About 10 paintings with an estimated value of between 60 million yen and 70 million yen were stolen in October from a Tokyo gallery whose owner feared for her life before her disappearance in mid-November, investigative sources said Wednesday.

The sources said a car belonging to the 52-year-old gallery owner, from Tokyo's Ota Ward, was later found in a parking lot near the Shizuoka interchange on the Tomei Expressway, which links Tokyo and Nagoya.

Police sources said earlier that the dismembered body found floating last week in Oigawa port in Shizuoka Prefecture is probably that of the woman, whose identity is being withheld.

The sources said Shizuoka police are conducting DNA tests to verify the identity of the woman, whose headless torso and other body parts were found Nov. 20 by an angler from Fujieda, Shizuoka Prefecture.

The police said they believe the woman was strangled before being dismembered.

According to friends and acquaintances, the paintings were stolen from her car in late October. The gallery owner had told them someone was following her but the police would not listen to her pleas for help, they said.

The woman had also said she had large debts, partly from gambling, and was considering taking out an insurance policy on herself to pay them off.

Police investigations show that the woman went missing in mid-November along with her car.