“Japanese woman finds skeleton, possibly of her missing brother, while cleaning her house…”

Up until a few years ago, Sumio Suenaga lived in a house in the town of Kasugai, Aichi Prefecture, with his younger sister and brother. However, according to the younger Suenaga siblings, their older brother, who was 66 years old at the time, went missing in 2015.

Perhaps hoping he’d turn up sooner or later, the younger siblings waited until 2016 to reported Sumio’s disappearance to the police, but there still had been no sign of him. Five years seems plenty long enough to wait, and so last weekend Sumio’s younger sister, who’s now 69, decided she’d like to use her older brother’s room, but realized she’d need to clean it up first.

As you might expect for a bedroom that’s gone unattended to for five years, there was plenty of straightening up to do. However, the sister didn’t get too far before discovering an unclothed skeletonized body. “I found something that I think are human bones,” she informed the police, and when officers arrived on the scene they confirmed that the corpse was indeed human. Though they were not initially able to determine the individual’s age or sex, investigators believe there is a high probability that the body is Sumio’s.