Kayo Matsuzawa – the lady in the cupboard.

Kayo’s Story

Kayo Matsuzawa was a 29 yr old Japanese woman who always wanted to travel and worked hard to save the money she needed to get to NZ. She came to New Zealand in 1997 and spent about two years in Christchurch working in a restaurant and studying English. Kayo wanted to visit and explore Auckland but initially was a little anxious about it and asked a friend to go with her.Her friend wasn’t able to go but reassured Kayo that heaps of people travel alone in NZ, she would be fine.

Unfortunately for this beautiful, young woman, this couldn’t be further from the truth;

Kayo flew to Auckland on 11 September 1998. The last known sighting of her alive is on CCTV footage showing Kayo getting off the airport shuttle and crossing the street towards Queen St Backpackers.

Kayo booked into the Queen St Backpackers for three nights, however, police believe that she never spent one night in the room, she had dropped off her belongings and possibly headed out to explore Auckland. What she did, who she met or where she went that day is a mystery. She never had time to send a postcard to her parents to let them know she had arrived safely in Auckland, and cell phones were not around.

11 days later Kayo’s naked decomposing body was found by a technician in an alarm cupboard in a stairwell that links two downtown Auckland buildings. Police would conclude that Kayo probably died the night she was last seen.

The two buildings are the Centrecourt building and the BNZ shopping building.The alarm cupboard was in a stairwell that linked the two buildings.

Sadly, at the time Kayo went missing, and when she was found, the media and public showed very little interest in what had happened to her.

The Buildings; To gain after-hours access at the back of these two buildings on Mills Lane a swipe card or a Dks key is needed. A swipe card was needed for access to the BNZ shopping center and a DKS key was needed to gain access to the Centrecourt building. Both the swipe card and DKS key hold information and data about when they are used and who uses them, which is recorded on two different computer systems. Only a handful of people get these issued to them.

When police checked the computer from Centrecourt to find out what data the DKS key held, they discover that information from the weekend when Kayo was murdered is missing. They cant tell if the information was deleted on purpose by some person or it was just a coincidental glitch in the system.

They checked the computer that held the information from people using the swipe card after hours, to access the BNZ shopping center. There was missing information on this computer as well on the 11th and the 14th. The day Kayo went missing and a couple of days after when it is believed the killer might have gone back to the body to retrieve some items.

Five days after her murder, Kayos passport, and other personal items were found in a rubbish bin on the corner of Mills Lane and Albert St, by a rubbish collector who handed them into police when her body was found. A gold ring with a pink stone was missing, it was not with the items from the bin and was not on her person.

In October 2007 a $75 000 reward was posted, for any information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the death in 1998 of Japanese tourist Kayo Matsuzawa. The investigation has remained open since September 1998. Detective Senior Sergeant Simon Scott has recently secured the reward in the hope that it will help trigger peoples memory of the homicide known as ‘Operation Net’. Unfortunately, no new information was given to the police and the reward was withdrawn 31 March 2008

In Feb 2009, a documentary by Bryan Bruce ” The Investigator” – Who killed kayo? (links below) aired on national television. Police were hoping that the documentary might help solve the case or bring in new information.

Following the airing of the documentary Detective Scott was pleased with the number of calls received from the public. “After the investigator programme last night, our 0800 murder number rang off the hook”. he said. Investigators are working through the information gained from the calls, a process which may take some days. However no persons of interest or suspects were named, and no one was charged.

Bryan Bruce in “The investigator” makes a few good points, if you want to watch it I will have the link below.

Firstly he discovered that the cupboard where Kayo’s body was found didn’t need a key, it could be opened with just a screwdriver.

The stairwell between the buildings could be a little confusing to navigate and there were alarms on some of the doors.

The bins that Kayo’s passport and personal items were found gets emptied 3 times a week, did the killer return to the body and take some clothes, personal items, and passport, to dump them in the rubbish bin, hoping they would never be seen again. The items from the bin were examined and fingerprinted but came back with no match.

The killer had to be familiar with these buildings, know where any alarms were, know about the alarm cupboard and that it could have been opened with a screwdriver.

Was the killer forensically aware, did he know about police procedures? Did the killer erase the data from the swipe card or DKS key from both computers?

