On December 31, 2000, when the New Year was approaching and the Japanese people were still immersed in a joyful atmosphere, an extremely bizarre tragedy suddenly occurred, which shocked the whole of Japan.
A family of four was brutally murdered at home, and the police searched for 23 years, but they could not find the whereabouts of the murderer.
The bizarre thing about this case is that the general unsolved cases are because there are no clues left at the scene, and the police don't know where to start, but the murderer of the case not only left fingerprints and DNA at the scene of the crime, but also did not flee as soon as possible after he killed someone, but played with the computer at the scene of the crime and left after 10 hours.
Why is the murderer so arrogant? Why are there so many clues at the scene, but the police cannot find out the identity of the murderer?
Horror of the crime scene
Located in the southwest of Tokyo, Setagaya was once the largest district in Tokyo and a traditionally wealthy district, where the tragedy occurred in a small two-story bungalow.
The owner of the house, Mikio Miyazawa, 44 years old at the time, is a designer, and his wife Yasuko Miyazawa, 41 years old, is a teacher at a training institution, and the couple is raising two children, 6-year-old son Rei Miyazawa and 8-year-old daughter Nina Miyazawa.
Yasuko Miyazawa's mother was the first to discover the bodies of the four men, and she called the police on the morning of December 31 to tell them that her daughter's family had been killed in their home. The police rushed to the scene of the crime.
Yasuko Miyazawa's mother explained the situation to the police, saying that she had called her daughter around 10 a.m., but no one answered, and ten minutes later she made two more calls, but there was still no answer.
She was a little uneasy in her heart, wondering if something had happened to her daughter, so she ran to her daughter's house to check the situation, she came to the gate and found that the door was not locked, so she pushed in, and found her son-in-law Miyazawa Kano at the corner of the stairs covered in injuries, lying in a pool of blood, no longer breathing, although she was very scared, but at the moment she was more worried about her daughter's safety.
So she walked past Miyazawa's body and went upstairs to check on the situation. This look almost didn't scare her out. Her daughter Taizi and her granddaughter Nina were lying at the staircase on the second floor, covered with knife wounds, and their deaths were extremely tragic. She ran back to the first floor and dialed 110.
After listening to Taeko's mother's words, the police felt a little creepy, this was a big case, and the police immediately investigated the scene of the crime.
In addition to Taizi's mother's description, the police later found the body of Rei Miyazawa on the bed in the bedroom on the second floor, with palm prints on his neck, which was strangled alive by the murderer.
As the investigation of the cause of death of the three people gradually improved, Miyazawa Miyazawa's head was chopped, but the real cause of death was a cut in the thigh artery and died of excessive blood loss.
The bodies of Taizi and her daughter Nina Miyazawa were covered with a large amount of clothing, and the murderer stabbed Taizi in the face more than 40 times, leaving scars on her neck and back, and a penetrating wound on her heart, which was the real cause of her death, and her daughter was also cut by the murderer.
According to the examination of the stomach residue of the corpse, the police preliminarily determined that the time of death of the people was between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. on December 30.
In addition, although the causes of death of the four members of this family are different, the common thing is that the methods are extremely cruel, especially the hostess Yasuko Miyazawa, who stabbed a total of 70 knives and dug out a piece of flesh from her face.
What kind of blood feud does the murderer have with this family, and he wants to be so ruthless?
The police are temporarily unable to determine the murderer's motive for committing the crime, and they need more clues. Several police officers searched the scene of the crime, and the more they searched, the more frightened they became. They all began to wonder if the murderer was definitely a psychopath, right?
The killer's bizarre brain circuit
Through the clues left at the scene, the police judged that the murderer did not leave the scene after killing the people, and in the kitchen of the deceased's home, there was a water cup containing a small amount of oolong tea, and the police extracted the saliva from the mouth of the cup, which did not match the DNA of the four victims.
This means that the murderer is still drinking tea leisurely at the scene!
What's even more outrageous is that the police found several paper cups of ice cream at the scene of the crime, and these ice creams were also eaten by the murderer, combined with some dents on the paper cups, the police guessed that the murderer directly squeezed out the ice cream in the cup with his hands and ate it.
The murderer not only "ate and drank" at the murder scene, but the key was that he actually played with the computer.
While searching the workshop on the first floor of the victim's home, the police noticed a desktop computer on the desk. At first, the police wanted to check the information left on the computer to see if the victim had a feud with someone on the Internet, so they brought the computer back to the police station, and asked the technician to retrieve the email and browser records, and found that on the night of December 30, the computer was turned on three times.
