Prior to Thursday's arrest of a suspect in the April 30 murder of a 19-year-old woman in Asakusa, hundreds of people had called the police with information. The majority of these calls were not made until several days after the murder, when police found some items that they believe the killer discarded while fleeing the crime.
The item that set bells ringing was a cap modeled on the head and face of a lesser panda. All the news programs, including the "wide shows," which covered the murder more extensively than they did any other story during Golden Week, placed the cap at the center of their coverage.
As they often do when covering such cases, TV reporters visited the scene of the crime, a narrow alley, and went over the murder in horrible detail, describing how the killer kneeled over the woman's prone form and repeatedly stabbed her as she screamed for help.