Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: The Setagaya Family Murders

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

A Tokyo family is slaughtered in their home, leaving behind a brutal and baffling mystery. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-setagaya-family-murders/ 

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is honestly one of those cases that, on paper, it almost doesn't seem real because it feeds right into our nightmares about family and safety and security and what happens when those things are violated in the worst way imaginable. This is the story of the Setagaya family murders. On December 31st, 2000, in Setagaya Ward in western Tokyo, a woman named Haruko decides to call her family. Haruko is an older lady and she lives right next door to her daughter, Yasuko Miyazawa.

And Yasuko's family includes her husband, Mikio, their daughter Nina, who's eight, and their son, Ray, who's six. So as you might imagine, for a family that all lives in close proximity like this, they're all pretty tight-knit. So Haruko calls over to their house, but there's no answer. At first, she doesn't think that this is weird. I mean, it's possible that nobody's near the phone, whatever. But it's also New Year's Eve and a Sunday, so they should be at home and already awake. Like at the very least, the kids are going to want breakfast soon. So maybe that's what's keeping them from answering.

As she keeps calling and calling without an answer, eventually she starts to wonder what the heck is going on. Between 10 and 1030 that morning, she decides, you know what, I'm just going to go over and see them in person. Again, she's like right next door. But when she knocks on the door, there's nothing. No answer, no commotion from inside, just silence. Growing more concerned, she finally uses her spare key just to let herself in. But the second that the door swings open, her life changes forever. The very first thing she sees when she walks inside is her son-in-law, covered in blood, lying at the foot of the stairs.

He isn't moving at all, and there are stab wounds and cuts all over his body. Oh my God. Now, I don't know what I would even do in that situation. Freeze, break down, run in fear, afraid that whoever did that to him was still in the house, but not Haruko. Though she has to be terrified and sick to her stomach with grief, she is overcome with a protective instinct that forces her up the stairs, calling out for her daughter and grandchildren, hoping beyond hope that they're okay. But as soon as she reaches the top of the stairs, all of that hope rushes out of her body, because there, lying in the hallway in the space between the bathtub and the toilet rooms,

she finds her daughter and granddaughter. They're tangled together as if they died trying to protect one another, but couldn't. They're covered in vicious cuts from above their chests up to their faces, and it's almost too horrible for her to even comprehend what she's seeing. In her panicked state, she tries to revive them, but they're cold and there's too much blood, too many stab wounds. She finds her little grandson, Rei, the youngest member of the family last. He is still in bed, and though he isn't bloody, he too is dead and cold to the touch. Haruko runs to call police and officers rush to the scene.

Right from the very start, they're appalled by the sheer brutality of these crimes. But in the middle of all of this horror, they can't help but notice that the scene is a little odd. For one, the place is a mess. Like the computer's mouse has been knocked off the desk, there are papers scattered everywhere, drawers have been pulled out of the desks and dressers, and they're stacked on top of each other. There is even one of the drawers upstairs emptied out and dumped in front of the toilet near where the women are found. Like it appears that the killer, or someone, took this drawer, brought it into the bathroom, tossed everything that was in the drawer into the bathtub, which by the way is also filled with water,

then put the empty drawer down in front of the toilet. But what was in the drawer that they dumped out? As far as I can tell, just papers, some of which are bloody actually. Now I don't know if the documents in there held any kind of significance or what because there was nothing I could find about exactly what types of papers they were or why they might have been destroyed, but they aren't the only thing police find in the tub. There's also a bloody white towel and at least part of a bloody sanitary pad. And from the looks of it, police think that both items were used to try and clean up blood from the crime.

Now there's no way to know this for sure right there at the scene, but police have this inkling right away that the blood that was cleaned up, the blood on the towel and on that pad, might actually belong to the killer. Why did they think that? Well I mean for one, there doesn't seem to be any visible attempts to clean up the blood from the victims. Like from the floors, from the walls, nothing like that. And this was a bloody crime scene. So they're thinking like maybe he's cleaning up blood off of him. And secondly, I mean we know it's not that uncommon for perpetrators to injure themselves in a stabbing death

when there are multiple puncture wounds because I mean we know as like the knife gets bloody. Their hand can slip and cut themselves on the blade. Right, right, right. And I think the killer might have even known that because there are a pair of handkerchiefs next to the toilet as well. And one is folded in a triangle with its ends pinched and wrinkled like it had been tied in a knot at some point. Like I think the handkerchief might have been used to cover this guy's face like a mask. But the other one has a cut in the middle of it. So police are thinking that the killer might have put the knife through the fabric to try and use it as a guard of some kind.

