Japanese police have arrested a 52-year-old housewife for allegedly strangling her husband at his request and keeping the corpse for 15 months in the house.
Mrs Takako Sasage was arrested after turning herself in to police in Niigata, 230 km north-west of Tokyo, a local police officer said.
"The smell was so utterly horrible in the house," he told AFP."I was amazed she managed to stand that for one year and three months."
Following her confession, police found the body of her 53-year-old husband, Hiroo, whose hands and legs were already skeletal.
Crudely covered up with household fabric, the body was lying in a room on the first floor of the couple's three-storey house, which had been "placed under public auction for repayment of the husband's debts", the officer said.
"Takako told us that her husband had begged her to strangle him to death in March last year," he said.
"She suffocated him by using his necktie and left the body in the room ever since," said the policeman.
The eldest daughter of the couple was also living in the house at the time of the homicide but apparently she had not discovered her father's death, he said. He added the family had little contact with neighbours.
AFP