Hyogo Prefectural Police arrested a 46-year-old doctor on Wednesday on suspicion of dismembering and abandoning his wife’s body.

Police said the suspect, Kenji Shimomura, has admitted to the charges, saying he “did it all by himself.”

Police are also investigating whether Shimomura was involved in the murder of his wife, Mami, who was 41 at the time.

Shimomura allegedly dismembered his wife’s body with a knife at their home in the city of Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, and disposed of it in a nearby river at some point in mid to late August last year.

According to police, Shimomura had reported his wife as missing to local authorities in September last year, saying that they had had an argument and he had not been able to contact her since.

However, he later confessed that he dismembered her corpse in the bathroom of their home and dumped it into the river.

Based on his statement, the prefectural police searched the river last month and recovered multiple bones, which were later identified as those of Mami Shimomura. The time and cause of death remain unknown.

The case is one of a few high-profile violent crimes that have occurred in Hyogo Prefecture this year.

In June, a 50-year-old woman was arrested in Kobe for abandoning her former husband’s corpse, which had been bisected and stored in a freezer in her apartment. Kobe prosecutors later indicted the woman on murder charges regarding the husband.

Also earlier in June, the body of a murder suspect was found in a river in the city of Tatsuno. Kenji Oyama had been the subject of a search following the murders of a 74-year-old mother and her 52-year-old daughter in the same city in May.