And speaking of knives, the killer left the murder weapon or weapons right there at the scene. According to the Japan Times, police found not one but two bloody kitchen knives upstairs where Yasuko and the kids died. Are these knives that the killer brought with them or did they actually come from the family's house? Because I feel like whether or not the killer came prepared with a weapon could say a lot about the motive and the preparedness. Yeah, little Nancy Drew over here. So police's best guess there on the scene is actually both. Like one of the knives is broken and it doesn't match any others that they find in the house. But the other one seems to be from the family's own knife set because it's the same like style and same specific brand name and everything.

So what they piece together and what's been theorized over and over again by people looking at this case is that the killer likely broke the knife that he had brought during one of the attacks. So then he went to the kitchen to get a new knife to finish the job. Now it's hard to say in what order that happened right away, but they're hoping in autopsy will help fill in the story. So the family's bodies are sent off while the investigators do what they can to keep searching for anything to help them piece together. Who could have done this and why? As they keep sifting through the scene and talking to Haruko, what they piece together just makes this case more confusing instead of providing answers. One of the first things they find is a torn ice cream things. Okay.

I ran the Waddon magazine article through Google Translate and it says, quote, torn ice cream. So I'm guessing that it means like a wrapper or something. I'm not 100% sure. But there is enough to suggest that someone ate like four or five of these like ice cream things there at the scene. And they also find extra clothes around the house that based on the location sizing placement, even spatters of blood, police assume belong to the killer and not the family. Like they find this olive green bag, the kind you would wear. To me, it looks like a fanny pack and it has some sand in it. They find gloves, a gray bucket hat, a black jacket, a plaid scarf that's neatly folded, what I would call a baseball shirt, but the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's website calls a sweatshirt. Honestly, it's easier.

Actually, if I just show you, so here, let me send this to you. Yeah, I called that a baseball shirt with just like long sleeves, right? Yeah, for sure. Actually, you can't even tell they're kind of cut off like right around the three quarter. So is this person like fully undressing there? I guess I don't get it. Girl, no one gets it. I mean, they also find empty wallets that belong to the actual family.

So it's not like the perpetrators and police think that there's cash missing. But all of the family's bank cards are still there like spread out on their living room couch. Almost like the killer was sorting through them looking for something specific. But they didn't actually take any. No. Now, another interesting fact that they latch on to is the front door. They learned from Haruko that she had to use her spare key to unlock the door. And initially, when they came onto the scene, they didn't notice any broken windows or damaged doors or anything.

So they were thinking that there was no forced entry. But when they take a really close look, Wandawn Magazine reported that the screen from the bathroom window is off and a flower pot that the family kept on the windowsill is on the ground and broken. So it's possible whoever was here came and went through that window. Plus, outside, they find a bunch of footprints, though I'm not clear exactly like how close to the window they were, if at all. Okay. Is it just me or does it kind of feel like this whole crime centers around that like bathroom, bathtub, toilet area? No. It's weird, right? Yeah. I mean, the drawer that was dumped into a full bathtub, two of the bodies were found near the bathrooms.

And now this may be where the killer came in. Well, wait for it because there is actually something else I haven't told you yet. Mostly because I feel like when I heard it, I couldn't really think about anything else. And I wanted you to like really grasp everything else at the scene. But the thing that they found in the bathroom, I don't think I have ever heard of this being left at a crime scene before. There in the toilet, where you already pointed out so much of this crime scene seems to revolve around, is unflushed poop from the killer. I'm sorry. What? Yes.

And they're sure it wasn't from someone in the family. Like there's two smallish kids there. And I've got to be honest, kids are not the best at remembering to flush. I mean, I might have crossed their minds potentially like the very first time that they were on the scene. But eventually, I mean, they collected it as evidence and had it compared to the family's stomach contents, which proved that it didn't come from anyone in the family. So it had to have been whoever killed them. I just can't get past this.

Like this, this killer was like, okay, murdered all these people. But before I leave, I'm just going to take a poop first. Well, all of this, right? Like, because it's not just like taking a dump. Like you're also undressing. You brought all these extra clothes. You're like looking through their cars. And the ice cream.

