She Killed Her Roommate, Stole Her Money, Then Used it to Dismember Her
The bizarre identity theft, murder, and dismemberment case Sawako Watanabe.
“No matter what I say, Sawako will never come back. I honestly can’t express my emotions. It still feels unreal.”
-Father of Sawako
We’ve all heard of the roommate from hell. The person who is loud at night never cleans up their messes, and always finds ways to ruin your day. This is the story of Terumi Morishima, a 29-year-old Japanese woman who in 2015 was sharing a house with a group of men and women.
One of these women, Sawako Watanabe became close with Terumi and they became friends. But what Sawako didn’t know was that Terumi was slowly stealing her identity, racking up thousands of dollars of debt, and was planning to murder her. More than just the annoying or inconsiderate roommate, Terumi was a deranged killer who would go to any length to make Sawako disappear.
Why did she decide to kill Sawako and how did she dispose of the body? How did she get caught and what happened to her? This is the story of a true roommate from hell who murdered, dismembered, and disposed of her roommate.
Sawako Moves To Osaka
Sawako Watanabe was born and raised in a small town in Ehime Prefecture Japan. Her father used to work at a flower shop and she wanted to someday open a flower shop together with her father. In 2015 she decided to move to Osaka at age 24 to get a taste of the big city and learn more about the trade.
As Osaka and Tokyo are both big cities, rent is quite high so many people live in tiny one-room apartments and oftentimes with roommates. Since Sawako was only working part-time, she couldn’t afford all the costs that come with securing an apartment plus the high rent.
Instead, she opted to live in a shared house. With separate bedrooms, communal showers, kitchen, and living rooms, it was a good way for her to save money, meet a group of friends, and feel safe in a big city.
Unfortunately, in August, a few months after living in the share house with three other people, a woman named Terumi came to live in the sharehouse as well. It would be Terumi who would eventually bring disaster to the house.
Terumi’s Troubled History
Terumi Morishima was born in Osaka Prefecture but when she was in elementary school her family moved to Hiroshima. Along with her mother, live-in boyfriend, and two younger brothers, Terumi stayed in Hiroshima until she graduated high school.
According to court reports, Terumi was a victim of both physical and sexual abuse. Terumi’s mother had a live-in boyfriend who would often verbally abuse her and sometimes even beat her with a bat.
Once she got into the fifth grade, the physical abuse turned into sexual abuse and her mother’s boyfriend would sexually assault her continually. Terumi was too scared to tell her mother and feared her mother might get sad. In the first year of high school she actually became pregnant with her mother’s boyfriend’s child.
Enraged, the boyfriend told her to get an abortion but the period of having an abortion had already lapsed. Terumi ended up giving birth at home unknown to her mother, but the baby was stillborn. The boyfriend took the stillborn and threw the baby’s corpse into a dam.
Terumi also told the story of the time her dog passed away. Once again not able to tell her mother about it and make her sad, she decided to hide the remains of the dog. Anything painful or sad, Terumi would tend to hide it. The defense would later use this aspect of her personality to explain why she did what she did to Sawako.
Life at the share house
Terumi got along with the group at the shared house and was known to have a friendly relationship with Sawako. She spent most of her time on the internet as she only worked short-term temp jobs so was always short on cash. She was also a struggling illustrator so most of her time was spent on the computer.
One of her roommates told courts, “She pretty much stayed in her room and I didn’t see her much. She seemed to be an internet addict, on her computer from morning until night.” But despite spending most of her time online, she did enjoy the company of Sawako.
This connection with Sawako might have been genuine or it could have been a way to acquire a target for identity theft. As she got closer to Sawako, she stole her driver's license. She then went to various institutions and took out loans of over 2.2 million yen ( about $20,000) and created an account and withdrew about 610,000 yen ( about $6000) in her name.
Terumi later admitted,
“I didn’t think I would be caught. I put on make-up, took off my glasses, and put on fake eye-lashes. I tried to look as much like Sawako’s picture and was able to trick the staff at the counter.”
In November, a few months after moving in, Terumi decided to move out on her own to an apartment only 300 meters or 900 ft from the shared house. She wanted a dog but the shared house didn’t allow pets.
In Japan, moving into an apartment can be quite expensive and usually costs about 6 months' worth of rent upfront for various fees and deposits. Most likely, Terumi used the money she had acquired from the illegal loans under Sawako’s name to acquire the apartment.
According to prosecutors, after maxing out the available loans, Terumi was once again strapped for cash and was also getting worried that collectors would try to find Sawako so she decided it might be a good idea to have Sawako disappear.
The Christmas Party
As Terumi was still close by to the shared house, and “friends” with Sawako, she continued to stop by at the house and even left some boxes and luggage in the house closets. She also decided to invite the members of the shared house including Sawako to her new apartment for a Christmas Eve Party.
She asked Sawako to help her go shopping and prepare for the party on the afternoon of the 24th. CCTV footage was taken from outside of Terumi’s building show both Terumi and Sawako entering the building just after 7 pm.
While at her apartment, Sawako got a message using the application LINE which is similar to WhatsApp. It was from one of the roommates at the sharehouse. Sawako’s reply was, “I’m at Terumi’s place. It’s going to be a bit longer.”
