Another body part turns up in Osaka

OSAKA — Another human body part has been found in a suspected multiple murder case in Osaka, a left ankle in a container stored at a garbage disposal complex, police said.

The discovery of the ankle Monday added to the several dismembered parts of human bodies found in two similar 18-liter containers in Tennoji Ward the previous day.

Also Monday, a resident recounted seeing three people on a night in late July unloading two containers of similar size from a minivan in a parking lot near where one of the metal containers was found.

The ankle was found in a container that had been collected as garbage in the ward around Aug. 5, the police said, adding it could be paired with the smaller of two right ankles that were found Sunday morning in a container abandoned in a park's shrubbery.

The third container was collected from the trash site of a condominium near where another container with human remains was found, after a neighbor complained of the abandoned object on Aug. 3, according to the police.

The city, which had collected and stored the container without inspecting its contents, reported its possession to police on Monday, after reports of the discoveries of the other body parts.

Regarding the three suspicious people seen unloading two containers, the witness said it was a man likely in his 20s or 30s who was doing the unloading, and that a middle-aged woman was in the passenger's seat.

The previous discoveries included a decomposing human head and the two ankles. The head was wrapped in a newspaper dated 2006, the police said.

The container found Sunday afternoon in a residential area about 100 meters from the park reportedly contained a pair of hands of roughly equal size and bits of bones, including a pelvis.

The police said the size of the remains indicates they belong to an adult male and female and suggests at least two people may have been victims of a crime.

A 25-year-old woman who lives in the area said she saw two containers sitting side by side on a street around July 20. She also said that three or four days later she spotted a middle-aged man kicking the containers and murmuring, "Here, maybe."

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