A 56-year-old woman who worked at a small hotel in Ichihara City, Chiba Prefecture, was found murdered there on Friday morning.
Police said the body of Hitomi Saeki was found at around 7:30 a.m. by another employee arriving for work, NHK reported.
According to police, the employee found the body on the floor behind the check-in desk. Saeki's face was swollen and her neck had been slashed with what appeared to be a knife. Her wrists were tied.
Police said Saeki had been alone on night duty.
An automatic check-out machine in one room had been wrecked, police said, adding they are trying to find out who stayed in that room on Thursday night.
Police are also examining security camera footage from the area.
The hotel is in an area dotted with houses and fields.
© Japan Today
8 Comments
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nandakandamanda
Some sick s.o.b. copy-cat? Seriously hoping they catch the perp.
AdamP75
What a terribly brutal murder. What would be the motive for this?
Zaphod
Another one of these "yami baito" jobs? They seem to target isolated houses.
Speed
My first thought is robbery. The article fails to say if any money was stolen or not. Not really sure what the motive would be to attack a hotel desk clerk.
Yohan
A 56 y/o woman has been murdered. The question is why? For what? Maybe the killer and this woman know each other?
This crime is likely not done by an outsider coming from somewhere.
Nobody who is not familiar with that area will just walk into this cheap hotel located in a remote area during night.
To go there and get away you need a car, maybe this helps to find out who has done this to this poor woman.
MilesTeg
Ichihara is a small, sleepy little town. Like many areas in the Boso Peninsula, most residents are elderly. There aren’t many details about this crime but I hear about home robberies in the countryside more and more. The elderly who often have cash and valuables at home are easy targets for criminals. This was a hotel so I hope they got some surveillance footage. It’s about a 30min drive from where I live.
Mike_Oxlong
Sure has the look of another yami-baito robbery.
virusrex
What would be the profit from killing an employee from a small hotel? The usual targets have a lot of money or expensive things easy to sell, isolation by itself do not make for a good target for that kind of semi-organized crime.