Slain Man From Japan Left Debts of $700,000 : Crime: The Camarillo resident who was stabbed to death in his home Feb. 23 owed the money on Antelope Valley property, police said.

A Japanese businessman who was stabbed to death in his Camarillo home left behind $700,000 in debts from an unsuccessful real estate venture, Ventura County investigators said Tuesday.

Ventura County sheriff’s detectives have been scrutinizing Yasuo Kato’s business records for clues to his death, particularly papers connected to his real estate firm, Y & M Corp., said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Vince France.

But France said even with investigators looking into Kato’s business dealings here and in Japan, they still have found no motive in Kato’s killing.

“We don’t have a strong motive that jumped out at us and said, ‘Here’s the obvious reason,’ ” said France. “Murder takes a pretty strong motive. It’s not just something one takes lightly.”

Kato, 49, was found dead Feb. 23 in the garage of his home on Arabian Place, stabbed twice in the heart with a serrated, rubber-handled hunting knife that lay nearby.

Investigators have learned that soon after arriving in California in 1988, Kato took out $700,000 in loans through Y & M to buy three parcels of land in the Antelope Valley, France said.

But Kato was unable to sell the land for housing lots when the bottom dropped out of the real estate market there in 1990, investigators said.

“Those loans are coming due, and there’s a problem because they have not paid them off,” France said. “I would assume he and the business were one and the same, and based on that I think he was not financially solvent.”

Y & M is still dealing in real estate after Kato’s death, said his son, Toshiyuki Kato. He said the firm is in the middle of negotiating a land deal in Southern California, but declined to discuss it.

Toshiyuki Kato said Tuesday that one week before he died, his father replaced him with his younger brother, Kiyoshi Kato, as secretary of the real estate firm.

Yasuo Kato made the switch because his elder son was preparing to leave the company, Toshiyuki said.

Toshiyuki said that he appointed himself assistant coordinator of Y & M to help keep the company in operation after his father’s death.

Investigators said they do not suspect either son in Yasuo Kato’s death.

They have questioned Kato’s sons and have found no evidence of a will or an insurance policy that would have benefited any of his relatives in the event of his death, France said.

While investigators have not gleaned a motive for Kato’s killing from his business troubles, they have begun to back away from theories that Kato’s slaying was either an anti-Asian hate crime or a killing by Japanese gangsters, Sheriff’s Lt. Joe Harwell said.

“We haven’t really ruled out any scenarios, but we found nothing to reinforce some, such as the hate crime,” Harwell said.

Yasuo and Toshiyuki Kato had complained on Feb. 9 that two men described as motorcyclists tried to extort money from the elder man while blaming Japan for the U.S. recession. They said that one of the men threatened Kato’s life after Kato pushed the man out of the house and locked the door.

France said police have not been able to identify a suspect in that incident.

He also said there is no evidence that Kato was killed by the yakuza , as Japanese organized crime syndicates are known.

Efforts to trace the eight-inch hunting knife used to kill Kato have proved fruitless, France said.