Piles of clutter surrounded bodies
IDAHO FALLS – When authorities entered a Rexburg home where a man is accused of keeping the decomposed bodies of his wife and daughter for years, they found what investigators described in court affidavits as “almost an end-of-the-world atmosphere.”
Empty cereal boxes were stacked clear to the ceiling. Trash was piled everywhere, from spoiled food and used toilet paper to bags of candy labeled with the day it was eaten.
Amid the clutter, sheriff’s deputies found thousands of pages of rambling journal entries, documenting everything from epic divine revelations to the time the house’s furnace turned off and on.
Authorities say those pages reveal a belief that one of the women was destined to marry a religious prophet, which prosecutors believe was the reason Kenichi David Kaneko kept the rotting bodies of his wife and daughter in his home, surrounded by hundreds of air fresheners, fans, scented candles and air purifiers.
Kaneko, 65, was charged earlier this week in 7th District Court with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of abandonment of a vulnerable adult, and one count of desertion and nonsupport of a spouse. He posted $75,000 bond.
Investigators determined that his daughter, Laura Marie Kaneko, 33, died in May or June 2001, and that his wife, Lorraine Kiyoe Kaneko, 58, died Feb. 9, 2003. Their bodies were found side by side on a bed on June 19, 2004, when authorities did a welfare check at the request of other family members.
Deputies asked Kaneko why he hadn’t called authorities when his wife and daughter died.
“He felt that it was all still part of the plan,” Madison County sheriff’s Capt. Travis M. Williams testified at a court hearing earlier this week on a request for an arrest warrant for Kaneko, the Post Register reported.
A doctor said autopsies showed no signs of external trauma, but that the deaths were possibly due to illness or starvation, or a combination of both.
Police found the journals in the home. In 1990, Laura Kaneko made entries that she had received a revelation from God that she was supposed to marry a young man who was then away on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to affidavits filed in court this week by prosecutors asking for the arrest warrant.
Family members said Kenichi Kaneko in 1993 began shielding his wife and daughter from outside contact. Williams said deputies were asked as early as 1997 to make welfare checks on the family. The women were found in the house and determined to be physically OK, “although their mental status was not evaluated at the time,” Williams said. “Both Laura and Lorraine advised this is how they learned to live and asked to be left alone,” Williams said.
Sheriff Roy Klingler said that on a welfare check in 2001 he repeatedly knocked on the door, then yelled that he would return with a search warrant. The women then came to the door and again said they wanted to be left alone.
In 2004, deputies went to the house to check on the women and after getting no answer, searched the home and found their bodies.