Eerie killer spouts traditional verse as cops hunt suspected slayer of elderly.
After the bodies of elderly victims in their 70s and 80s were found in discovered in a Japanese village in the Yamaguchi province in located in western Japan, a police investigation was launched.
The Independent reported that the bodies of three victims were discovered in two homes that had been burned to the ground.
Two more victims were discovered close by. They had been beaten to death.
All of the five slain villagers were believed to have died instantly after being bashed in the head with a blunt instrument.
Criminologist Jinsuke Kageyama told the Japan Times: “All of the victims must have been asleep when they were attacked… Even elderly people resist. It would have been difficult to strike them repeatedly only on the head.”
The murder victims represented a third of the population of the small village.
Local police said they found a haiku poem – a traditional three-line verse – stuck to the window of a home belonging to the chief suspect in the case — a 63-year-old villager whose name has not been released.
The creepy haiku read: "Setting a fire – smoke gives delight – to a country fellow."
According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, the suspect had also told neighbors that if he had killed anyone, he would be immune from prosecution because he is on medication.
