Disturbing Necrophilia case of Kaoru Kobayadhi
Necrophilia, which is defined as having “sexual feelings or activities that involve dead bodies,” is rightly considered one of the world’s gravest taboos. Serial killers have a tendency toward necrophilia as part of a larger spectrum of transgressive behavior. On November 17, 2004, Kaoru Kobayashi, a middle-aged newspaper deliveryman, abducted seven-year-old Kaede Ariyama and took her back to his home in Sango, Nara Prefecture. There, he sexually assaulted the girl before drowning her in his bathtub. Kobayashi then mutilated the girl’s corpse, took pictures of her body with her own cell phone, and dumped her remains in a rural gutter. To taunt Ariyama’s family, Kobayashi emailed the postmortem pictures to the girl’s mother and younger sister. When police began investigating cell phone records, they tracked an unknown number to Kobayashi’s address, where they located a cell phone that contained a graphic image from Ariyama’s murder. Kobayashi was promptly charged with the...