A 23-year-old nurse, who allegedly killed her best friend and sliced her apart with a scalpel before throwing the pieces out with the garbage, was arrested for murder Thursday despite the lack of a body, reports said.
Tomoko Kaneda, who worked at the Red Cross hospital in Omiya on the outskirts of Tokyo, reportedly threw out the victim's remains together with garbage at several collection points over a period of 10 days, effectively making it impossible for police to retrieve them.
But police believed that they could prove the case as Kaneda had confessed to the killing of her nursing colleague and longtime friend Yoshiko Nagata, also 23, in a quarrel over their mutual boyfriend, reports said.
Omiya police refused to confirm by telephone the reports, carried by major news media.
Kaneda was initially detained on July 19 in connection with the disappearance of Nagata after turning herself in. She has been held and questioned on suspicion of mutilating and abandoning a body.
She has since confessed to the bizarre butchering process, prompting police to add murder charges to her case, the reports said -- TOKYO (AFP)
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