NAHA, OKINAWA PREF. – Police said Thursday they had arrested a 32-year-old former U.S. Marine in Okinawa on suspicion of disposing of a 20-year-old woman’s body.

According to police, Kenneth Franklin Shinzato has admitted to the charge of disposing of a body and has made remarks implying he killed her.

The police said they found the body based on a statement by Shinzato earlier in the day, and later confirmed it to be that of missing office worker Rina Shimabukuro from Uruma in central Okinawa. Her body was found among weeds in the village of Onna, north of Uruma.

Police began questioning Shinzato, who works at the U.S. Air Force Kadena Air Base and lives in the town of Yonabaru with his wife and child, on a voluntary basis Monday.

According to investigative sources, police found DNA matching the victim’s in Shinzato’s car. He was reported as saying that he abandoned the victim in a wooded area after she stopped moving.

The Japanese government scrambled to deal with the incident, calling U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy to the Foreign Ministry Thursday night and summoning the top U.S. military commander in Japan to the Defense Ministry to lodge protests over the incident.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida called on Kennedy to assist as much as possible with the investigation and work to ensure the incident is not repeated.

Kennedy expressed her “deepest sorrow on behalf of the American government” and pledged to “cooperate fully with the Okinawa police and Japanese government and redouble our efforts to make sure that this never happens again.”

Also on Thursday night, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani expressed “outrage” at the incident to Lt. Gen. John Dolan, commander of the U.S. forces in Japan, who apologized to the Okinawan people.

The Japanese and U.S. governments moved swiftly to avoid the incident having a negative impact on the Japan-U.S. bilateral relationship ahead of the Group of Seven leaders’ summit in central Japan next week, and U.S. President Barack Obama’s subsequent visit to Hiroshima as the first sitting U.S. president to go to the atomic-bombed city.

Shimabukuro’s boyfriend was the last person to hear from her as they communicated via the free messaging app LINE at around 8 p.m. on April 28, when she told him she was going out walking. The boyfriend reported her missing to the police the following day.

GPS data from Shimabukuro’s smartphone shows her last confirmed location was an industrial area near her home in Uruma, according to the sources.

Okinawa hosts the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan. The city of Uruma is the location of U.S. bases Camp Courtney and Camp McTureous.

The implication of a U.S. military base worker in a violent crime against a local is almost certain to add fuel to existing anti-base sentiment in the prefecture.

Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga, who has sparred with the central government on the planned relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within the prefecture, spoke of “ext

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read full article at source: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/05/20/national/crime-legal/u-s-base-worker-admits-dumping-missing-okinawa-womans-corpse-stopped-moving

Kenneth Franklin Gadson, who works on Kadena Air Base, Japan, and goes by his Japanese wife's family name of Shinzato, was arrested Thursday, May 19, 2016, and charged with the illegal disposal of a body in connection with the April 28 disappearance of Rina Shimabukuro, 20.

read full article at source: http://www.stripes.com/news/defense-attorney-says-okinawa-confession-made-in-a-daze-1.410588

http://www.tokyoreporter.com/tag/kenneth-franklin-shinzato/