A company president suspected of murdering an acquaintance to fake his own death hanged himself early Wednesday in a jail cell in Kanie, Aichi Prefecture, two days after his arrest, police said.
Kiyoshi Hasegawa, the 53-year-old president of a failed ironworks firm in the town of Kamiyamada, Nagano Prefecture, had confessed to killing an unemployed man said to resemble him in a truck crash in a bid to collect on his own life insurance policy.
An officer found Hasegawa hanging from his shirt around 2:35 a.m. at Kanie Police Station. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital, police said.
Aichi Prefectural Police have begun an investigation into whether there were any errors in the management of the police cell in which the suspect hanged himself. Usually, felony suspects are kept under close surveillance, particularly for the first few days after arrest, to prevent them from committing suicide while in detention, sources said.