The first time was at around 10:20 p.m., when someone browsed the homepage of the studio of the deceased Miyazawa Miyazawa and booked a ticket on a website called "Four Seasons of the Theater Company". On a note, Shiki is one of Japan's most famous drama troupes, performing more than 2,000 plays and musicals every year.
In addition, computer records also show that someone entered a password to log in to the mailbox and sent a work email. It is judged that during this period, Miyazawa Miyazawa is using the computer and is busy with work. It wasn't until around 10:50 that the computer turned off.
The second time the computer was turned on was around 1:20 a.m., and the user did only one thing, and that was that he checked the "Four Seasons" website again and tried to buy tickets, but then for some unknown reason, he gave up buying tickets again. Four hours later, the computer was shut down again.
At this time, the only person who can use the computer is the murderer who stayed at the scene of the crime, and the police really can't think of the reason why the murderer did this, and what is even more ridiculous is that the murderer turned on the computer again at 10:05 in the morning on the 31st, this time he checked the homepage of Miyazawa Miyazawa's studio, but just glanced at it, and five minutes later, the computer was turned off again.
From these switch-on records, the police judged that the murderer stayed at the scene of the crime for up to 10 hours, and what is frightening is that the murderer left the scene of the crime at more than 10 o'clock in the morning on the 31st, and Taizi's mother also came to her daughter's house at 10 o'clock. Fortunately, Taizi's mother was lucky enough to escape.
The police summed up the search process and found many suspicious points: First, the murderer did not use a spoon in the process of eating ice cream, probably to prevent his saliva from being left on it, but why didn't he notice this when he was drinking oolong tea? Second, why did the murderer not leave the scene of the crime after the murder, but stayed for so long? Third, why did the murderer perform those strange operations on the computer, and what did he do when he tried to book tickets and view the homepage of the deceased's studio?
The police were confused, and they could only guess whether the murderer would have some mental illness, so they would do such an incomprehensible operation.
Since the killer stayed at the scene for so long, he must have left other clues. During the third search of the crime scene, the police found that the murderer had left too many clues, but they didn't expect that even if there were so many directional clues, the identity of the murderer would still be a mystery.
The numerous clues left by the murderer
The police found two knives at the scene where the murderer used the murder weapons. One of the knives was a "willow blade knife" brought by the murderer himself, and the length of the knife was 34 centimeters. This kind of knife is generally used to slice sashimi, and the handle of the knife is also engraved with five big characters of "Guan Sun Liuyin Shou". It was found on the floor on the first floor and had been broken.
According to the comparison, the police judged that the murderer had stabbed Miyazawa Miyazawa in the head with it, and there was also a knife that was a kitchen knife in the victim's house, which was discarded by the murderer on the second floor. Neither knife was found to have the killer's fingerprints extracted.
The police tried to trace the identities of all the buyers of the "willow blade knife" and then investigate it, but unfortunately the knife was sold through 46 supermarkets in the Kanto region, and a total of 1,500 were sold.
In addition, the police also found a bloodstained band-aid and a bloody towel in the kitchen on the second floor. After testing, the blood stains did not belong to the four victims. The police determined that the killer had been injured during the attack, and they tested the DNA in the murderer's blood and came to a conclusion: the murderer's blood type was A, and he was either Japanese, Chinese or Korean, and three generations ago there was mixed southern European ancestry.
And this murderer left many footprints at the scene of the crime, under the window of the bathroom outside the house, there was one, and there were also in the kitchen, through the analysis of the footprints, the police judged that the murderer was wearing size 45 shoes, and they also found out that the shoes worn by the murderer were a British brand, named Schlesinger.
A total of about 4,500 pairs of these shoes were produced in the Korean branch, and there is also a branch factory in Jilin, China, which further confirms the identity of the murderer as a Chinese or Korean. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the murderer was Japanese, and he found a merchant to purchase on behalf of him.
In addition to the shoes, the police found seven belongings left by the killer in various corners of the scene, which is very incredible.
The first was a black L-size jacket, which was produced by the well-known clothing brand Uniqlo during the police investigation, and sold more than 80,000 pieces before the case, and about 10,000 pieces were sold in Japan alone. With such a huge sales volume, it is difficult for the police to track down the identity of the murderer.
There was also a sweatshirt, also in size L, which did not belong to the four victims. It was neatly stacked on top of each other by the killer on the floor of the second-floor bedroom.
In the same place as the sweatshirt, there is also a woolen bucket hat, also produced by Uniqlo, a total of nearly 3,500 pieces were sold in the two years before the incident, and next to the bucket hat, there is a dark green scarf, and the police did not find out what brand this scarf is.
