Good news, bad news, weird news

The good news is that the online Daily Yomiuri newspaper DOES have archives these days. I hadn't noticed, but the site now carries more than just today's news. I wonder when they changed it?

The bad news is that they have started truncating their stories, or at least this one, the most fascinating story to turn up since the LAST time it turned up. (I wrote about it here.) It gets weirder and weirder.

Man 'hit lover who hired killer to off his wife'

The Yomiuri Shimbun

A 32-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a woman with whom he had been having an affair after learning she had hired a hit man over the Internet to kill his wife, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said Wednesday.

Sadatoshi Machida, an ambulance worker at Shibuya Fire Station, assaulted the 32-year-old woman, who was a coworker, at a hot-spring resort in Shizuoka Prefecture on Sept. 2, breaking one of her ribs.

According to the MPD, Machida found a contract for the murder of his wife in the woman's bag while performing first aid in June. He arranged to meet the woman at a hotel in August and hit her, bursting one of her eardrums.

Machida then invited the woman to a hot-spring resort in Izunokuni, Shizuoka Prefecture. In order to console Machida, who was upset about the murder plan, she complied.

(Oct. 13, 2005)

This story made my jaw drop several times when I read it in the hard copy version yesterday morning at work. There were some sentences I had to reread to make sure I was reading correctly:

According to the MPD, Machida found a contract for the murder of his wife in the woman's bag while performing first aid in June.

How can they write stuff like this, that raises more questions than it answers? How did he manage to perform first aid and rifle through his girlfriend's bag at the same time? Who was he performing first aid ON? Her? After he'd beaten her up? But no, we learn that he beat her up AFTER finding the contract, so presumably he was performing first aid on someone else.

I wonder if the patient survived? Machida's reaction to this discovery was to invite the woman to a hotel and burst her eardrum.

The next thing to make my jaw drop was that after he had burst her eardrum she felt she needed to console him, by meeting him at a hot spring resort, although I suppose this kind of makes sense, in a masochistic kind of way.

"I'm sorry I wanted to kill your wife. I can see you are very upset. Let me make it up to you. Let's go on holiday together."

"Good idea. Let's go to a hot spring resort. You're paying."

"Pardon?"

"I SAID LET'S GO TO A HOT SPRING RESORT. ARE YOU DEAF OR SOMETHING?"

But the story gets even more bizarre, and this is the bit they left out of the online version. Consider yourself lucky to have me, your faithful connoisseur of the weird, to type it all up for you:

Machida started dating the woman when she was assigned to Shibuya Fire station in September 2001. But since last year, he started charging her around ¥2000 an hour for the pleasure of his company. He received ¥200,000 to ¥1 million each time they went out, and she had paid him a total of ¥5 million as of November.

After beating her up at the hot spring inn, he said, "I'll stay with you until tomorrow morning. Pay me ¥5 million. If you don't have it, borrow from your relatives," the police said.

Machida has admitted to the charges, the police said.

The woman was arrested on suspicion of violating the Law Concerning Punishment of Physical Violence and Others for hiring a hit man. The MPD also arrested an Internet site operator Akio Okudaira, 49, and a self-described private detective Takaharu Tabe, 40, on suspicion of fraud.

(Now close your mouth.)

She PAID him to go out with her? Why? Blackmail? But if there was any blackmail involved, wouldn't it be the other way around, since he was the married one?

And also, if he was charging ¥2000 an hour for 'the pleasure of his company,' and she paid him ¥200,000 to ¥1 million each time, then does that mean they 'went out' for 100 to 500 hours each time? That's about four to twenty days per date! (Or were they just very, very bad at mathematics?)

However... let's put this and the previous story together and try to make sense of this. Here's how I understand it.

The woman hired a hitman on the Internet, paid him, and got a contract. (What sort of hitman issues a contract? Did he sign it, I wonder?) Machida found the contract to kill his wife (while performing first aid) and was incensed. The woman agreed to go to a hotel (for 100 hours? 500?) to 'console' him, and he beat her up, bursting her eardrum. Then they went to a hot spring resort and he beat her up again, breaking her rib. After this, she went to the police and complained about the non-performing hitman/private detective. The police promptly arrested her on suspicion of inducing a person to commit murder, and now have arrested Machida for beating her up, so presumably she decided to complain about him, as well. The police also arrested the non-performing hitman for fraud

Hold on... fraud? Oh, but of COURSE. He took the money but DIDN'T KILL THE WIFE. Boy, I bet he's kicking himself now. Bugger. I knew I shouldn't have chickened out. Being arrested for fraud sucks.

You couldn't make this stuff up. ISN'T IT WONDERFUL?