On June 10, the Tokyo Police Department arrested Masahide Namba, 61, a barber from Mitaka, Tokyo, on suspicion of robbery and non-consensual sexual intercourse. The incident occurred at a hotel in Kabukicho, Tokyo, between 1 and 3 AM on May 27.
The suspect approached a woman in her 20’s in Okubo Park area and accompanied her to a nearby love hotel, promising to pay her cash. Once they were in the room, he threatened her with a knife, saying he would kill her if she didn’t do what he said, then he committed the indecent act. He also took photos of the victim’s ID with his smartphone. He even planned to prevent her from reporting the incident to the police.
However, the woman mustered up the courage to consult the police, and security camera footage led to his arrest. The police are investigating the suspect’s other crimes after receiving similar complaints on social media from around summer last year, such as “A man with a knife threatens a woman around Okubo Park”.
The suspect, Namba told police interrogators, “I don’t remember anything.”
The suspect was born into a family that ran a large construction company in Tokyo, but the company went bankrupt in his father’s place. He became a barber, and lived in an apartment in Mitaka with rent running about 75,000 yen per month.
A resident of the same apartment said: “He moved in earlier this year and came to say hallo. He seemed like a warm-hearted person. At first he lived alone, but recently I saw a woman in her 50’s. I think she was living with him because there were two bikes lined up in front of his door”.
A colleague said that he was very popular with customers because of his skills and calm personality. I still can’t believe he committed the crime, and his girlfriend used to come from Chiba to the suspect’s house. They haven’t broken up since his arrest and she has been visiting him at the detention center. He earned about 350,000 yen a month at the shop, but he also worked at another barber shop. He must have had more than 400,000 yen a month in total. But I can’t believe he was working from 8 AM to 8 PM and then going to Kabukicho.
The suspect’s social media account states that he has “recently become addicted to DBD”, an online survival horror game called Dead by Daylight, an extreme competitive game in which survivors try to escape from a single killer. Did he want to experience the thrill of the game in real life?
