Investigators who heard a Tokyo police officer confess to shooting the country's top police official tried to keep the embarrassing admission a secret, Japanese media said Saturday.
The 31-year-old officer, whose name has not been released, said he was a member of the Aum Shinri Kyo doomsday cult and that cult leaders had ordered him to kill National Police Agency chief Takaji Kunimatsu.Kunimatsu was shot and wounded outside his Tokyo apartment building on March 30, 1995, 10 days after a deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that has been blamed on the cult.
Kunimatsu was in charge of the investigation into the gas attack.
The officer with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department reportedly confessed to the shooting about four months ago.