A Japanese woman hid her mother's body for 10 years in a freezer: I didn't want to move.

 Sylvie Claire / January 31, 2021

A Japanese woman who hid the body of her dead mother for 10 years in a freezer explained her gesture by the fear of being evicted from the apartment if the death was discovered, the local press reported Saturday.

Police told AFP that Yumi Yoshino, 48, was being held on suspicion of hiding the body of a woman found Wednesday in a freezer in a Tokyo apartment. The defendant said she hid the body 10 years ago because she did not want to move from the apartment she shared with her mother, the local press reported, citing unnamed police sources. The apartment rental in a Tokyo apartment building was in the name of the mother, whose age at the time of death is estimated to be around 60, Kyodo News said.

Yumi Yoshino was forced to leave the apartment in mid-January due to rent arrears and it was a cleaner who made the macabre discovery. An autopsy performed on the corpse failed to determine the exact time and cause of death, according to press reports.