Foul Play Ruled Out in Death of Japanese Women

Three months after two Japanese-born women were found dead in a Burbank home, police have officially declared the case a murder-suicide and ruled out the possibility of foul play.

A Los Angeles county coroner’s report concluded that Yoshiko Mizoguchi, 42, suffocated her mother, Sumako Mizoguchi, 65, and then committed suicide by hanging herself in a house on Brighton Street, where the women had been staying with a friend, said Burbank Police Lt. Larry Koch.

Police said they do not know exactly why Yoshiko Mizoguchi killed her mother and herself, but said financial difficulties may have been a factor. The women immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, and they owned and lived in a home with two detached rental units on Elk Avenue in Glendale. But recently they had had trouble renting out vacant units.

“Their way of making a living was that apartment, and that investment had not gone the way they anticipated it would, which is why they had moved in with their friend in Burbank,” Koch said. “They were losing money, and if it had gone bad enough they could have lost their home.”

Police believe Yoshiko Mizoguchi strangled her mother with a bedsheet or pillow, then tied an electrical cord to the rafters of a Japanese-style room in the rear of the home and hanged herself.