Police are preparing to send investigators to China to help search for and identify the remains of a murdered Japanese man whose body is believed to have been crushed in an automobile compactor and shipped to China, police sources said Thursday.
The Saitama Prefectural Police and the National Police Agency said the investigators will ask Chinese police to search for the remains of Hiroyuki Taniguchi, 41.
The search will be conducted among some 1,000 compacted cars exported to China as scrap metal, they said. The car carrying Taniguchi's remains is believed to have been exported in early March to the port of Tianjin, according to sources.
Taniguchi, a resident of Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture, was allegedly strangled Feb. 19 in a forest in Kodama, Saitama Prefecture, after being involved in trouble at a sex parlor in Kumagaya, according to police.
His body is believed to have been put in a car that was crushed in an automobile compactor at an industrial waste processing factory in Kodama, they said.
In mid-March, police arrested seven people on suspicion of extortion and illegally disposing of Taniguchi's body. One of the seven, Hiroshi Arai, 29, the operator of the sex parlor, confessed to killing Taniguchi, according to police.