Prosecutors have kept the audio tapes of their questioning of Toshikazu Sugaya, who was imprisoned for the 1990 murder of a 4-year-old girl but freed in June after a DNA test indicated he was innocent, a senior prosecutor said Tuesday.
Sugaya, 62, was convicted of killing Mami Matsuda in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, and sentenced to life based in part on an earlier DNA test that indicated body fluids found on the victim's clothes matched his.
After his arrest, he was also questioned as a suspect in the 1979 slaying of Maya Fukushima and 1984 murder of Yumi Hasebe, both 5 and both killed in the same city. Prosecutors taped those interrogations.