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Baby kidnappers foiled by technology
(Yomiuri Shimbun, The (Tokyo) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jan. 9--SENDAI, Japan -- Advanced investigative equipment, including a device to trace telephone calls and another that scans automobile license numbers, led to the quick arrest of three suspects about 50 hours after a newborn baby was snatched for ransom from a Sendai hospital Friday.
The police were able to trace the first threatening call from a kidnapper Saturday afternoon. It lasted for two minutes and 11 seconds and was traced to a public telephone booth in Ogawaramachi, about 25 kilometers south of the Miyagi Prefecture capital.
From Saturday night to early Sunday, Sanae Shimura--director of Hikarigaoka Spellman Hospital, from where the baby was kidnapped--moved from one place to another carrying a large amount of cash, in accordance with the kidnapper's instructions. He took a train from JR Sendai Station to JR Ishinomaki Station in Miyagi Prefecture, then took a taxi on the Sanriku Expressway back toward Sendai.
The kidnappers also shifted their location from Ogawaramachi to Tagajo and then to Sendai, trying to find a suitable place to receive the 61.5 million yen ransom they were seeking.
But the police were able to trace all the movements of the kidnappers, suspected of comprising a married couple and a male acquaintance.
A male kidnapper called the hospital at 4:22 p.m. Saturday to demand the money requested in the ransom note addressed to the hospital director. When the phone operator asked the kidnapper whether to put the call through to management, the kidnapper said, "Shall I hang up?"
The kidnapper spoke in a hoarse voice, which sounded as if it had been altered through use of a device. When the hospital's chief clerk answered the phone and asked the kidnapper, "Are you the person who wrote the ransom note?" the kidnapper pressed the clerk for a prompt answer, saying, "I'll hang up."
The police succeeded in tracing the call, which lasted two minutes and 11 seconds, determining that the kidnapper had phoned from a public telephone booth at a park in Ogawaramachi. Several vehicles, including a white station wagon, were identified leaving the scene immediately after the call, and they began to narrow down the target vehicle.
After that, the kidnapper called the hospital or the director five times. The police were able to identify all the public telephone booths where the calls were made from.
The calls from the kidnapper were no longer than around two minutes, apparently due to the caller's fear of being traced. But an investigative source said it was a wasted effort.
Previously it took more than five minutes to trace a call, and police would ask the recipients to stretch the conversations. But the sources said the quality of switchboards had improved and along with it the ability to trace calls.
Especially in this kidnapping case, the use of public telephone booths--which are directly run by NTT Corp.--allowed the police to pinpoint the kidnapper's location in a few minutes. Cell phones can be traced within a radius of several tens to hundreds of meters.
An automatic scanner of automobile license numbers picked up the number of a white station wagon seen suspiciously near the public telephone booths from where the kidnapper called the hospital director, and also on the Sanriku Expressway, to which the kidnapper told the director to come.
It was a white Mitsubishi station wagon. Police investigators who went to the public telephone booth in Ogawaramachi identified it from the license number.
The kidnapper called the hospital director four times while traveling in the station wagon. The police traced the station wagon at several places, and became increasingly convinced that the kidnapper was inside it.
The police said they determined a man and a woman were in the station wagon, consistent with the ransom note, which hinted a female accomplice was involved in the kidnapping.
An unmarked patrol car ran alongside the station wagon in police effort to apprehend the kidnappers, but the police first wanted to confirm if the baby was inside.
The police's investigative headquarters then decided to put priority on the baby's release and to follow the station wagon.
On early Sunday morning, the police confirmed that the station wagon was owned by a vehicle inspection agent in Sendai, but he was found not to be involved in the case. It had been used from around December by the husband of the woman involved in the case.
Crime doesn't pay The Sendai case was the 282nd kidnapping for ransom in Japan after the end of World War II. Only eight have not been solved, including the March 1984 kidnapping of the president of confectionery firm Ezaki Glico Co.
Of the eight outstanding cases, the victims were killed or missing in two cases, and safely returned in the remainder.
Investigative technologies for public telephones, cell phones and automobiles have improved significantly. A senior National Police Agency official said, "Kidnapping for ransom has become a crime in which criminals can't expect to succeed."
A cell phone was used first in a kidnapping case in that of a Fuji Bank clerk in Minato Ward, Tokyo, in November 1991. Such phones are said to be difficult to trace compared with public phones.
Since then, a prepaid cell phone and a cell phone registered in another person's name have been used to prevent police tracing the perpetrator of a kidnapping, including that of a second-grade primary school student of Yokohama in April 2000.
But even if police fail to trace a cell phone, it is still possible to narrow down the whereabouts of the user within a radius of several hundreds meters, as long as the power is on. As a result of technological advances and cooperation between cell phone companies and police, the ability to trace cell phones has improved greatly, leading to a number of arrests in recent years.
A law aimed at confirming the identity of cell phone users was enforced in April 2005. Due to the law, it is difficult to obtain such a phone in another person's name.
The NPA's automatic scanners of automobile license numbers have proven useful in recent kidnappings. As of 2003, the devices were installed at 580 places on main roads nationwide, allowing police to track the movement of suspicious cars instantly.
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