Mummy’s the word for Japanese police

AFP, Oct. 28, 2002
http://www.iol.co.za/

Tokyo – Police summoned to a southern Japanese home to investigate a strange odour discovered a mummified body wrapped in a white cloth in the lounge, officials said on Monday.

Two women had been living in the Fukoka City home of an elderly couple and their 41-year-old son. It was the body of one of the women that police found, lying on a futon, when they came to the house at the request of the son on Sunday.

The son said because he and his parents use separate entrances, he did not notice that something was amiss in the home. But after a foul smell lingered, he asked police to investigate.

An autopsy is underway to determine the cause of death, but no visible scars were visible on the body, police said.

“The situation is obviously unusual. We suspect it might be related to some sort of a cult belief. It definitely reminded us of previous cases similar to this,” police said.

The online edition of the Yomiuri newspaper said the woman appeared to have died several months earlier.

“The woman died of an illness and we were maintaining her body,” the newspaper quoted the elderly mother as telling police.

In March, two Japanese members of a faith-healing cult were each sentenced to seven years in prison for causing the death through neglect of two people, whose corpses were allowed to mummify in the hopes they would come back to life.

In February the leader of another cult was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of a stroke victim whose mummified body was found in a hotel in Chiba in 1999. – Sapa-AFP

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