Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. To keep creating
new content, we kindly appreciate any donation you can give to help
the Murderpedia project stay alive. We have many
plans and enthusiasm
to keep expanding and making Murderpedia a better site, but we really
need your help for this. Thank you very much in advance.
Status: Found not guilty in
2002, because the evidence submitted by prosecutors was "not sufficient
enough to judge that the defendant was the true culprit beyond
reasonable doubt"
Burglar faces murder
charge
Inmate arrested over '89 slaying, suspected
in two others
The Japan
Times
June 12, 2002
SAGA (Kyodo) A 39-year-old Saga
Prefecture man serving time for burglary has been served an arrest
warrant in his prison cell for a slaying 13 years ago and faces
questioning on two others.
Teruhiko Matsue, of Kitagata, is serving a two-year prison term. The
arrest warrant is in connection with the January 1989 slaying of Tatsuyo
Yoshino, 37, a local seamstress whose corpse was found along with the
other two dead women at the base of a cliff in the mountains around
Kitagata.
Matsue allegedly strangled Yoshino,
with whom he was acquainted, on the night of Jan. 25, 1989, after he had
telephoned her and invited her out. He then allegedly took her body in
his car to the mountains.
The body of Sumiko Fujise, 48, a
restaurant employee from the city of Takeo who disappeared in July 1987,
was also found at the base of the cliff. If she had been slain right
after her disappearance, as police suspect, the 15-year statute of
limitations for her murder would expire next month.
The third body was identified as that
of Kiyomi Nakajima, 50, also from Kitagata. She disappeared in December
1988.
Immediately after the victims' bodies
were found 13 years ago, police briefly interrogated Matsue, who
surfaced as a suspect because of his links to Yoshino.
Although Matsue submitted a deposition
indicating he may have had something to do with the deaths, police
lacked material evidence or testimony to clearly link him to the murders.
Matsue later reversed his position and denied involvement in the
slayings, according to police.
In an interview with Kyodo News in
1989, Matsue said he was with friends on the night when Yoshino was
believed to have been killed. He said he knew her but denied that they
were intimate, and added that he did not know the other two women.
Matsue was arrested in November in
Ebino, Miyazaki Prefecture, after being put on a wanted list for
allegedly breaking into houses in neighboring Kagoshima Prefecture.
He was sentenced to two years in prison
in March, at which time he was again questioned about the murder case,
police said, adding that he remained almost silent during questioning.
Police did not elaborate on why they
served Matsue with a warrant in connection with the 1989 slaying this
time around.
Because all three victims were found in
the same location, police theorized that the same perpetrator was
involved.
Alleged triple-strangler
tells court he is innocent
The Japan Times
Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2002
SAGA (Kyodo) A 39-year-old man pleaded not
guilty Tuesday to strangling three women in the town of Kitagata, Saga
Prefecture, between 1987 and 1989 and burying their bodies in nearby
woods.
"I am innocent of the
three murders," Teruhiko Matsue told the Saga District Court. Matsue is
accused of killing the women, whose bodies were found together in a
forest in the town in January 1989.
The trial is expected to be drawn out
as Matsue has refused to confess to the charges against him, sources
said.
Matsue's arrest this summer came as the
statute of limitations on the earliest case was about to expire.
According to the indictment, Matsue
strangled Sumiko Fujise, a 48-year-old restaurant employee, in July
1987; Kiyomi Nakashima, a 50-year-old housewife, in December 1988; and
Tatsuyo Yoshino, a 37-year-old seamstress, in January 1989.
Public prosecutors told the court
Tuesday that Matsue raped Fujise in his car then killed her when she
threatened to go to the police. The woman was an acquaintance of his,
they added.
The prosecutors said Matsue killed
Nakashima because he believed she had wrongly blamed him for bumping her
with his car. Matsue, who was drunk at the time, was worried that she
would go to police, they said.
They further alleged that he killed
Yoshino, whom he was dating, because he believed she was seeing another
man.
