Tatsuya Ichihashi, who was arrested on Tuesday after more than two years on the run, stayed silent during initial questioning over the death of the 22-year-old British teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker, police said.
“We started a full-fledged interrogation of the suspect today,” said a spokesman for the Gyotoku police department in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo. “The suspect has remained silent about the case.”
Hawker’s body was found in a sand-filled bathtub on the balcony of Mr Ichihashi’s apartment in Chiba in March 2007. He later had plastic surgery to his eyelids and nose, had facial moles removed and grew a beard, apparently hoping to evade detection.
Mr Ichihashi, 30, was carrying a toy gun when he was caught at an Osaka ferry terminal on Tuesday trying to reach southern Okinawa.
Police said that he would be questioned for up to 20 days before prosecutors decide on an indictment. He has been charged with abandoning a body rather than with murder. In Japan, which this year introduced a jury system, murder can be punished with the death penalty, although capital punishment, carried out by hanging, is usually reserved for cases of multiple homicide.