Brother of ‘apostle of death’ arrested over Japan killings

The brother of a notorious Peruvian mass murderer dubbed the "apostle of death" has been arrested in Japan over suspicions he killed six people himself.

Jonathan Nakada, a 30-year-old Peruvian, was arrested in Kumagaya, a city in Saitama prefecture north of Tokyo, this week after allegedly stabbing to death six people, including two children and a woman in her 80s, in the space of a few days.

Media reports, quoting records in Peru, identified the suspect as the younger brother of Pablo Nakada, who killed 25 people in Peru between 2000 and 2006.

Police in Saitama have been criticised for allowing Jonathan Nakada to abscond during questioning, just before he went on his alleged killing spree.

They had started questioning him last Sunday after he was found, confused and incoherent, at a local fire station. He fled the police station, however, after officers agreed to let him step outside to smoke a cigarette.

The head of the Japan’s police agency, Masahito Kanetaka, said he acknowledged that allowing Nakada to abscond had had “grave consequence” but added that officers had no reason to suspect he would go on to commit serious crimes.

In the days after he fled, Nakada is suspected of killing 41-year-old Miwako Kato and her daughters, Misaki, 10, and Haruka, seven, whose bodies were found stuffed into two closets. He is being questioned about the murder of 84-year-old Kazuyo Shiraishi, whose body was found an hour earlier in a bathtub at her home about 100 metres from Kato's house. Nakada is also suspected of killing Minoru and Misae Tasaki, a couple in their 50s, whose bodies were discovered on Monday at their home in the same area.

Police arrested Nakada on Wednesday after a resident reported what was initially thought to have been a break-in at Kato’s home. When officers arrived at the house, Nakada slashed his wrists before crossing his chest and falling from an upper-floor window.

Footage taken by a neighbour and shown on Japanese TV shows Nakada, knife in hand, sitting on the window ledge with his legs dangling below. Police officers can be heard yelling at him to drop his weapon and give himself up.

He was taken to hospital, where he is reportedly unconscious and being treated for a fractured skull.

Nakada has lived in Japan for about 10 years and worked at a factory until recently, according to Kyodo, which quoted a former colleague as saying that he barely spoke to other workers and was always alone.

His brother, 42-year-old Pablo Nakada, known in Peru as “El apóstol de la muerte”, was given a maximum 35-year prison sentence almost a decade ago after confessing to the murders of 25 people. He shot dead all of his victim with 9mm pistols fitted with rubber silencers he had made out of slippers.

He was arrested in late 2006 after he ran out of bullets during a shootout with police at his workplace. Nakada, who has paranoid schizophrenia and has attempted suicide, has been held in a psychiatric prison east of Lima, Peru's capital, since 2007.

In a 2011 TV interview from his prison cell, he claimed he had been commanded by God to rid the world of drug addicts, prostitutes and other “scum”.

"I am not a criminal, I'm a cleaner, I got rid of homosexuals and the homeless from society," he said. "I killed 25 people to clean the world of scum." (Guardian Service)