Japanese Boy, 14, Arrested In Beheading Of 11-Year-Old

TOKYO - Cracking a bizarre murder mystery that shook Japan, police yesterday arrested a 14-year-old who confessed to killing a younger boy and dumping his severed head in a schoolyard in the western city of Kobe.

The boy, whose name was not released, lived in the neighborhood where the mutilated head of an 11-year-old boy, Jun Hase, was found by a custodian May 27 at the gate of a junior-high school.

In a note stuck in the boy's mouth, the killer called the police "fools" and boasted of enjoying nothing more than seeing people die.

Yesterday's confession and arrest ended an exhausting search for a killer whose brutal act came to symbolize for Japanese an increase in violent crime that has shaken their prized sense of security.

Police were investigating the possibility the same boy also was behind a previous killing - the fatal bludgeoning of a girl in March - and the stabbing of another girl. Kyodo News reported that he had confessed to the attacks, but police said they could not confirm that.

Fear that the killer would strike again had gripped the tidy, middle-class Kobe neighborhood. Parents and teachers led children to and from schools in groups, often with patrol-car escorts. Parks emptied and residents stocked up on alarms that a child could set off if accosted by a stranger.

A week after the murder, the attacker sent a rambling, 1,400-word letter to a Kobe newspaper threatening to kill three more people a week if he became upset and expressing hatred for Japan's high-pressure, conformist education system.

The sometimes incoherent letter described murder as a kind of release and included a threat to kill "vegetables" - a word police took to be the writer's disparaging term for people.

Lead investigator Seishi Yamashita said in a nationally televised news conference that the suspect confessed yesterday after several hours of questioning. Then police found a knife thought to be the murder weapon in the suspect's house, he said.

"As far as the motive, that's something we'll be investigating very closely," he said, refusing to explain how police had zeroed in on the suspect.

The national TV network, NHK, reported that police had been led to the boy by the killing of pigeons and other small animals in the area.

The arrest of such a young suspect was unexpected. Several people reported seeing a man in his 30s or 40s around the school just before Hase's head was found, and police initially appeared to have few other leads.

Kobe has had its share of tough times. A massive earthquake in January 1995 killed more than 6,000 people and wrecked the once-charming port. The city of about 1 million people is still recovering.

For many Kobe residents - particularly parents - the arrest meant they could relax for the first time in a month.

"I'm so relieved," one mother told NHK. "I always worried if my child had made it safely to school or if he would come back home all right."