Up until a few years ago, Sumio Suenaga lived in a house in the town of Kasugai, Aichi Prefecture, with his younger sister and brother. However, according to the younger Suenaga siblings, their older brother, who was 66 years old at the time, went missing in 2015.
Perhaps hoping he’d turn up sooner or later, the younger siblings waited until 2016 to reported Sumio’s disappearance to the police, but there still had been no sign of him. Five years seems plenty long enough to wait, and so last weekend Sumio’s younger sister, who’s now 69, decided she’d like to use her older brother’s room, but realized she’d need to clean it up first.
As you might expect for a bedroom that’s gone unattended to for five years, there was plenty of straightening up to do. However, the sister didn’t get too far before discovering an unclothed skeletonized body. “I found something that I think are human bones,” she informed the police, and when officers arrived on the scene they confirmed that the corpse was indeed human. Though they were not initially able to determine the individual’s age or sex, investigators believe there is a high probability that the body is Sumio’s.
The Suenaga’s house, which Sumio was the legal owner of, is not particularly large, even by Japanese standards. It’s startling to think that the younger siblings spent years in such close proximity to the remains of their brother, whom they thought was missing, and if by some slim chance the body is not Sumio’s, the situation becomes even more shocking.
Making the whole thing even more puzzling is that when Sumio’s younger siblings initially told the police he was missing, they reportedly said that “he hasn’t come home in over a year,” which would ordinarily imply that they saw him leaving the house, or at least knew that he had left. However, given the siblings’ ages, it’s possible that all three were retired and kept irregular schedules, and that the sister and younger brother simply assumed that if they hadn’t seen Sumio around the house, he must have gone out.
Source: Yahoo! Japan News/Tokai TV via Jin, FNN Prime Online
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- https://soranews24.com/2020/08/17/japanese-woman-finds-skeleton-possibly-of-her-missing-brother-while-cleaning-her-house/
28 Comments
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funkymofo
Bizarre
tamanegi
You haven't seen someone around the house for a year so you assume that person must have "gone out" ?
Ken
What?Very weird story..They lived in the same house and didn't realise he was dead all these years in his room?Just unbelievable.
Meiyouwenti
Didn’t they smell the decomposing body of their brother? Highly unlikely.
Bernard Marx
Imagine how stinky and filthy their house must be to have not noticed a decomposing corpse along with all the blood, puss, and other bodily fluids leaking out everywhere.
Vince Black
As if she didn’t know it were there
shogun36
SURPRISE!!!!
Yeah, that.
Or maybe they killed him and just "conveniently" found the remains only just now?
So, did anyone check if the dead brother's pension checks stopped coming in recently?
Bart Fargo
Perhaps, as you might expect, this is a puzzling story.
darknuts
They "abandoned " the body and are covering up. They probably read the story that happened recently.
OssanAmerica
Sounds like BS to me. Can't miss the overwhelming smell of a decaying body. And how often do these people clean the house?
Mr Kipling
As Bernard said, the smell of a decaying corpse is very difficult not to notice. I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t pick it up. That and them not reporting a missing person for over a year? Something very odd going on here..... and 3 siblings living together in their 60’s is also not exactly normal is it?
ulysses
This is bizarre.
Did no one notice the decay, which must have happened if he died there!!!!
Jtsnose
It sounds like there should be more police investigation work to be done.
Antiquesaving
A clue to the whole thing is in the article.
If he passed away then there is the issue of taxes, inheritance if no will and once inheritance issues are settled then back to taxes because of inheritance tax.
Now how no one smelt the decay is near impossible but lets say they didn't.
The sister is the one that called the police.
One has to wonder if the other brother had knowledge and just didn't say anything or tell his sister?
Edward Pickering
The sister was probably collecting his monthly pension before going to the police.
Mark
Do't even know where to start!?
Graham DeShazo
When my dad died suddenly it was 3 days before we got worried enough to ask for a welfare check. By the time the police found him, poor dad had been dead at least 3 days (Fortunately, dad died in his sleep.)
When I got back to Kansas 24 hours later, I could smell it from the street through closed doors.
I’m pretty suspicious that they would not have noticed the sickly-sweet stretch of a decomposing body in a Japanese house with thin walls.
cleo
Japanese pensions are not paid by cheque. Or even by check.
You have to check the bank account to see if the money has been deposited.
It says in the article the room hadn’t been cleaned in five years. The room, not the house.
Hawkeye
OK come on folks, this is BS. Report him missing and don't enter his bedroom to check on him for an extended period? WTF. Some thing is rotten in Denmark. This is sick Japan at it's best
Antiquesaving
@cleo
I suspect that not only the room hadn't been cleaned in 5 years the house was not much better.
People are asking how no one noticed the smell.
Well I was a paramedic by home many years ago.
True it is a smell that is hard to miss but both back then and here in Japan I have had the unfortunate chance to be in 2 very similar situations.
Once was when working as a paramedic the other was living temporarily in an apartment while my place had serious structural repairs done.
Both cases the people living in the home were hoarders the garbage smell was incredible you could smell it down the road plus in the case of Japan they had cats.
So no one smelt the decay over the rest of the foul smells.
Oddly both these cases were groups of unmarried elderly siblings living in the same house left to them by their parents.
Antiquesaving
@Hawkeye
Nothing unique to Japan.
Canada about 35 years ago 2 elderly sisters and a brother all living in what was their parents home.
Hoarders the lot only when the city got a court order to forcibly clean up the property and house due to the garbage and smell did anyone realise one sister had died years earlier and was still in her room.
Seems they all had a fight and had not talked and avoided eachother for over 10 years so the 2 others had no idea.
Near identical situation about 15 years ago in Adachi-ku Tokyo.
This time 3 sisters a whole lot of cats garbage hoarding not speaking to eachother over a fight years before the smell from the house was unbelievable, I was living in a temporary apartment 2 lots over.
City came to clear all the garbage police, fire department, Hazmat suites, etc... They found one sister had died at least a few years before in her room but because the sisters were avoiding eachother for years they had no idea.
In both cases the smell of the hoard of garbage was so bad no one noticed the smell of body decay.
Happens far more often than one may think in every place one can imagine.
Nippori Nick
Read the comments from others about how this happens now and again, but I still can't figure why no one looks in the bedroom in years. Surely if someone is "missing", you would look in bedroom pretty early on
theFu
Corpse or skeleton? Big difference. Skeletons don't just show up. They have to be cleaned or the smell becomes terrible. Was the window opened and wild life able to eat?
This reads like a poorly conceived horror movie that is completely unrealistic.
Paul
They did it!
The Judge
they are going to die for touching his things