A Kobe Man's Body Sat in a Freezer for 12 Years

His body sat in a freezer for over 12 years. An unpaid electricity bill is what finally gave him away.

So, what happened?

A neighbor in a Kobe apartment building called the cops on June 19th about a truly awful smell coming from next door. It was the kind of smell you can't ignore.

Police went in the next day and found a freezer that had lost power. Inside was the body of Yutaka Nishiguchi, the guy who lived in the apartment. He was 42 when he died, sometime back around December 2011.

The Details Are Something Else

His body was cut in half. The top part was in one bag, the bottom in another, and he was still dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. Just... there.

The freezer itself wasn't huge, only about 87 cm tall. Police just wheeled the whole thing out of the building. The photos are unreal.

Inside the apartment, there were no signs of a struggle or a robbery. Weirdly, the main door to the whole building didn't even have an auto-lock, so pretty much anyone could have come and gone.

Is This… A Thing Here?

I’ve been in Japan for a few years, and the wildest part is that this isn't even a one-off story. It feels like you hear about a freezer-body case every so often.

Last year, a 75-year-old woman in Ibaraki was arrested for hiding her adult daughter's body in a freezer for 20 years. And in 2021, a Tokyo woman kept her mother's body in one for over 10 years because she was afraid of getting evicted if anyone found out she had died.

It makes you think about isolation. But it also makes you wonder, who was paying the rent and the electricity for Nishiguchi's apartment for the last 12 years?