Cell phone messages hint at murder motive

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The Metropolitan Police Department has determined from cell phone messages sent by a woman killed by a police officer in an apparent murder-suicide Monday that the officer killed her to keep her from talking, fearing it would come out that he had illegally entered her home while she was out, the MPD said.

Senior Police Officer Hidekazu Tomono of the MPD's Tachikawa Police Station is believed to have killed himself after shooting 32-year-old Yoko Sato.
Some responsibility may lie with top-ranking officers at the MPD, who failed to notice that Tomono, 40, had persistently stalked the woman, eventually allegedly killing her to protect himself.

About 430 messages from Sato sent since mid-November were found on Tomono's cell phone, the MPD said.

From an analysis of these messages, the MPD found that since late July, Tomono had been asking Sato's neighbors about her private life and had been watching over her apartment in Kokubunji, Tokyo. Sato sent an increasing number of messages begging Tomono to stop and there were messages in which she accused him of breaking into her apartment.

On the day of the incident, Sato sent Tomono six messages between about 7 p.m. and about 9:50 p.m.--just before the murder.

According to the MPD, the first message from that day was calm, taking the form of a standard greeting. But subsequent messages grew colder, with Sato eventually telling Tomono she did not want to see him. One message suggested that she may have made up her mind to complain about his stalking. In her final message, she mentions his breaking in, saying the police would know it was him if they collected fingerprints.

The MPD also said Sato, who had not shown up for work at the pub she worked at near JR Tachikawa Station since Aug. 15, had recently asked Tomono's colleague who came to the pub if the police would take fingerprints if someone burgled her home. She also told her mother on her mobile phone that she was worried, saying: "I'm being watched. Maybe my cell phone is being monitored."

Tomono would usually send Sato a message when he got close to her apartment to tell her he was nearby, but there was no such message on the day of the incident.
Tomono hired private eye

On Wednesday--the day after the pair's bodies were found--the MPD searched Tomono's home and seized a report of a background check on Sato that Tomono had a private research company make around January.

The report showed Sato also worked a day job and that Tomono paid hundreds of thousands of yen to the company to locate her workplace.

Sato and Tomono became acquainted at the pub where she worked in Tachikawa last autumn.
Tomono would frequent the pub about three or four times a week. Even if he went there with colleagues or superiors from the station, he would often end up staying by himself singing karaoke and waiting until after the bar closed to meet Sato.

(Aug. 25, 2007)