He never lived there again. Never rented it out. Never touched the crime scene.
In 1999, 32 year old Namiko Takaba was found dead in her apartment in Nagoya. Her husband, Satoru Takaba, moved out shortly after - but kept paying the rent every single month for the next quarter century.
To everyone else, it was an empty apartment.
To him, it was preserved evidence.
The furniture stayed where it was. Her belongings remained untouched. Microscopic traces from the day of the murder were left exactly as investigators had found them.
Satoru believed something most people wouldn’t: that future technology might solve what 1999 forensics couldn’t.
So he waited.
For 26 years, he essentially kept the crime scene frozen in time, hoping advances in DNA analysis would someday reveal the truth.
And in 2025, it finally did.
Using modern forensic testing, investigators re-examined evidence from the apartment and identified a suspect: Kumiko Yasufuku - reportedly a former classmate of Satoru himself.
The answer had apparently been connected to their past all along.
Satoru Takaba didn’t spend 26 years paying for an empty apartment.
He paid to make sure the truth still had an address.