Yeah, you're walking around the house eating four or five things of ice cream. Like you're spending so much time there. Yeah. I mean, the killer had to have been there for a while. Yeah. To do all of these things. They were taking their time. So legit, this scene is like a treasure trove of evidence.

And all of it is collected and sent off for analysis. While they wait for the results of that and the autopsies, police try to develop a timeline through witnesses and digital forensics to narrow down when the family was last seen alive in hopes that they can but really pinpoint a time of the attack. According to information from the Tokyo police, the family went out shopping at a local mall in the morning on the day that they died and then spent their evening eating dinner, watching TV together.

From the verified source material I have, there wasn't anyone who was in contact with them after that and no eyewitnesses. But neighbors reported hearing a loud noise coming from the home at around 1130 on the night the family was killed. And police are thinking that that's likely close to the time of death. So the loud noises were the attack then? Yeah, sort of. So there are a couple of theories about what could have caused this loud noise. And both are the results of the attack, but they're both a little bit different.

So it's important to understand the way that the family's house is laid out to kind of wrap your head around the two theories. So you have the ground floor. So like when you first walk in, this is like the living area. There's like a kitchen, a little study. Then you go up this set of stairs to the second floor and these are the living quarters. So you've got some bedrooms, that bathroom. But there's also this like third floor loft type space

that you can get to with a ladder that folds down. So think like a pull ladder that we see in a lot of attics here in the US. Oh, okay, yeah. So both theories seem to start the same way. That at the start of the attack, this man snuck in through the bathroom window on the second floor and only Ray was on the second floor at this time sleeping in his room. So everyone kind of thinks mom and daughter were in that loft attic area relaxing, maybe watching TV and dad was likely downstairs.

So the killer goes to Ray's room first. And that's why he probably died differently than the rest of the family. The killer didn't want the family to know that he was there. So he strangled the young boy so that hopefully he wouldn't make a lot of noise. It would stay quiet. But at some point, someone realized what was going on. Now this is where the two theories separate. It could have been mom first and she tried to like pull the stairs up to the attic

so that this guy couldn't get them. And maybe that's like the bang that people heard or dad came up to see what was going on. And when he encountered the attacker, the attacker pushed him down that first flight of stairs. So it could be either honestly or both that caused the noise that people heard at 1130. But didn't you say that the women were found on the second floor like near the bathroom? I guess what makes them even think that they were on this third floor loft area? Yeah, you're right. So they are eventually found on the second floor.

But there was at least some amount of blood, however big or small, that told police that they were in the attic at some point. So they were either up there and that's where they were attacked or they fled up there to try and get away from their killer and hide. And that actually kind of brings up maybe a third option that they could have even maybe fallen from the loft. I mean, I really just don't know. But everyone seems to agree that the attack happened around this time.

But what's really interesting and adds credence to the theory that the attackers stuck around for a long time after he murdered the family is that according to the family's computer log, it shows that someone was online after the family's thought to have been murdered. Someone who they believe has to be their killer accesses the Internet in the house first at 1.18 a.m. and then according to the Daily Yomurri, they were on again the next morning at around 10 a.m.

Wait, isn't that right before Grandma came over to check things out? Yeah, yeah. So what were they doing on the computer? Well, the source material kind of conflicts and it's messy. But it's likely something like the websites that were visited were likely already bookmarked. And like, I know one of the visits was to a Tokyo Theater Group website. And like, I can't make sense of what they were looking at without more information.

But in my mind, like, what the person was looking at might not be as relevant as when they were looking. That Waddon article says, browsing stopped suddenly at 10 a.m., which you noted was just before Grandma came in. And there's quote, evidence it was forcibly terminated. Like, the Japanese language Wikipedia page mentions

that the power cord was disconnected from the computer and I saw on some blog posts that the cord might have even been gone altogether but I couldn't confirm that anywhere else. Now, police have a really simple theory about that 10 a.m. web browsing though. They think that maybe when Grandma came in, like, you know, obviously she is freaking out at this point, it's possible maybe she just like knocked over the mouse

when she came in that morning and caused like a random bookmark page to actually pop up. But that 118 browsing stuff has to be the killer. Okay, but if the cord was disconnected from the power source or even possibly completely gone from the scene, then Grandma knocking over the mouse wouldn't have made any difference. It's still not going to turn on a computer without a power cord.

