American Whose ‘Dream Was to Marry a Japanese Woman’
An American tourist suspected of murdering and chopping the head off of his Japanese “Tinder date” last month has been revealed to be a “mama’s boy” who once served in the United States Air Force.
Yevgeniy Vasilievich Bayraktar, 26, is accused of killing 27-year-old office worker Saki Kondo before putting her severed head in a bag and then scattering the rest of her body in the woods during his stay in Japan.
Japanese authorities would later catch the suspect on CCTV video leaving his Osaka rental room with Kondo’s body parts. He is now currently being detained in Osaka, Japan.
Not much is known about Bayraktar, who went by “Jake” and reportedly lived in a small home in Long Island in Mastic Beach in New York with his mother and her third husband.
Benny Dacy, Bayraktar’s former stepfather told the New York Post that Bayraktar was “a mama’s boy” who was spoiled by his mother growing up.
“If we were having dinner and he didn’t like the food, his mother would get up in the middle of the meal to cook him something special, and this was at a time when we didn’t have a lot of money,” Dacy was quoted as saying. “He and his mother were very close. He and I were not.”
According to the Post, he served only 11 months of his four-year assignment as an airman first class at the McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas. An Air Force spokesman revealed that he was prematurely discharged from his duty in June 2012.
Bayraktar met Kondo on a dating app, believed to be either Tinder or Matchapp.
The victim would be last seen entering Bayraktar’s rented apartment with him on Feb. 15 via surveillance cameras. When Bayraktar exited the rental, he was carrying several bags, while Kondo was nowhere to be found.
The suspect was arrested on Feb. 22 renting a different lodging room soon after the victim was reported missing. Kondo’s severed head was discovered by investigators inside a bag in a lodging room in Osaka.
“My son’s dream was to marry a Japanese woman,” Bayraktar’s mother said via the Tokyo Reporter.
Last week, Bayraktar accompanied the police in the woods in Shimamoto to show them where he scattered her severed torso and the rest of her body parts.
Before meeting Kondo, Bayraktar had reportedly met several Japanese women online and also taken them to different vacation rentals around Japan. The other women were found to be safe, according to Japanese officials cited by The Japan Times.
