National News

Kanae Kijima, with her face covered, is transported in a police vehicle to public prosecutors on Tuesday. (Mainichi)

Traces of powdered sleeping medicine have been found in the possession of a 35-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of murdering a man who was found dead under suspicious circumstances last year, it has been learned.

The sleeping medicine was found on a pestle owned by 35-year-old Kanae Kijima. The medicine she had been prescribed was reportedly the same type as that found in the body of the 41-year-old victim, Yoshiyuki Oide. Police suspect that Kijima ground up the medicine so she could have Oide take it without him noticing, and put it in a beef stew and other food that he had before he died.

Investigative sources said that the pestle was found among Kijima's belongings, and prefectural police had been investigating a substance on it.

Oide was found dead in a rented vehicle in a parking lot in Fujimi, Saitama Prefecture, early on Aug. 6 last year. When she was questioned by police, Kijima said that she had eaten a beef stew with Oide at her home the previous evening.

"I went to the parking lot with him. We got into an argument there and I left him," she was quoted as telling investigators.

An autopsy on Oide's body found the ingredients of what were believed to be a stew in his stomach. Alcohol was also detected.

Investigators said that traces of sleeping medicine were also found in the body of 80-year-old Kenzo Ando, who burned to death at his home in the Chiba Prefecture city of Noda in May last year. Kijima had frequented Ando's residence as a home helper, and Chiba and Saitama prefectural police are jointly investigating the death.

Kijima has beem charged with stealing 50,000 yen from the wallet of a man in Tokyo who fell asleep. Investigators said the man told them he became sleepy when he was with Kijima, and that he fell asleep quickly and his sleep was deeper than normal. Saitama Prefectural Police suspect that this man was also made to consume a sleeping drug.