Yeah, this doesn't make sense to me because, okay, I can buy her hitting the mouse. I don't know that I buy her hitting the mouse and tripping over the cord and, you know, maybe the cord... And somehow the cord disappears or at least completely disconnects. Like too much. I agree.

And I have a feeling that this is probably one of those things that is just getting literally lost in translation. I'm sure there's a better answer out there, but just none that I can find in English that I can actually read. By January 3rd, three days into their investigation, police have the autopsy results back and the report paints a miserable picture

of what happened to the Miyazawa's on the night that they died. According to that Waddon piece I mentioned earlier, six-year-old Ray's cause of death is determined to be suffocation and he has marks on his neck indicating that the killer strangled him by hand. And because there's no blood on him or even around him, police are pretty sure that he was killed first. I guess I don't follow.

I know that's been their kind of theory, but how do they know that for sure? Well, only because like everyone else was stabbed so viciously. I mean, this was a scene that was covered in so much blood. So they're thinking that there's no way the killer didn't have blood on him. So if he would have killed Ray later, he would have likely transferred blood to Ray or in his room or somewhere.

And there's just like no sign of that. Okay, gotcha. Everyone but Ray died from blood loss due to multiple puncture wounds. I wasn't able to find an exact count of how many times they were each stabbed, but the Japan Times reported that dad, Mikio, was stabbed at least ten times and that the tip of one knife was found broken off in the back of his head. So most likely he was attacked before his wife and daughter,

especially if the knife broke off inside of him. Right, and I think Nina and her mom knew the attack was coming because the autopsy report also suggests that eight-year-old Nina tried to escape her attacker. But in the end, she was beaten so badly that some of her teeth were broken and her brain started to bleed inside her skull. Oh my God. I mean, all of that for an eight-year-old child.

What was notable, though, and something that was specifically called out in the report is that some of Nina and Yasuko's wounds were actually inflicted post-mortem, meaning that the attacks continued after they were already dead. They only found evidence of that on Nina and Yasuko, so only the women in the family were mutilated after they were dead. And that could just be that the killer got them last and they fought back, like this whole process took longer than it did with brother and dad. I mean, but it also could be that whoever the killer is had an issue with women.

I honestly don't know. So did the autopsy help narrow down the time of death at all? No. Based on their stomach contents, police think that they ate a few hours before they died, but the sources I found don't really get any more detailed than that. So best estimate we have is still that 1130 time frame and nothing about the autopsy conflicts with that or, you know, narrows it down any further. At some point, law enforcement gets lab results back on blood evidence from the crime scene.

I mentioned that police had an inkling early on that at least some of the blood was from their killer, who they think got injured during the attacks and tried to, like, fix himself up upstairs in that bathroom. And it turns out they're right. His blood, and they know it's for sure a man now, too, is all over that house, including on both knives. And they know it's his blood because of the blood type. So it's type A, which doesn't match the blood types of the family. Dad and son were both B and mom and daughter were type O. And get this, they even find the killer's fingerprints all over the house, including on the ice cream wrappers.

And I don't know about you, but this feels like a slam dunk. We have blood evidence check, fingerprints check. But of course, DNA and fingerprints are only helpful in an investigation if they match someone on file. And in this case, neither the prints nor the DNA match anyone in their system. This comes up all the time in the U.S. And that's partly because we only really require people to provide DNA samples if they are being charged and or convicted with a felony offense. But get this, I read in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that in Japan,

they can compel DNA samples from people suspected of committing lesser offenses, too. Which means Japan's National Police Agency has a pretty robust DNA database, almost 1.3 million DNA profiles in their system as of August 2020. So with no hits, that tells police one of two things, either this person has never been caught for any crimes that they've ever committed before, or this brutal attack is their very first act of violence. So when you were talking about how the attacks continued past the time that the victims actually died, like they were post-mortem wounds, my mind immediately went to Overkill, which is usually because there's some sort of personal connection between the killer and the victim, like the emotions are really high.

But you can tell me, I'm way off on this. But what if what we originally thought of as Overkill is actually just overcompensation? Like the killer didn't know what he was doing and really wanted to make sure that they were dead and didn't know when or how to stop to confirm that, you know? Yeah, no, I mean, that's totally possible. And I mean, if they are that inexperienced, like it also explains why so much evidence was left behind. Yeah, but so I guess this is the thing. If that's the case, you'd think someone who'd never done this before and, you know, you got to think about the scene.

