Letter Threatens More Killings

A man who claims to have beheaded a schoolboy threatened in a letter to kill three more people a week, expressing hatred for Japan’s high-pressure, conformist education system. The letter was received by a newspaper in Kobe, the city where the boy’s head was found May 27. Police said the handwriting appears to match a note found in the mouth of the victim, an 11-year-old mentally disabled boy. The killing has shocked a nation unaccustomed to violent crime. The rambling and sometimes incoherent 1,400-word letter describes killing as a kind of release. “It’s only when I kill that I am liberated from the constant hatred that I suffer and that I am able to attain peace,” it said.