Woman found living in wardrobe

Published on Friday 30 May 2008 23:37

A HOMELESS woman in Japan who sneaked into a man's house and lived undetected in his wardrobe for a year was eventually discovered after he became suspicious when he noticed food was mysteriously disappearing.

Hiroki Itakura, a spokesman for the police in the town of Kasuya, on Kyushu island, said that on Thursday officers found the 58-year-old woman hiding in the top compartment of the man's wardrobe. They arrested her for trespassing.

The resident of the home installed security cameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months.

One of the cameras captured someone moving inside his home on Thursday after he had left, and he called police, believing that it was a burglar. But when officers arrived they found the door locked and all windows closed.

Mr Itakura said: "We searched the house … checking everywhere someone could possibly hide.

"When we slid open the wardrobe, there she was, nervously curled up on her side."

The woman told police that she had no other place to live and said that she had first sneaked into the man's house about a year ago when he left it unlocked.

The wardrobe is in one of several rooms in the man's single-storey house, where he otherwise lives alone.

Police officers are investigating how she managed to go in and out of the house unnoticed, as well as details of her life inside the wardrobe, and if she had taken anything else besides food.

She had moved a mattress into the small space and apparently even took showers, Mr Itakura said, calling the woman "neat and clean".