Editor’s note: This article is drawn from publicly reported accounts — press coverage, court reporting, and statements attributed to officials and witnesses. It is presented as reported, not as established fact. Where details were disputed or unclear in reporting, that is noted below.
The date that never ended
On the afternoon of February 15, 2018 — the day after Valentine’s Day — Saki Kondo, a 27-year-old Japanese translator from Hyogo Prefecture, set out to meet a man she had matched with on Tinder, according to press and court reporting on the case. It was a new connection, an exciting one: Kondo was fluent in English, had recently started a new job translating between English and Japanese, and, as Vocal Media’s account of the case put it, she was about to meet an American man roughly her own age.
Security-camera footage later showed Kondo entering a vacation rental in Osaka with the man, a 26-year-old Russian-born American tourist from New York named Yevgeniy Vasilievich Bayraktar, who went by “Jake.” She was never seen alive again.
Kondo was, by all reported accounts, a capable and well-traveled young woman. She had been born in Himeji, famous for its centuries-old castle, and had studied abroad, according to the Vocal Media account. She had moved to the city of Sanda in Hyogo Prefecture for work, where she served as a translator for company executives. Her friends reportedly described her as friendly and were shocked when the news broke. On the day she was set to meet Bayraktar, she told friends she was going to meet “a male acquaintance,” the same account reported. That was the last anyone heard from her.
The tourist
Bayraktar was in Japan on a visitor’s visa. According to reporting by The New York Times, he had traveled to Japan several times before and was in the country for sightseeing; the Asahi Shimbun reported that he had been in contact with several women through dating apps, through which he met the 27-year-old woman. He stayed in a series of short-term vacation rentals — minpaku, advertised online much like Airbnb listings — in the Nishinari ward of Osaka, according to investigators cited in the Times. His parents told Nippon TV in New York that their son loved Japan and wanted to marry a Japanese woman, and that he would never commit a murder, the Times reported.
Forty-eight hours of silence
According to The Mainichi newspaper, cited in the Vocal Media account, Kondo’s cell phone went dark in the early hours of February 16. When she failed to show up for work, her employer contacted her parents. On February 17, her family filed a missing-person report with the Hyogo Prefectural Police.
Investigators reviewed surveillance footage showing Kondo and Bayraktar entering the Osaka condo together — and showed no further sign of her leaving. Bayraktar, by contrast, was recorded coming and going from the rental, carrying a travel bag each time, according to The Goldwater’s account, which cited the Japan Times. When investigators first examined the room, they found no blood in the bathroom or elsewhere, though the space had been heavily sprayed with air freshener. A more thorough examination later reportedly revealed traces of blood and locks of hair.
The arrest and the confession
On February 22, police intercepted Bayraktar on his way to a second vacation apartment he had rented. He was carrying a bag containing Kondo’s severed head, according to investigators cited by the Japan Times. Confronted, he admitted to killing her and to abandoning her body — “I abandoned the dead body of a woman who was with me,” he told Japanese authorities, according to The Goldwater’s account.
He then led police to her dismembered remains scattered in mountainous areas across Osaka and Kyoto prefectures — a torso and a pair of soil-covered arms in Shimamoto, legs in Yamashina. According to investigators cited in the reporting, none of the recovered body parts bore wounds apart from the severing cuts themselves. Her clothing and other belongings were never recovered, The Goldwater reported.
What prosecutors alleged
Press and court reporting attributed a series of damning steps to Bayraktar in the days after Kondo’s death. He was reported to have strangled her in the rental, then purchased a saw and a kitchen knife and dismembered her body over several days, transporting the bags by public transportation — he had no car — to wooded areas around Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe, keeping her head in the apartment, according to the Vocal Media account.
Prosecutors also presented evidence that he had deleted his Tinder account and searched online for methods of disposing of a body, the same account reported — steps that suggested an effort to erase any connection between the two of them.
A manslaughter verdict, not murder
Because Japanese prosecutors could not establish that Bayraktar had set out with the intent to kill, he was tried not for murder but for manslaughter and for corpse desecration — destruction and abandonment of a corpse — according to the Vocal Media account of the trial. The Kobe District Court heard the case. Prosecutors argued for a 13-year sentence; the defense sought five years, arguing that Bayraktar had shown remorse and had led officers to Kondo’s remains.
The court sentenced him to eight years in prison. Kondo’s father told reporters the sentence was too light and that the truth remained unknown, according to the account. The judge weighed the remorse against the concealment — the saw purchased after the killing, the deleted app, the searches for disposal methods — and the eight years stood.
Kondo’s body was recovered in full, and her family was able to give her a proper burial, according to the same account. For the family, that was the only consolation in a verdict they regarded as inadequate for a young life cut short a day after Valentine’s Day.
Disclosure: This article is based on publicly reported accounts — press and court reporting cited above — and is not stated as established fact. Claims are attributed to the outlets, officials, and witnesses named in the text. Yevgeniy Vasilievich Bayraktar was convicted and sentenced as described; the case is closed, but details of what happened inside the rental remain as reported rather than established by a full murder trial.
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