There's blood everywhere. If this is your first crime, you're stabbing them 10 plus times. You don't know who's dead or what. You think this person would be in just like a rush to get the heck out of dodge. But that's not what happened here. Again, I go back to this person hanging around, eating ice cream, pooping, surfing the web. Like, I don't know about you, pooping under pressure, not ideal. I think this person was relaxed, like confident they wouldn't get caught. But for all of the confidence, all the bravado this killer is showing off, police have their own.

Because even without a fingerprint match or a DNA hit, the killer still left so much behind. Enough for police to start to hone in on who he might be and why he committed such a heinous crime. As police start getting more and more of their test results back, a clearer picture of their killer starts to emerge. From his blood results, police already know they're looking for a man. And based on the style of the clothes left behind, they're thinking that he was on the younger side. We've got baggy pants, we've got this bucket hat, the belt bag, all of it. In particular, police are looking at this scarf. It's this mass-produced plaid scarf with signs of wear and tear, similar to a style worn at the time by students from junior high up to like the college age.

Okay, but what about the shirt? Like, just going from my own experience, my three-year-old has a shirt like that. My 13-year-old has a shirt like that. Your husband has a shirt like that? I've never seen a shirt like that. My 33-year-old husband has a shirt like that. Everybody has, like, it's a universal style. It doesn't really hone down a specific age group. No, I agree. I mean, the shirt doesn't give away the suspect's age. I mean, that style is a dime a dozen for sure. But they are actually able to trace the manufacturer of that shirt and find out where exactly it was being sold at the time. Once again, though, like, different sources say different things. So there's this piece from the Japan Times that reported soon after the murders that between 200 and 300 of these shirts were sold in Setagaya and the surrounding area.

And they said that this happened between, like, September of 2000 and the end of December when the murders took place. But on the flip side, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's website, the shirt was available at only four shops in Tokyo and that only 10 of them were ever sold. Like, 10 shirts total, period. Stop. Wait, so we're going from possibly as many as, like, 300 of these shirts sold? Yeah. To 10. That's a short list. That's a huge difference.

Yeah, so, again, I don't know which one's right. Now, the bag the killer left behind might be a little more telling, though. Jake Sturmer and Yumi Asada reported for ABC News Australia that the bag is one of those... I said fanny pack before, but it's like this convertible bag thing. Like, it could be worn as either a cross body bag or as a fanny pack. And we've got actually pictures up on our website. You can see exactly what I'm talking about. But the bag has got these adjustable straps and the straps were pulled pretty tight, suggesting that whoever this person is that was wearing it has a really slim build with an under 30 inch waist.

Which would definitely explain how he could fit through a tiny bathroom window. Now, it turns out almost 3000 of those bags were made over a period of four years. So trying to even think about tracking purchases is a dead end. But when they get the results of what's inside the bag... That's just sand, right? Not just sand. It's sand from the United States. What?

According to an article in the Nikkei newspaper, it came from the Southwestern US specifically. So we're talking like Nevada, California, Arizona, that area. Now, please also find this powdered fluorescent dye on the bag and on the killer's shoes. Like chalk dust or something? I don't know. My sources just call it powdered dye. I don't know what it... I don't know.

There's no pictures of it. Now, the handkerchiefs found at the scene, the ones that we said were likely a mask and the other one may be used to hold the knife. Well, they actually find traces of cologne on the one that has the cut, the one that we think he used with the knife. And they're able to identify it as jacar noir. I read on the Japanese Wikipedia page about this case that that cologne was really popular with skateboarders back in the 1980s. Something Wadan confirmed. And there just so happens to be a skate park right behind the Miyazawa's house. Like literally there's a fence between them and the skate parks, like super close.

Okay, so you're telling me that the police think that the family was murdered by a skater boy? Well, it's 100% just a rumor at this point. But I did read online that Mikio had been seen arguing with skateboarders before he died. About anything in particular? I mean, I read that it could have been about the noise coming from the park, which makes sense because, I mean, skateboarding isn't necessarily like the quietest of activities, right? And here's the thing about the skate park. According to the ABC News Australia article that I mentioned earlier, the park was getting ready to expand. And as a result, the family had actually been paid to vacate their house.