About 15 minutes later, Terumi came to the shared house alone and told the others that Sawako was still preparing for the party and should be back in a few minutes. Sometime later, another message from LINE from Sawako’s phone arrived to the roommate saying, “I’m sorry I can’t make it to the party, something urgent came up. Have fun without me.”
Terumi went back to the apartment, then returned to the shared house and told the others that Sawako wasn’t there. She also told them that Sawako had been talking to her ex-boyfriend so she may have gone to meet him.”
The group then decided to cancel the Christmas Eve Party since Sawako wouldn’t be able to attend. Unfortunately, Terumi was the only person who really knew why Sawako would not be attending the party.
The Crime
According to autopsy reports, Sawako was suffocated sometime after 7:50 pm on the 24th of December. According to Terumi’s confession, she claimed that after leaving Sawako alone in her apartment and visiting the shared house, when she returned she found Sawako collapsed. Scared and in a panic she spent the next 3 days dismembering, hiding and disposing of Sawako’s remains.
However, prosecutors argued that this murder was planned and set in motion before the party. Medical examiners found traces of a sleep medication in Sawako that was prescribed to Terumi. A search of Terumi’s computer search history also found such searches as:
- How to dismember a human
- Can bones be shattered?
- How to stun a person
- How to kill someone the perfect crime
- What happens to your account if you disappear?
- What happens if you take a lot of sleeping pills?
On December 25th, Terumi took Sawako’s bank card and withdrew 100,000 yen ( about $1000) from her account. Video from the ATM showed a woman that was not Sawako withdrawing the money. The woman was identified as Terumi. She then went to a store and bought the following items:
- Freezer
- Odor removing sand
- Detergents
- Small knife
- Foldable saw
- Cutting board
- Buckets
- Garbage bags
- Food processor
- Garbage disposal unit
Over the next three days, she used the knife and saw to dismember Sawako in her bathroom and kitchen. According to police reports and reporting from Sankei Shinbun, here is a list of the various discoveries after police searched the share house as well as Terumi’s apartment:
- Sawako’s hands and feet were severed and placed in nylon bags which were then wrapped in paper bags and placed inside a closet on the second floor of the share house where Terumi’s room had been.
- Pieces of flesh were packed in plastic bags and discovered inside a freezer in Terumi’s apartment.
- Muscle and meat were put into the garbage disposal machine to break it down, then dumbed in garbage bags and placed outside the apartment with communal garbage.
- Parts of Sawako were boiled in a pressure cooker.
- Sawako’s skull, spine, and pelvis were found in Terumi’s bathtub filled with liquid.
- The kitchen of the shared house also contained bags of meat that were identified as Sawako’s remains.
Arrest and Sentencing
“Sawako died suddenly. I didn’t know what to do so I decided to hide her.”
On December 25th while Terumi was shopping and preparing to dismember Sawako’s body, Sawako’s family was waiting for her to come home. She had made plans to visit them at Christmas but had never shown up. Sawako’s father called the police and reported her missing.
Investigators found the missing Sawako’s ATM card had been used and quickly linked it with Terumi after talking to Sawako’s roommates and finding the last person to see her might have been Terumi. On December 29th, when they went to Terumi’s apartment they discovered the gruesome scene.
Terumi told investigators that when she came home, Sawako was already dead so she decided to conceal the body. She was originally arrested for destruction and abandoning a corpse and taken into custody.
Terumi’s trial began in June of 2016 where she was charged with the murder of Sawako Watanabe as well as theft and dismembering her body. Her defense continued to argue that because of Terumi’s past troubles and her habit of hiding and concealing things to avoid trauma, she should be given a lesser sentence.
Terumi also continued to claim that she only dismembered and disposed of Sawako’s body but didn’t kill her. The defense argued that in the 15 minutes that Terumi left Sawako alone in her apartment she might have been murdered by someone else. She also claimed that Sawako had given her the bank card and given her permission to take out the 100,000 yen.
However, prosecutors were able to disprove these statements with all the evidence they had such as the WhatsApp messages, internet search history, and identity theft of the victim. They were able to show that Terumi was planning to kill Sawako and make her disappear.
According to Japan Today, in June of 2017, The Osaka District Court found Terumi Morishima guilty of the murder of Sawako Watanabe and sentenced her to life in prison. Her defense appealed the verdict but the High Court once again confirmed her life sentence. Then in September 2018, The Supreme Court dismissed her case cementing her life sentence.
Most likely the combination of Terumi’s childhood trauma and sexual abuse mixed with pressures for her to afford living in a big city in Japan, Terumi decided to kill. Not having stable employment, any family or friends around, and spending hours at home alone online may have isolated her and made her want to be someone else. She might have stolen Sawako’s identity not only for the money but also to escape herself and become someone else.
Had Terumi had more mental support and avenues to help her better her life financially and mentally, she might not have felt the need to destroy someone else’s.
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Sources
English
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20151231/p2a/00m/0na/016000c
Japanese
https://www.iza.ne.jp/kiji/events/photos/170720/evt17072012000001-p2.html
https://www.sankei.com/west/news/160112/wst1601120005-n1.html