NABARI, Mie -- A man who killed his common-law wife in 1998, then chopped up her body and buried the mutilated parts in a secluded part of Mie Prefecture has been arrested, police said.

Junichi Mori, 59, a company employee from Osaka, was arrested for the murder in around June 1998 of his live-in lover, Harumi Nagata, a 40-year-old bar mama-san.

Mori admits to the allegations.

"I just lost my head and did it," he told the police.

Police said Nagata divorced in 1987 and moved in with Mori in 1993, losing custody of her four children. In June 2006, her by then 30-year-old son filed a missing person's report with the police, seeking to discover his mother's whereabouts.

When investigators could find no reason for Nagata to have disappeared, they began to fear that she may have been caught up in a crime. Police said they found Mori had acted suspiciously in a number of ways, including shutting down Nagata's bar not long after her disappearance. They asked him to submit for questioning on Nov. 11, when he admitted to having killed Nagata, and bringing an end to her mysterious disappearance almost 10 years ago.

Mori told the police he cut up Nagata's body in Iga, Mie Prefecture, then dumped the parts in a forest some 30 kilometers from Nagata's bar in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture. His statements have led police to discover some of the allegedly slain bar mama-san's body parts.

Police said the statute of limitations for prosecuting illegal disposal of a body or mutilation of a corpse had passed so Mori could not be charged with these offenses.

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