I wasn't able to confirm when they were required to be out of their house or even exactly how much they received in compensation. Just that it was like a significant amount of money. And what I can tell you, and this is from another Japan Today article, is that other homeowners in the neighborhood could have gotten as much as 100 million yen, which is pretty close to a million US dollars, at least based on today's rates. And so if robbery was the motive, police wonder if maybe the killer was after that money. But like, surely you wouldn't just keep that kind of cash lying around the house? I wouldn't. You know, like I don't think, this is like a normal family with normal jobs.

So I don't think they're pulling like a Pablo Escobar and like sewing cash into their couches or anything like that. But on the other hand, again, I didn't know them. I don't know what's normal for them. The family was known to keep cash in the house and not small amounts either. The Japan Times reported that Yasuko ran a cram school, which I guess is like a tutoring business, helping people to like get ready for SATs, that kind of thing. And she worked out of the family home and collected tuition money in cash right there on the spot. And she did keep that in the house.

Do police even know that for sure money was missing from their house? Like at all? Well, one Tokyo police officer who worked on the case told Japan today, quote, several hundred thousand yen are believed to have disappeared, end quote. Which to me says that they're reasonably sure, if not 100% confident. I read in Wandawn magazine that the family kept a household account book, and it showed that something like a hundred fifty thousand yen in cash was missing. But it doesn't clarify if that's missing from like the house itself,

missing from like the bank accounts. Again, I don't know. Anyway, all of that to say, no one can say for sure at this point, but robbery is definitely becoming a possible motive for the murders. And it's something the police are looking more and more at. Unfortunately though, it doesn't really help bring police any closer to figuring out like who would have wanted to rob them and murder them. Weeks turn into months, months into years.

Nothing happens with this case. There are some leads that pop up like here and there. Like in the early days of them canvassing, there's like one visual report from a witness that briefly caught their attention. They're told that three men hailed a taxi at about 8 30 p.m. They're in Setagaya near the family's house. One man got out first, then the other two got out maybe like a mile and a quarter away from the family's house.

And people taking taxis in a place like Setagaya isn't that unusual. What made this trip noteworthy is blood. Because according to another article I read in the Japan Times, at least one of these guys left blood stains in the back of the cab. But you said this is happening at what, 8 30? But if the family's killed at 11 30 and this guy's bloody 8 30 before then, it doesn't really matter. And I think ultimately that's why this lead kind of dies out pretty quickly.

And every time police get a lead like this, they dust off the case file. They start investigating with fresh eyes. They sometimes end up with less than they started with instead of more. According to ABC News Australia, even grandma Haruko, the woman who found the family dead that morning, she gets less and less sure that she even used her spare key to get into the house on that horrible day. And with cases like this, I mean, details are everything.

Time is an enemy when it comes to people's recollection of the details. But on the other hand, time also can be an ally too, especially we know when it comes to DNA technology. According to Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, in August of 2005 police bring a sample of the suspect's blood to a DNA expert at a Japanese university to see what, anything they might be able to find out with this new technology. Again, at this point, all we know is that their suspect is a man with type A blood.

So literally anything else we can learn would be super helpful. It takes eight months for police to get the results of this genetic testing back. But when they do, they learn that their killer is, as they must have expected, of East Asian genetic heritage. So either Japanese, Chinese, or Korean. But that's just on their father's side. On the mother's side, the killer has a relative with roots in Europe, specifically the southern Mediterranean areas.

So that's Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, that kind of area. I mean, that's got to be enough to generate like a composite of what this killer may actually look like. It is, but like everything else in this story, it's not that simple. Because according to an article for Japan Today, it's actually illegal for law enforcement to use DNA to make composite images. Of murder suspects? I mean, honestly, with all the DNA this guy left at the scene,

he's basically asking you to make a composite. Yeah, I don't know. It must be a privacy thing. I mean, what's truly mind-boggling for me about this is that they're like way out in front in terms of like who they collect DNA from. Their net is much wider than ours here in the US. But then I guess they're limited on what they can do with that material once they have it.

The Japan Today piece on this topic says, quote, the law prevents exploratory profiles of crime suspects from being made public, end quote. So it's also possible maybe that police are able to generate composites, but they're not allowed to like blast it over the news. Yeah. Either way, the years keep passing and life in Tokyo moves on from the horror that was uncovered on New Year's Day 2001.

