A 30-year-old man in Nishitokyo has been arrested on suspicion of murdering his elderly next-door neighbor, police said.
Part-time worker Dai Hiraoka has admitted to fatally stabbing Kazuyo Tada, 79, in the neck, police said. They were neighbors in the same apartment building.
The suspect was arrested Saturday and moved to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office on Sunday morning.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, Hiraoka initially pretended to be a witness to the crime and visited Tanashi Police Station in the western Tokyo suburb on the night of Aug. 2.
On Friday night, however, he contacted an investigator and confessed to killing her.
"I stabbed her with a kitchen knife and killed her," Hiraoka was quoted as saying. "I did it alone. I had trouble with Tada right before that."
According to the investigators, Hiraoka moved into the building in June. Around early July, Tada complained to a female acquaintance that "the neighbor next door makes loud noises until late at night."
Hiraoka told police that, after initially pretending to be a witness, he changed his mind because he felt he "had to tell the truth." He said he threw away the knife used in the attack.
Another of Tada's neighbors reported the incident on the night of Aug. 2 after noticing that the door to her unit was open and finding her inside.
An autopsy found she died of blood loss. The stab wounds in her neck were 13 cm long, and she has also been stabbed in the left palm and back, police said.
