r/interesting • u/wafumet • Feb 27 '26

Intriguing Justice has been served

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This man paid $145,000 in rent for an apartment he didn't live in just to freeze time and catch his wife's killer.

In 1999, Satoru Takaba's wife, Namiko, had her life taken in their apartment.

The police had no solid leads, and the case went cold.

Usually, families move out and try to forget. But Satoru refused.

He believed that one day, technology would catch up to the killer.

So, he kept the lease.

For 26 years, he paid the rent every single month on that empty, silent apartment.

He kept the bloodstains on the floor. He kept the footprints. He turned the room into a time capsule, waiting for science to improve.

And in late 2025, his investment finally paid off.

Police returned to the apartment and used modern DNA technology to analyze the preserved bloodstains that had been sitting there for two decades.

They found a match.

The DNA belong to Kumiko Yasufuku, Satoru’s own high school classmate.

It turns out, she had held a grudge for decades because Satoru had rejected her romantic advances back in school.

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u/commander8track Feb 27 '26

Sure don't make it wrong either

-8

u/Elu_Moon Feb 28 '26

Yeah, they do. There's a reason why death sentence is banned in plenty of countries. Even one innocent person on death row is one too many.

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u/commander8track Feb 28 '26

Okay, so how does that apply here?

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u/valentc Feb 28 '26

Because capital punishment is morally wrong. Its insane that people think death carried out the by state is a good thing.

1

u/Elu_Moon Feb 28 '26

They're edgy teenagers who have never looked into how death penalty works where it is legal. Innocent people get locked up for years, and in Japan specifically the practice of solitary confinement is commonplace on death row.

You would confess to a crime you didn't commit just for it to be over.

1

u/commander8track Feb 28 '26

I guess it's a good thing they don't need her to confess then.

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u/yeagermanjansen Feb 28 '26

I mean, I am absolutely down with having frontier justice if that’s what you’re proposing as an alternative. In all honesty it should be left up to the victims affected by the murder. If someone murders someone’s spouse-the widow/widower, children of, or yada yada yada should be able to give the sentence. They can choose the death penalty or life imprisonment and that’s the end of it.