But not everyone is able to forget. Even after they retire and move into civilian life, officers who were on the scene that very first day cannot let it go. For many of them, and especially for the police chief, the case haunts him. Even after he retires from the force, he spends over a decade unofficially investigating the Setagaya family murders. He and other officers regularly visit with the Miyazawa's surviving relatives to pay their respects and share any updates or insights on the case.

And the family never stops fighting for justice. In 2010, after years of lobbying from the Miyazawa's family and other families affected by violent crimes, their work pays off. According to the Donga Yieldbo newspaper, Japan abolishes their statute of limitations for capital crimes, taking away the 25-year limit, which I did not even know was in place before this. Oh my God. While this milestone moment and the crime's 10-year anniversary

kick up some renewed interest, it doesn't lead to any new breakthroughs in the investigation, and the case stays cold. But then, in 2015, this investigative journalist using the pen name Fumia Ichihasi publishes a book called The Setagaya Family Murder Case, 15 Years On, The New Facts. In it, he lays out years of research, research that has led him to a conclusion no one really sees coming.

He doesn't think that the Setagaya killer is a skater kid, nor does he think it's a botched robbery. He thinks that whoever killed the Miyazawa family was a hired hitman, specifically a former member of the South Korean army. Wait, what? Is there any case for this? Did the police consider this angle at any point in time in their investigation? I wish I could give you a play-by-play of what's in this book,

but it doesn't seem to have been translated into English, at least not yet. But I read in Japan today that the book lays out several pieces of evidence that point to the killer having a connection to the Korean peninsula, which again includes their DNA. We know from 2006 that the killer is East Asian on their dad's side, so remember that's either Japanese, Chinese, or Korean. But according to this article,

their DNA has this specific marker that occurs in one out of every 13 Japanese people, one out of every 10 Chinese people, and around one out of every five Koreans. So statistically speaking, they're more likely to be Korean? Exactly, but there is more than just like that, because that alone, I don't think, proves anything. Remember how police found footprints at the crime scene? Yeah.

According to the Tokyo police, the shoes that left those prints were made in South Korea. Okay, but they're neighboring countries, right? So it probably isn't that weird to see Korean shoes on a person in Japan. Right, but here's the thing about these shoes. ABC News Australia reported that this specific type, whether it was like the brand or the shoe or even the size, was never sold in Japan. Not only that, but there were soil particles found at the crime scene,

which according to this book anyway, were traced back to a specific province in South Korea near the capital Seoul. Okay, so we have soil from South Korea and sand from the US. What is happening here? Honestly, the absurdity of all of this almost makes me buy the hired hitman theory. I mean, it's literally, like, when I think about it, it's like he brought a boatload of evidence to distract people. Like, what if all of it, the clothes, the sand,

what if it's just meant to be a distraction? I mean, it worked. Right, and the author thinks that after committing the murders, this man immediately fled the country. So it could be both, right? He could have either left all of these as red herrings, or he didn't care that he was leaving all of this evidence behind because he was that confident that he would never be on anyone's radar

and never be caught. Okay, but like, why? Like, hitmen aren't hired to take out whole families for fun for no reason. So under what I have read about the book's theory, it does all come back to money, and specifically that million-dollar payout that the family got for vacating their house. The author alleges that Mikio Miyazawa mentioned the money to a guy that he just refers to in the book as Kay,

and that Kay hired this assassin to kill the family and get the money. So this author knows who paid for this supposed hit, but do they know who the trigger man is, too? They don't outright name him in the book, but he does refer to the trigger man as R and get this. The author says he knows who it is and confirmed it. Like, apparently, it's going around that this guy matched the guy's fingerprints to the crime scene. Like, what are we waiting for here?

I wish you could see my face right now. Like, ugh. Listen, we've been doing this long enough to know that talk is cheap. We have to think that if there was any truth to the claims in this book, that the Japanese police would have been all over this, or at least followed up on it. But then again, maybe not, because like so many true crime books out there, this one takes some pretty big hits at the police.

