OSAKA -- Police have obtained records from an Osaka Internet service provider in the hope of finding the killer of an 11-year-old Kobe boy, officials said June 20.
Investigators took action based on reports by Internet users that messages posted on the system around February included terms similar to those used in a note left inside the mouth of Jun Hase's severed head. The head was discovered May 27 at the gate of a Kobe junior high school.
The messages included the words "wine," "devil" and "rose" in red Chinese characters on a black background. Those same words were hand-written on the note left by the boy's killer.
The messages were posted on a World Wide Web site set up by a 24-year-old employee of the provider to allow Internet users to post messages. Police are believed to be checking data on who accessed the page around the time the messages were posted in a bid to identify who sent them, the officials said.
The site also reportedly carried messages until May that contained the words "die," "kill" and "great grudge," the same words used in the note found in Hase's mouth. Access to the site was restricted by the provider in May because of numerous "impolite" messages left by users, an employee said.