Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - "The Little Girl Murderer" Tsutomu Miyazaki

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Numerous childhood traumas led Tsutomu Miyazaki to create a monstrous character in his head named "Rat Man" that eventually took control of his thoughts and actions. "Rat Man" required human sacrifices and his preference was little girls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode contains discussions of child murder, rape, and sexual assault of children, suicide, necrophilia, and cannibalism. Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13. On February 6, 1989, Shigeo Kono's day started like any other. He ate breakfast, he brushed his teeth, he kissed his wife good morning, but all the while he avoided one thought. the thing that was always there, lurking behind each moment, his four-year-old daughter, Mari. Mari had been missing for almost six months. Tokyo Police had no leads, and Shigeo and his wife, Yukia, were losing hope.

On this particular day, Shigeo opened his front door and noticed a strange box sitting on the front steps. Confused, he brought it inside and opened it. The box contained a horrific sight. ashes, charred bones, baby teeth, and photos of a pink and white cat shirt. The same one Mari was wearing the day she disappeared. There was also a postcard. The words cut from magazines strung together in a taunting message. It read, Marie cremated, bones, investigate, prove.

Hi, I'm Greg Folson. This is Serio Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we're learning about Tsutomu Miyazaki, also known as Japan's Little Girl Murderer. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. In the first part of this episode, we'll look at the lonely childhood that led Miyazaki to recede into obsessions with violent media rather than form real social connections. Later, we'll see how certain traumas led him to create a horrific alter ego

with an insatiable urge to take the lives of vulnerable young girls. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer, the hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence to find the person they were looking for, like Jack the Ripper, the Golden State Killer, the Unit Bomber. It's tedious work to find what you're looking for. So, if you're hiring, I've got news for you. You can skip the lengthy investigation and the tiresome process of sorting through hundreds

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That's Shopify.com slash killers. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point,

and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. One of the most traumatic things a person can experience is isolation. Everyone feels lonely from time to time, but when it's taken to extremes, it can hinder our mental, social, and spiritual development. And when it lasts a lifetime, it can cause a person to break. In Mitzis Sorretto's book, The Best New True Crime Stories, contributing writer Joe Turner, details how Tsutomu Miyazaki was lonely from the day he was born. He had no friends and no lovers. Even his family avoided him, leaving him to navigate life by himself.

But while many children invent imaginary friends to keep them company, Miyazaki created a monstrous character that eventually took control of his thoughts and actions. This story starts in 1962 in a town called Itzukaichi on the western outskirts of Tokyo. Katsumi Miyazaki owned a respected local newspaper called Akikawa Shimbun. Both he and his wife Raiko were influential in their community. The Miyazakis were excited to welcome their first child. In particular, Katsumi dreamt of his son inheriting the paper one day.

But from the moment Tsutomo Miyazaki emerged from the... the womb, his parents' attitudes toward him changed. Miyazaki was born premature and with an unexpected condition. His hands were twisted and misshapen, and his wrists fused directly to his forearms. Without wrist joints, Miyazaki's hand and arm movement was greatly restricted, but his physical limitations were nothing compared to the social ostracism he faced as he got older. Miyazaki's classmates bullied him relentlessly, teasing him for having what they called funny hands. As a result, Miyazaki shied away from his peers.

He withdrew so much that when questioned years later, many of Miyazaki's teachers and classmates didn't even remember him. But the bullying didn't end at school. Miyazaki had two younger sisters who found his hands repulsive, and his parents made little effort to defend or support him. Katsumi was distant and spent most of his time at work. He and Raiko mostly left their son to be raised by his grandfather. The Raiiko tried to make up for her emotional distance with gifts.

Though Miyazaki saw through his mother's attempts to paper over bad parenting with presents, there was one thing she bought him that he actually enjoyed. Comic books. Young Miyazaki scoured the books. He retreated into a fantasy world, forgoing his schoolwork to pour through comics, known in Japan as manga, laid into the night. He even began to draw his own characters. But these drawings weren't your typical children's illustrations.