Matsue admitted murdering the three
women in October 1989, when he was arrested on a drug-related charge. He
immediately retracted his confession, however, saying police had forced
him to make it.
With no material evidence to link
Matsue to the murders, investigators abandoned their case against him.
But 15 years later, they resurrected
the case, conducting another round of investigations and saying Matsue's
DNA matches saliva found on one of the victims' bodies. A new test using
more sophisticated methods linked Matsue to the corpse.
On June 11, police arrested Matsue and
charged him with the murder of Yoshino. Matsue was in prison at the
time, having been sentenced to a two-year prison term in March for
breaking into houses.
On July 2, the police served Matsue
with a fresh warrant, charging him with the murder of Fujise. The
indictment on the Fujise case came only six hours before the 15-year
statute of limitations on the crime was set to expire.
On July 9, the police served Matsue
with an arrest warrant for the murder of Nakashima.
Accused triple-killer's acquittal
is upheld
Saga man's confession deemed forced
The Japan Times
March 20, 2007
The Fukuoka High Court on Monday upheld the acquittal
of a 44-year-old Fukuoka man who was charged with murdering 3 women in
Saga Prefecture between 1987 and 1989.
The victims, including one that the defendant,
Teruhiko Matsue, had been dating, were found near each other in a
mountainous part of the town of Kitagata in January 1989.
"There were no errors or misidentification of facts
in the trial of first instance, where his confession was not adopted as
evidence because it was illegally obtained," presiding Judge Katsuhiko
Masaki said in upholding the acquittal of Matsue, who wasn't arrested
for the slayings until 2002 because Saga police, after he retracted his
1989 confession, decided they couldn't make a case.
The Saga District Court acquitted Matsue in May 2005,
rejecting as evidence his written confession submitted earlier, on
grounds that he had been subject to "illegally long hours of questioning
that went beyond a voluntary nature" and "there is a possibility that
investigators had forced and led him to confess."
When he wrote the confession, Matsue was being held
for an unrelated case.
The district court found Matsue not guilty in the
murders of Sumiko Fujise, 48, Kiyomi Nakashima, 50, and Tatsuyo Yoshino,
37, because the evidence submitted by prosecutors was "not sufficient
enough to judge that the defendant was the true culprit beyond
reasonable doubt." The prosecutors had demanded the death penalty.
At the Fukuoka High Court, prosecutors again demanded
that Matsue's confession be adopted as evidence, arguing that he is
presumed to have killed the three, whose bodies were found in nearly the
same spot, given his relationship with Yoshino, whom he was dating, and
the detection of his bodily fluid on her body.
They also characterized as "new evidence" the
discovery of mitochondrial DNA in a substance found on a picture that
was in his car, claiming it matched the DNA of one of the victims,
without specifying.
The defense counsel discounted the discovery, saying
that mitochondrial DNA is not sufficient for identification and
contended that the prosecutors had concealed forensic evidence
indicating someone else may have perpetrated the slayings, including the
discovery of urine residue on a seat in Matsue's car that did not match
the urine of any of the victims. They did not elaborate.
The bodies of the three women, who had disappeared
between 1987 and 1989, were found in January 1989 in a mountainous part
of Kitagata.
In November that year, Matsue, who had been arrested
and was in custody on a drug charge, submitted a written confession
during questioning by Saga Prefectural Police.
He later retracted it, leading police at that time to
give up on their efforts to establish a case against him as a murder
suspect, due to insufficient evidence.
Matsue was arrested in June 2002 in connection with
one of the murders, just before the statute of limitations on the
slayings was to expire later in the year. He was charged with murder the
following month. He maintained his innocence from the time of his arrest
to the end of his trial.
From left, Tatsuyo Yoshino, Kiyomi
Nakajima and Fumiko Fujise.
Teruhiko Matsue (left) is taken into the
Takeo Police Station after being arrested on suspicion of committing
murder 13 years ago.
