A 42-year-old man recently arrested for confining, abusing and starving a woman in an Osaka condominium for five months had held another woman and her child captive nine years ago, investigative sources said Monday.
The woman, then 22, and her child, believed to be around 2 at the time, were suffering extreme malnutrition when her mother rescued them from Takuya Muramoto, the sources said.
The woman was also suffering from a broken rib when she was rescued, they said. Muramoto was arrested Thursday on suspicion of confining a 24-year-old woman in his apartment in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, beating her and starving her from February to July.
She was only rescued when Muramoto called an ambulance because of her deteriorating condition on July 15.