Body In Backpack

Following our previous reports of Tokyo’s oldest man and http://supercom.org/tokyos-oldest-woman-missing-for-24-years/431158/ the remains of an elderly Japanese woman have been found in a backpack.

This is the latest and most gruesome discovery so far by investigators searching for missing old people in Japan.

The woman’s son told police his mother died in 2001 but he could not afford to pay for a burial so kept her remains.

Investigators are trying to account for old people following the discovery last month of the mummified remains of a man registered as being 111 years old. He had died 30 years earlier and his remains had been left in his bed ever since.

The audit has so far identified 281 centenarians who are missing or have already died. Those missing include a 125-year-old woman whose registered address was turned into a park in 1981, according to Japanese media.

In the most recent find, a 64-year-old man told officials that his mother had died at home in Tokyo in “about June 2001″. He had no money for a funeral so never reported her death.

He reportedly told police: “I laid out her body for a while, washed it in the bath, then broke up the bones and put them into a backpack.”

As her death was not reported the woman’s pension continued to be paid and police are now investigating the son on suspicion of fraud.

According to government data here are more than 40,000 registered centenarians in Japan, but the number of missing has raised concerns that the welfare system is being exploited by dishonest relatives.