Fumia, the investigative journalist who wrote the book, claims that the Tokyo police's special investigators were all working on other cases at the time of the Miyazawa family murder, so a reserve team was sent instead. And add to this the fact that this was a holiday, it was New Year's. It meant that fewer officers were even on duty, so it took longer for a full team of investigators to get to the scene. As I'm sure you can imagine, Tokyo police dispute these claims pretty strongly. But while I was researching, I found a couple of news articles

that bring some interesting insights into the investigation's crucial early days. The first one is from Sanke News, and it cites sources from within the force claiming that police were super focused at first on finding a person with a seriously injured hand. So they were so focused that they allegedly put off looking for other suspects, or even eliminating potential suspects. Another piece, this one from NHK News, goes deeper. According to this article, back in 2001,

a woman actually reported seeing a man with a bloody hand when he darted out into the road in front of her car. But, allegedly, police just never followed up with her. What? Why not? The article doesn't say. Like, this piece is from March 2015, so over 14 years after the murders. And police in this article are like, ma'am, if you're reading, please call.

So they're, like, literally quoted in this piece, asking her to come forward, which makes it pretty clear they did nothing back in the day. It seems to back up what the book is hinting at, though. Like, police error could have prevented an easy resolution for this case. But, of course, hindsight is 20-20 as well. Like, it's way easier to look back and criticize police work than it is actually doing the police work in the chaos of a quadruple murder investigation.

Well, totally. And I mean, I think it's wise to take the book and its theories with a grain of salt, too. There are just so many questions about what feels like every little detail around this case. Like, for example, there's, like, here's this, like, one-off thing. So, exactly 100 days after the murders, someone left a statue near the back of the Miyazawa's house. I wasn't able to find out anything, like, exactly about how close it was to the house

or the crime scene itself, but between the distance and the statue's symbolism, police do think that it might be related, because, you see, according to the Japan Times, it's a Jizō Buddhist statue. The article goes on to say that the Jizō is commonly viewed as the guardian of unborn children and of children who died prematurely, children like Rei and Nina. Furthering the connection is a carving on the bottom of the statue, which looks like the Chinese character for the number six. And wasn't Rei six years old when he was murdered?

Mm-hmm, yep. So without more information about who left the statue, though, it's impossible to say for sure. Like, police think it's connected. Personally, I don't know. Like, I can also see someone just, like, paying tribute. Like, I think it just shows that this crime haunted the community back then and still lingers to this very day, because now, 20 years later,

police still don't have a suspect in custody. They have never made an arrest. They have never even named a suspect. I mean, it's not for lack of try, at least according to police's statistics. As of December 2020, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has deployed over 280,000 investigators to follow up on 13,000 tips over the course of 20 years. I'm sorry. That can't be right.

That's, like, what, almost 40 new investigations per day and 14,000 different investigators a year? I did the math, too. I didn't believe it. But I found multiple pieces of source material that confirmed that number. And plus, the Tokyo Police, like, when I looked at it, this is why it didn't make more sense to me. They have around 43,500 officers. So it's literally, like, it's the entire force, practically,

working on this case and starting over and over and over again, and they're bringing in random... I can't figure out that number. I cannot figure it out. I mean, no wonder it hasn't been solved, though. Like you said earlier, every time someone new looks at things, they probably get lost. Like, how is anyone supposed to be the expert on this case? I don't know.

According to Asahi Shimbun, as of December 2020, police have received over 13,600 tips from the public. But I don't see why over a quarter of a million police would be necessary to look into them. And I think you're right. If that many different people are looking at it, then no wonder they haven't solved it. It's like the epitome of too many cooks in the kitchen, you know?

Yeah, I was actually going to say, even in looking at something simple, I can see one thing and you can see something completely different. And if we asked either of our sisters, they would come up with two completely different ideas as well. We're talking about half a million. I love a fresh set of eyes, but at some point, you've got to have someone see it all the way through. You're never going to have anything done

if you're constantly bringing in people. I don't know. I have to think something. You need a point person. You need a point person. It's all I'm asking. With so many clues and so much evidence, it seems all but unthinkable that a suspect is still on the loose. And yet, over 20 years after their brutal murders, the Miyazawa family's killer has never faced justice.

The passage of two decades doesn't erase the pain that Mikio, Yasuko, Nina, and Ray experienced that night, or the agonizing uncertainty of their family members left behind. In fact, Mikio's mother, Setsuko, is alive today at 89 years old, praying that she will live long enough to learn the truth about what happened to her son and family. You can find all of our source material for this case on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio-chuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?