Suspect, 25, first to be hit with murder charge over bodies found in Tochigi

A 25-year-old man was served a fresh arrest warrant Saturday on charges of murder after being arrested last month for allegedly disposing of the bodies of a Tokyo couple in Tochigi Prefecture.

A total of six people have been arrested over the incident, but the man, Ryoken Hirayama, is the first to be charged with murder.

A joint investigation team of Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department and the Tochigi Prefectural Police believes that Hirayama, was asked by another man who issued instructions to kill the couple, and that he prepared the car used in the plot and recruited two other men to carry out the murders.

Hirayama was served the new arrest warrant on suspicion of murdering Ryutaro Takarajima, a 55-year-old company executive, and his wife, Sachiko, 56, at the garage of an unoccupied house in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. Takarajim and his wife are believed to have been suffocated between around 11:50 p.m. on April 15 and 1:30 a.m. on April 16. The wife had a mark on her head, apparently from being hit with a hammer.

According to the investigation team, Hirayama has told police that he was asked by a certain individual in early April to murder the couple and dispose of their bodies and then instructed two people to handle the matter. Hirayama is believed not to have entered the garage when the killings took place.

Besides Hirayama, the five other men have been arrested on suspicion of disposing of the couple's corpses. They are 32-year-old Seiha Sekine, a company executive and the common-law husband of the couple's first daughter, 36-year-old Ryo Maeda, who works in the real estate business and is an acquaintance of the couple, 28-year-old Hikaru Sasaki, whose occupation is unknown, 20-year-old Kang Gwang-gi, also of unknown occupation, and former actor Kirato Wakayama, 20.

The investigation team believes that Sekine, the suspected mastermind of the scheme, asked Hirayama through Sasaki to kill the couple and Hirayama told Kang and Wakayama to carry out the murders.

The couple's bodies were found burned near a river in the town of Nasu in Tochigi Prefecture, on the morning of April 16, with their heads covered with plastic bags and their hands and feet bound.

Hirayama is suspected of procuring the car that was used to carry the couple's bodies to Nasu, as well as bands and gasoline. Sekine is believed to have paid a total of about ¥15 million to the alleged participants in the plot, and Hirayama said he received ¥9 million as his share of the payments. Investigators have seized about ¥7 million in cash from a location related to Hirayama, and are looking into the flow of the money.