Episode 155:
Bar Owner Hid Woman’s Body in the Wall and Threw a Party..What?
On New Year's Day 2026, an elderly woman in Hokkaido, Japan, was waiting for a call that didn't come. Sato Shima had raised her granddaughter, 28-year-old nurse Hinano Kudo, since childhood, and had not heard from her in two days. When there was a knock at the door she thought Kudo had come home. It was a coworker from the hospital. Kudo, who had never once skipped work, had missed her shift and wasn't answering her phone. Her last text to her grandmother had said she would spend New Year's Eve with her boyfriend and be back at the hospital on January 1. Her grandmother realized she didn't know the boyfriend's name.
The two women went to the police. Officers broke a window to enter Kudo's apartment and found nothing out of place. Security footage showed her shopping for groceries at 4 p.m. on December 31, looking cheerful, and going home. She was never seen leaving again. Around 6:30 p.m., a man none of the neighbors recognized walked out of the building.
The Bar Owner Down the Street
A neighbor, visibly reluctant, suggested detectives look into Lady Luck, a small bar nearby that had become popular for its cheap drinks. Its owner was 49-year-old Toshihiko Matsukura. He and Kudo belonged to the same hunting club, having met in 2022 when both were getting their licenses, and she stopped by the bar almost every day after work. The regulars all knew the two were a couple. Matsukura was also married, with a wife 14 years younger and a child in kindergarten, and the family home was only a few hundred feet from the bar. Kudo, who had grown up without a father, had fallen for a man 21 years her senior. In July 2025 she transferred to a hospital near the bar. That August his wife discovered the affair and filed for divorce, and friends said the couple had begun fighting more often. His build, height, and walk matched the man in the footage. Questioned on January 4, Matsukura said he saw Kudo often but hadn't known she was missing, and that he had only dropped by her building because he was nearby. Everything on his phone from before December 31 had been deleted. He said he had cleaned it up for the new year.
Behind the Dart Machine
On January 10, police took Matsukura to Lady Luck. Five air purifiers were running, and under their noise was an odor the detectives recognized. They searched the kitchen, the counter, the storeroom, and the bathrooms and found the place spotless, with nowhere large enough to hide a body. Then one detective moved the dart machine. Behind it, a wooden board about 15 inches wide was fastened to the wall, and the wall sounded hollow. Behind the board was a cramped space of about 18 square feet. Inside, wrapped in a large plastic sheet, was Kudo's body, curled up, with rope marks around her neck. While officers were focused on the wall, Matsukura ran to a window and jumped from the second floor. He struck a drying rack on the neighboring building, fell, and was arrested.
A Party a Few Feet From the Body
On the night of December 30, Kudo and Matsukura went out for year-end drinks with friends until about 2 a.m., and nobody noticed anything wrong between them. Police believe Kudo was strangled in her apartment around 4 p.m. on December 31, and that Matsukura, seen leaving at 6:30 p.m., came back before dawn, put her body in a bag sealed with tape, and drove it to the bar, where he pushed it into the space behind the dart machine and nailed plywood over it. He then texted his regulars an invitation to a New Year's takoyaki party on January 2. The bar normally served only drinks, but that day he cooked and served the food himself, and the smell of it filled the room while the air purifiers ran. Guests later recalled that he grew tense whenever anyone went near the dart machine, kept asking whether anything smelled odd, and blamed food waste he hadn't been able to take out.
Final Thoughts
Matsukura has said only that there was an argument. What happened in the fourteen hours between the night out and Kudo's death is still unknown. Experts who have looked at the case think the killing was probably not planned, pointing to how he hid the body in the place he knew best and could not conceal his anxiety afterward. On January 30, 2026, he was indicted for murder and abandoning a corpse. The trial has not yet begun and the allegations have not been tested in court. Kudo's grandmother, now alone, has said she blames herself hundreds of times a day for not knowing he was married and for not asking her granddaughter to spend the New Year with her.
Regulars at the bar knew about the affair, and one neighbor hesitated before even mentioning the bar to detectives. When people around a relationship can see that something is wrong but treat it as none of their business, how much does that silence matter, and what would you have done as one of those regulars?
WE DOCUMENT.
YOU DECIDE.
Our interpretation is only one possible perspective.
