Elementary school teacher arrested for sneaking into home of former student to steal uniform

It sounds like the plot of a modern-day Edogawa Rampo story.

Police have arrested a 39-year-old elementary school teacher for trespassing.

Masashi Mizuno teaches at a school in Edogawa, Tokyo, and snuck into the home of a high school student who used to be in his class at another school.

According to police, Mizuno secretly made a copy of her home key five years prior in anticipation of sneaking into her home in the future.

Mizuno apparently had a fetish for female school uniforms. “I wanted a school uniform and I remembered the student, and that she would be in high school by now,” he had said.

He succeeded in entering the apartment in late May, but was found by the student and her father, and then escaped.

The father understandably called the police, reported the Asahi Shimbun last week. Mizuno was arrested in early July.

He had been the student’s form teacher six years ago and at one point took charge of her key during a school event. It was then that he made a copy, he has confessed.

She was a fifth grader at the time. Now that’s what we call playing the long game.