Baby safe, kidnappers arrested
Published: January 9, 2006
SENDAI (Japan)– A couple who kidnapped a newborn baby boy and held him for about 50 hours were taken into custody almost immediately after the child was found safe, police said.
Apparel seller Nobuyasu Nemoto, 54, and his Filipina wife, Carmencita, 35, were taken into custody soon after Shu Yamada, a 13-day-old baby, was found unharmed at the Sendai Medical Center at about 6 a.m. on Sunday.
The Nemoto couple, from Shichigahama, Miyagi Prefecture, and Kazuyoshi Sato, 32, of Sendai, the ex-husband of Nemoto’s daughter from his first marriage, were arrested for abduction with intent to demand ransom.
All three admit to the allegation that they snatched Shu from the Hikarigaoka Spellman Hospital in Sendai and demanded 61.5 million yen for his safe return.
“Any hospital would have been all right. I just wanted money,” Nemoto told the police, adding later, “I’ve got some relatives who’d earlier had some problems with the way the hospital dealt with them when they stayed there.”
Nemoto also opened up about why the trio suddenly stopped contacting hospital officials while the ordeal was still going on.
“We decided not to go after the money and made getting the baby back out first priority,” said Nemoto, who is believed to be several dozen millions of yen in debt.
Police said Nemoto snatched Shu at around 3:40 a.m. on Friday after having created a decoy by screaming out that a fire had broken out.
Early Saturday, police said Nemoto left an envelope taped to a newspaper delivery outlet in Sendai that contained a handwritten letter demanding a ransom payment of 61.5 million yen from hospital director, Sanae Shimura.
The letter ordered Shimura to catch a train from JR Sendai Station to Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture. The letter also promised Shu would be released safely Sunday morning if Shimura obeyed the instructions. The letter noted that a former nurse was looking after the boy’s health.
Nemoto called the hospital on Saturday to confirm whether it is ready to make a deal with him, the police said, and the hospital’s chief secretary gave him Shimura’s mobile phone number.
Just after 9:30 Saturday night, the kidnapper called Shimura’s mobile phone. Shimura was at JR Sendai Station when the call came. He followed Nemoto’s orders to catch a train to Ishinomaki, police said.
When Shimura arrived at Ishinomaki Station not long after 11 p.m. Nemoto ordered him to catch a taxi along the Sanriku Expressway to a rest area called Higashi Matsushima. When Shimura arrived there, another call from Nemoto instructed him to travel to a traffic sign 9 kilometers along the expressway and to wait there for 10 minutes for more orders.
Shimura did as he was told, but no further contact came. He waited near the sign in Rifu, Miyagi Prefecture, until about 3 a.m., but, after consulting with police, returned to Sendai.
Police said that at about 5:40 a.m. on Sunday, the hospital received a phone call from another man saying “the baby has been left at the old public hospital.”
Officers rushed to the Sendai Medical Center and found Shu wrapped in a blanket.
Meanwhile, police said Shu’s kidnapping was the 282nd reported abduction for ransom in Japan since 1946. With only eight unsolved cases, the arrest rates for kidnappings for ransom is a staggering 97 percent.
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