In addition, there is a pair of black gloves and a green waist bag, which have also been sold quite a bit, and it is worth mentioning that the waist bag has been discontinued at the time of the crime.
Finally, there were two handkerchiefs produced by Muji, and the murderer made a hole in one of them, and the police found that the hole was just enough to be pierced by the blade of the "willow blade knife" brought by the murderer. It is likely that the murderer wrapped a handkerchief around the handle of the willow blade knife, which was supposed to prevent the handle from slipping on blood stains during the attack.
Another handkerchief was folded into a triangular shape by the murderer, and the murderer was supposed to use it to cover his face.
The sales of these two handkerchiefs are also staggering, with 60,000 handkerchiefs sold in Japan alone.
It can be seen that although the murderer left so many belongings at the scene of the crime, these are very common and easy to buy products, and the police want to find the identity of the murderer through these items, which is tantamount to looking for a needle in a haystack. If the murderer deliberately did this to provoke the Japanese police, it shows that he is bold and arrogant but extremely thoughtful.
But the belongings collected by the police did not serve no purpose. Based on the size of the clothes and the length of the waist bag, the police deduced that the murderer was about 170 centimeters tall. It's a height that's not too tall and not too short, and it's very common in the crowd.
The police later tried to use the killer's DNA to find the killer's identity, but the police did not find a DNA match for the killer in the crime database, which proved that the murderer did not have a criminal record before.
But if this is the first time he has committed murder, it is a little too incredible, because his methods are too ruthless, and staying at the crime scene for ten hours also shows that he has a strong psychological endurance. From these two points, he doesn't look like a novice at all.
After the details of the case were exposed, the Japanese people were panicked. for fear that "my own family" will also be destroyed. The police later offered a reward of 20 million yen, or about $130,000, to publicly solicit clues from the public.
This is also the highest reward in the history of Japan, but unfortunately, the murderer in this case has not been found, and the police have not even found out what his motive is.
guess
Let's talk about the murderer's motive first. At present, the most speculated is that the murderer killed for money. The reason was that at that time, the Japanese police found that the murderer had rummaged through the boxes and cabinets in the victim's house, took out all the valuables such as passbooks and jewelry stored in the cabinets and drawers, and placed them neatly on the sofa.
But the strange thing is that the murderer did not take these valuables away, but chose to take 200,000 yen in cash. The money was the tuition that Taiko received in the training class, and the murderer wrote down the birthday of the Miyazawa couple in a notebook, and some people guessed that the murderer did this to try to deduce the password of Miyazawa's bank card.
It is said that Miyazawa has hundreds of millions of yen in his bank card, and not all of this money is earned by Miyazawa's part-time job. It turned out that the government had planned to build a park in the area where Miyazawa was located not long ago, so it negotiated with Miyazawa and others to let them move to other places, and the hundreds of millions of funds were compensation for the Miyazawa family.
So the murderer may have known that Miyazawa had such a large sum of money, so he came up with the idea of murder and robbery.
But there are obviously many flaws in this conjecture. First of all, the murderer can force Miyazawa to tell the password of the bank card with a knife, and then kill people, there is no need to kill people first and then guess the bank card password by himself, this logic does not make sense.
Secondly, the murderer prepared a handkerchief before he came, which was used to wrap the handle of the knife to prevent slipping, which proves that he went to kill people in the first place, and robbing money was not the murderer's first priority.
There are also murderers who did not take away all the valuable things at the scene, which means that the murderer is not completely just for money, he may have taken the cash just conveniently, or he wanted to interfere with the police's sight, so that the police mistakenly thought that he was killing for money.
In the end, the murderer spent a lot of time eating, drinking, and playing at the scene of the crime, instead of using this time to search for something more valuable, which is enough to prove that in the eyes of the murderer, money is not so important.
Now let's talk about my guesses. Judging from the circumstances of the murder of the four deceased, the murderer was the most ruthless against the hostess Yasuko Miyazawa, which means that he is likely to have a deep grudge against Taiko, and as for killing the other three, it is just a matter of doing it. There is also a place to prove that the murderer and Taizi have a certain connection.
That is when the police first investigated, they found that Taizi and her daughter were covered with thick clothes, and in many cases of killing acquaintances, the murderer would cover the face of the deceased with something to prevent himself from feeling guilty when he saw the face of the deceased. The murderer in this case may be no exception.
So what is the connection between the murderer and Taizi? Remember that Taizi's work is a teacher at a training institution, judging from the clothes left by the murderer at the scene of the crime, the murderer's age should not be very large, so is it possible that the murderer was a student of Taizi?
