TOKYO Japanese police launched a fresh search Saturday of the apartment of Mamoru Takuma, who killed eight children in Japan's worst school massacre, AFP quoted a police spokesman as saying on Saturday.

"It is true we searched his place," the spokesman at Osaka police said without giving details.

Reports said police confiscated books on law, which could serve as evidence that he had been studying what legal responsibility mentally-ill patients would have if they committed crimes.

Takuma, a 37-year-old diagnosed schizophrenic, went on the rampage on June 8 at the prestigious Ikeda elementary school near Osaka, killing eight children and injuring 13 more as well as two teachers.

Lightly injured and barely conscious, Takuma told police after being arrested at the school that he had taken 10 times his normal dose of tranquillizers shortly before the attack.

But he later reversed the remark and said he had not taken a drug and had faked mental illness to avoid criminal charges, according to police.

Television footage showed a police team wearing white gloves carrying several cardboard boxes out of his apartment.

Police initially searched Takuma's apartment on the day after the attack and had found a fake doctor's license with his name on it.

Private television networks said he had voiced no word of regret.

An emotionless Takuma briefly appeared before television cameras Saturday when he was transported from the local Ikeda Police Station to a nearby hospital where he was to have stitches removed from his left hand.

With dyed brown hair and a white striped shirt, he seemed unshaken before a swarm of reporters and camera crew and calmly got in a police car.

Takuma reportedly confessed to the massacre, Japan's worst mass killing since the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack by the Aum Supreme Truth cult, saying that he had targeted an elite school to ensure his execution.

The nation's top-selling ***Yomiuri Shimbun*** said Saturday police had determined Takuma had planned the assault and that it was not an impulse act.

They found he had used his car navigation system to find the shortest route to the elementary school, the daily said. Takuma drove to the school on the day of attack.