Did the killer have a car? If he did why wouldn’t he use it to take kayo to a remote location to get rid of her body?

In the documentary, Bruce and the Detective go over to Japan to meet kayo’s family and friends. When Kayo was growing up her dreams were to travel. She worked long hours at a local fishmonger, to save for her trip to New Zealand. They all describe Kayo as being outgoing, friendly and trusting of anyone.Kayo sent them lots of postcards.

Bryan asked Kayo’s best friend “Why do you think this did not get the kind of coverage that it should have done? she replied, “Its because we are Japanese.”

That last statement I found appalling, and feel so bad for her friends and family, that they are thinking that no one in New Zealand cared enough about her daughter’s death because she was Japanese.

In 2012, The Herald spoke with Detective Scott Beard (link below)

Detective Inspector Scott Beard, one of Auckland’s top investigators and the district field crime manager, has been overseeing the file on Kayo’s death. The investigation, named Operation Net, remains open and active.

“A senior detective has been responsible for reviewing the investigation and dealing with any new information that comes into the police,” Mr. Beard told the Herald.

“To date, there has been nothing to advance the investigation.”

He would not be drawn on the suspect list, details of any profiling done around the killer or the specifics of the investigation to date.

Mr. Beard reasoned that it was not the right time for police to release more detail than they already had about Kayo’s death.

“If we had some information that I thought would warrant the use of the media I would do so,” he said.

Police were never able to pin down how she died, but it was clear she had been murdered.

Police have never commented in detail on the state Kayo was found in, saying there are things only police and the killer would know. In 2000 Detective Inspector Kevin Baker, who was running Operation Net at the time, revealed police had collected forensic evidence from Kayo’s body.

Those items, which he would not identify, had not been tested at the time. Police wanted to hold off, fearing they might jeopardize their chances of a DNA extraction in the future with better technology.

There were a few suspects over the years. One suspect was a Russian man who also stayed at the Queen St Backpackers. After kayos body was found he suddenly left the country the day after. He has never been located.

Another suspect was an alleged serial killer who was in Auckland in 1998. Royal Navy Petty Officer Alan Michael Grimson, who was charged with killing two young men in Portsmouth, England. He was based at the Devonport Naval Base fire school as a trainer when Kayo died. He was there for four months on an exchange programme between the two killings in England.

Detective Senior Sergeant Kevin Baker said police had always assumed that the killer had access to Centrecourt and knew about the alarm cupboard.

The Herald(link below) has learned that the manager of the company that maintained the alarms knew Grimson.

He had met him a few times at the fire school. He believed that his brief encounters with Grimson were coincidental and there was no reason for him to have known about the Centrecourt building.

Detective Senior Sergeant Baker has asked Interpol to obtain information on Grimson’s movements from British police.

But he is remaining cautious because Grimson appears to have targeted young men, and there is nothing at this stage to link him to Miss Matsuzawa.

“I would have to say it is unlikely he is involved, but we certainly won’t ignore it.” He tells The Herald.

In a final twist, an article on TBR.cc (link below) states that they were given a document originally provided to Police at the time of Kayo’s murder, but apparently not followed up at the time.

A man who pawned goods, including a 14 kt ring later identified by police as Kayo’s… gave his details on pawn receipt. Despite positively identifying the ring, police forgot to take away the original of the receipt. The receipt can be viewed here pawn receipt.

So………Questions and theories

The police are really not giving much information at all.

Could the killer have been the Russian or the serial killer? Did they know enough about the buildings?

Was it someone who worked in one of the buildings and knew about the alarms, that knew about the cupboard, knew it could be open with a screwdriver?

Did the killer wipe the data from the two computer systems about who accessed the buildings? Or, was it just a coincidence that the data was missing?

What about Kayo’s ring and the man who pawned it?

IF THIS CASE WAS GIVEN MORE ATTENTION AT THE TIME, COULD IT HAVE BEEN SOLVED?

All my sources of info and other articles are in the links below:

Sadly Kayo’s family thinks that the people and media of New Zealand never cared about what happened to Kayo.

Let’s show them that WE CARE, the NZmysteries community CARES, and share Kayo’s story wherever we can. Tabz

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2007/10/can-bloggers-he.html

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10834743