If it's really Taizi's student, then it makes sense that he only stole the tuition fees in the end. Because he must have also paid the tuition, which was the only thing at the scene of the crime that could prove that he had a connection with Taizi. He was afraid that the police would find something out of the money, or that there was something deeper about it, that drove him to take it all away.
In addition, it is said that the training institution where Taizi is located is downstairs from Taizi's mother's house, and Taizi's mother's home is not far from Taizi, so it is very likely that the murderer has seen Taizi's mother and knows that Taizi's mother often comes to Taizi's house. Therefore, the reason why the murderer stayed at the scene of the crime until the morning was to wait for the arrival of Taeko's mother and kill her as well?
Later, because Taizi's mother came too late, the murderer was afraid that something would happen if he stayed any longer, so he had to leave the scene of the crime in a hurry. And the reason why the murderer made some strange moves during the time he stayed at the scene of the crime is related to the possibility of my next guess.
I guess the murderer is likely to like Taizi, and may have expressed a good impression of Taizi, but obviously, Taizi, who has already formed a family, will not like him anyway, not to mention that the murderer is still Taizi's student, and it is simply counterintuitive to be together. So Taizi decisively rejected the murderer's confession.
It is not difficult to see from the fact that the police found a footprint under the bathroom window outside the house, and it is likely that the murderer climbed to the second floor through the outside of the house, and then sneaked into the room through the bathroom window, next to the bathroom is the bedroom.
So the murderer first strangled Miyazawa Rei in his sleep, and after going out, he met Taizi and her daughter Nina at the staircase on the second floor, took out a knife and hacked them to death, the murderer stabbed Taizi in the face dozens of times in order to vent his anger, and after he calmed down, he saw Taizi's face, and he was a little unbearable, so he went to find a few clothes to cover Taizi.
At this time, the godman who worked on the first floor heard the movement from upstairs, and planned to go upstairs to check the situation, but happened to bump into the murderer who came to the first floor after the murder, and the murderer took out the willow blade knife he had prepared long ago without saying a word, and stabbed the godman in the head, and the godman screamed and fell to the ground, and the murderer went up to mend the knife and stabbed the godman in the thigh, and the godman then died of excessive blood loss.
After the perverted murderer did all this, the passion for killing faded, and he came back to his senses, he was at a loss and a little thirsty because of the vigorous activity just now, so he went into the kitchen and drank a cup of oolong tea.
But the tea didn't seem to quench his thirst enough, so he grabbed a few more ice creams from the fridge and tried to numb his nerves with the cold. But under the stimulation of the cold, he came up with a perverted idea, he wanted to play a role-play and put himself in the perspective of Taizi's husband, so as to satisfy his terrible desire to love.
So, he turned on the computer of Taizi's husband and godman, and found through the browser record that the godman had booked a ticket for the "Four Seasons of the Troupe", guessing that Taizi was likely to go to the musical with the godman, so he also followed the example of the godman and wanted to book a ticket, and the murderer's inner thoughts at that time may be: "I can also take you to the musical like him, why don't you refuse to accept my love for you?"
At this time, the murderer has completely gotten into a dead end, and killing Taizi can't make him let go of this deformed love, but makes him yearn for Taizi's love more and more. So his role-playing escalated again, he opened the homepage of the godman studio, and imagined that he worked like a godman, and he himself was the godman himself.
I live in this place with Taeko and my son and daughter every day, and I live a happy life.
The murderer folded his clothes at the scene of the crime and left his belongings, which was also imitating the daily life of the male owner, and only when he regarded this place as his home, he would put these things here without scruples.
To sum up, the identity of the murderer is most likely to be a student of Taizi, who was single at the time of the crime, and has an almost obsessive love for Taizi, and in the eyes of outsiders, he may be a very normal person, and he has not done anything particularly out of the ordinary before killing Taizi's family.
It is also because he is a student that it is difficult for the police to look at him with suspicion.
The above is Fei Fei's conjecture based on some clues, I don't know how the audience in front of the screen thinks? Here I want to explain the follow-up of this case, Japan's Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that the statute of limitations for the crime of homicide is 15 years, and just as the statute of limitations for this case is about to end, many police officers in charge of this case and people who are concerned about this case have voiced their voices demanding an extension of the litigation period.
Later, Japan amended its Criminal Procedure Law, and there is no longer a statute of limitations for such vicious cases, which means that as long as there are still people willing to investigate the case and can catch the murderer, the murderer will be punished as he deserves.
It's just that I don't know when this unsolved case will come to light one day.