Japan teen murder accused kept cat head in fridge

  A 16-year-old Japanese schoolgirl who
allegedly confessed to decapitating a classmate
kept a severed cat head in her refrigerator, a
report said Tuesday.
The teen was arrested last week on suspicion of
murdering fellow student Aiwa Matsuo, 15, after
police discovered her dismembered body on a
bed in the suspect's home in the western
Japanese city of Sasebo.
The grisly case has attracted major media
attention in a country with one of the world's
lowest crime rates, as commentators search for
answers to explain the teenager's pattern of
increasingly violent behaviour.
Some reports have suggested the parents of the
girl -- who wasn't named because she is a minor
-- desperately sought to have her hospitalised
but were rebuffed.
On Tuesday, the Mainichi newspaper said
investigators found a severed cat head in a
refrigerator and about one million yen
($10,000) in cash at the apartment where the
girl lived alone.
She had reportedly been living there since April
on the advice of psychiatrists after she battered
her father with a baseball bat.
Her father -- who remarried about three months
ago after the girl's mother died of cancer last
year -- is believed to have given the cash to his
daughter, who reportedly told investigators that
she "wanted to dissect someone".
The man has been quoted as saying that "my
daughter's act can never be forgiven".
Also Tuesday, the Mainichi and Jiji Press news
agency reported that the suspect told her
stepmother that she planned to murder a person
after growing bored of killing animals.
A day before the incident, her parents
consulted with a psychiatrist and tried to get
the girl hospitalised but the request was turned
down due to lack of space at the facility, Jiji
said.
The father then called a local child welfare
office, but a security guard told him to
telephone back after the weekend.