By Mark Stone, Asia Correspondent
Efforts to solve a string of murders in Japan have been complicated after the main suspect - a grandmother - was found dead.
Miyoko Sumida, 64, was the suspected mastermind behind a series of deaths in Amagasaki in Japan's Hyogo prefecture.
In an extraordinary and hugely complicated case, it is alleged that Sumida and a number of her family members murdered an unspecified number of other family members and acquaintances and concealed their bodies underground and in concrete.
In an investigation which has gripped Japan, she and eight other people including her husband, adopted sons and daughter-in-law were arrested in November 2011 for multiple murders.
She was found dead in her police cell on Wednesday having apparently taken her own life.
According to investigators in the murder case, Sumida built up a complex network of relatives and other acquaintances, who she controlled with violence.
The arrests came following the discovery of the body of 66-year-old Kazuko Oe in a concrete-filled drum at a warehouse in the city of Amagasaki.
In October this year three more bodies were discovered.
Police found them hidden underneath the home belonging to the 88-year-old grandmother of Sumida's daughter-in-law.
Local media reports have identified them as Takashi Tanimoto, 68, Mariko Nakashima, who was the 29-year-old sister of Sumida's daughter-in-law and Mitsue Ando, 71 years-old and the partner of Sumida's older brother.
A fifth body, identified as Jiro Hashimoto, 53, was found in a concrete-filled drum retrieved from the sea in Japan's Okayama prefecture at the end of October.
The sixth body, understood to be that of 88-year-old Nori Minayoshi, was found in a farm shed in early December. Other relatives are still understood to be missing.
Sumida was being held in a cell at the police headquarters in the city of Kobe. She had been placed on suicide watch after repeatedly telling police that she wanted to die.
Police found her in the cell with a long sleeve shirt around her neck. Attempts to revive her failed.
Given the complexity of the relationships between the alleged murderers, accomplices and victims, police had been struggling to piece the crime together.
Sumida's apparent suicide, before her trial, is likely to make the police and prosecution job even harder.
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