DNA testing planned for girl's 1979 murder

UTSUNOMIYA, Tochigi Pref. (Kyodo) Police have decided to conduct DNA tests on evidence from an unsolved 1979 murder of a 5-year-old girl in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, investigative sources said Tuesday.

While the statute of limitations for the murder of Maya Fukushima has run out, the Tochigi Prefectural Police made the unusual decision to start testing as early as the beginning of October at the request of the victim's father, Yuzuru Fukushima, 55.

The sources said the police made the decision because the case is linked to the controversial "Ashikaga case," in which Toshikazu Sugaya, 62, was convicted of the 1990 murder of a 4-year-old girl and recently freed after a fresh DNA test indicated he was not the culprit.

Sugaya was once held as a suspect for the Fukushima murder as well, but prosecutors waived his indictment over the case in February 1993 citing a lack of evidence.

In July this year, Yuzuru Fukushima asked the police to conduct a DNA test to see if samples from the Ashikaga case match his daughter's case. The police also will run the DNA results through a database to see if any matches come up.

The DNA test will be conducted on samples collected from a cloth backpack, a plastic bag and other items found near Fukushima's body.

The items have been kept by the Utsunomiya District Public Prosecutor's Office. No DNA tests have been conducted on them, partly because DNA analysis methods in the early 1990s were able to detect DNA types only from blood and other body fluids.

Fukushima's body was found on the banks of the Watarase River in August 1979. She was one of the victims in a series of murders targeting young girls in the area.