Depressing, grisly crimes

Wherever you go, if you trawl the newspapers or keep an eye on television news, I guess you'll come across depressing crimes aplenty. In my early days in Japan, it seemed that a murder wasn't really a murder unless it involved a body being chopped up into small pieces before disposal (usually in a variety of unimaginative ways). I remember thinking that I'd arrived in a very odd country. Every murder seemed to be one of these barabara satsujin jiken (ばらばら殺人事件). People were forever coming across body parts - when out for a stroll in the woods, when fishing, and it was a time when it wasn't too wise to use train station lockers if my memory serves.
These days you hardly ever hear about a barabara satsujin jiken, but other grisly, depressing crimes abound. Right now the murder/arson seems to be an everyday occurrence. They're so frequent that it does make you wonder if the idea pops into some poor soul's head when watching the news. The murder/suicide (usually with young children as murder victims) is depressingly familiar, too. And what is it with this spate of imprisonment of young women (不法監禁) in the homes of what must be very warped blokes? The crimes seem to come in bunches, as if one crime is the catalyst for a series of copycat crimes.
Depressing and grisly crimes, indeed, but with a different twist from the depressing and grisly crimes back in the UK.