Unsolved Mysteries: The Brutal Slaying of Kazuko Toyonaga

Did a Young Japanese Woman Fall Prey to the Notorious Danish Killer Peter Madsen in 1986?

On October 30, 1986, workers were headed for their lunch breaks all across Copenhagen. However, one taxi driver would have little time or stomach for food. As he walked beside Christianhavn’s Canel at Islands Brugge Harbour, something caught his eye between two boats — it was a dismembered abdomen and its lower limbs.

Police were urgently called and arrived at the gruesome scene. Yet, the head of Copenhagen’s murder squad Kurt Jensen wasn’t overly alarmed despite the circumstances. He reasoned that the remains were most likely a suicide, with a boat’s propellers tearing the body apart in the water. However, as an autopsy was scheduled, more body parts began to turn up in various places in the canal, and some were wrapped in garbage bags. Copenhagen had a killer on their hands, and rumors began to swirl that one of the bags used to cover the body parts had been Swedish. Copenhagen police denied this.

The autopsy revealed that the victim was a woman in her early 20s, with the initial suspicion being that the victim had come from Greenland. However, examining the teeth led investigators to conclude that an East Asian origin was far more likely. She’d…