Japanese Woman Found Frozen to Death in a Room She Was Confined to for Years

A Japanese husband and wife were arrested this week after their adult daughter was found frozen to death in a small room she was reportedly confined to for years.

According to Reuters, Yasutaka Kakimoto, 55, and Yukari Kakimoto, 53, were taken into custody Wednesday (Dec. 27), after they reported the death of their 33-year-old daughter Airi Kakimoto. Western Japan's Osaka Prefectural Police Department said the woman is believed to have died on Dec. 18, but her parents didn’t alert authorities until Dec. 23. Airi was 4.76 feet tall, weighed about 47 pounds, and was in “a state of extreme malnutrition” at the time of her death, police said.

The Kakimotos admitted to keeping their daughter in a 9-square-foot room for about 15 years, and would only feed her once a day.

“Our daughter was mentally ill and, from age 16 or 17, she became violent, so we kept her inside the room,” the parents said, according to police. “We wanted to be together with our daughter.”

The windowless room Airi was in had a makeshift toilet and a tube that would allow her to drink water from an outside tank. The space was also equipped with a camera and had a double door that could only be unlocked from the outside. Authorities said they also discovered 10 cameras installed outside of the house, which was surrounded by a six-foot-tall fence.