They were dark and nightmarish, like the disturbing humanoid rat with no eyes that he called the Ratman. Over time, Miyazaki's love of comics grew into an obsession with horror movies. He amassed a gigantic collection of comics and videos and continued to spend his time escaping into media rather than trying to make friends. And his taste in film was troubling. He seemed to be particularly fond of an ultra-violent, low-budget Japanese horror film called flowers of blood and flesh in which a man kidnaps a woman, then cuts off her head and hands. Over time, Miyazaki grew to care about little else other than his dark obsessions. By the time he finished high school, his grades had plummeted.

Because of his low-ranking, he had to abandon his plans to become an English teacher, and instead enrolled in a local junior college to become a photo technician. In college, Miyazaki's lack of social skills led to even more bizarre and up. upsetting interests. Along with his obsessions with manga, anime, and horror, he started viewing extreme pornography. He even started bringing his camera to sports fields so he could take upskirt photos of his female classmates. Miyazaki's interest in sexually explicit media didn't stop there. At the age of 21, he no longer felt gratified by depictions of adult women. This was because, by law, pubic hair had to be censored, so Miyazaki grew bored of the images.

But there was a loophole in the law. If the subject didn't have any pubic hair, then nothing had to be censored. So following a twisted logic trail, Miyazaki turned his attention to child pornography. Crucially, possession of child pornography was not illegal during this time, so his newfound interest was readily available. When Miyazaki graduated college in 1983, he moved back in with his parents and got a job at a printing plant. His parents hoped that having a college degree into career might push their son toward a more grounded, normal life. But their hopes were quickly dashed.

Miyazaki fell into the same old patterns. He worked during the day, then retreated to his room at night to consume piles and piles of manga, horror films, and pornography. Miyazaki later claimed that it was around this point in his life that he first began to contemplate suicide. He even tried reaching out to his parents to discuss his mental health challenges. However, as has been the case in many cultures, the subject of mental health was heavily stigmatized in Japan at the time. Sadly, Katsumi and Reiko saw their son's struggles as a sign of weakness and brushed them aside. Isolated from his peers and family, Miyazaki turned to the only person in his life who didn't give him the cold shoulder, his grandfather, who had raised him when his parents were cold and distant.

Throughout Miyazaki's entire life, there was no person he felt closer to than his grandfather. So when he died in May of 1988, the loss hit 25-year-old Miyazaki incredibly hard. In an effort to retain a piece of the only man who ever cared for him, Miyazaki attended his grandfather's cremation service. At the end, he gathered a handful of ashes and ate them. In their book, Supernatural Serial Killers, authors Samantha Lyon and Dr. Daffer, TAN describe how this was a, quote, desperate attempt to retain something from him. Vanessa is going to take over in the psychology here and throughout the episode. As a reminder,

she is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. This incident is the first known example of Miyazaki eating human remains. Dr. Clancy McKenzie, a psychology professor at Capital University in Washington, D.C., has studied the phenomenon of cannibalism for years. According to his research, cannibalistic urges often can come from psychological trauma experienced during childhood. It also had four main forms, sexual, aggressive, spiritual, and nutritional. Given Miyazaki's desire to, quote, retain something from his grandfather after his death, this particular instance would mostly fall under the spiritual category, though it's impossible to rule any of the others out as well.

And this instance would not be the last time Miyazaki would dabble in this disturbing practice. Eating his grandfather wasn't the only red flag Miyazaki displayed around this time. Two weeks after the cremation, one of Miyazaki's younger sisters caught him watching her take a shower. When she yelled at her brother to leave, he attacked her. When Miyazaki's mother heard about the incident, she confronted him about it. She demanded he spend less time watching videos alone in his room and more time engaged in the world. Miyazaki responded by attacking her as well. It seemed he was at something of a breaking point.

With his grandfather gone and his relationship with the rest of his family destroyed, Miyazaki had nothing left. All that remained were his dark thoughts and macabre obsessions. And from that lonely abyss, one voice emerged, a voice that would guide Miyazaki into the same. darkest part of his psyche, the voice of the rat man. Coming up, the rat man encourages Miyazaki to kill for the first time. I'm Sarah Turney, host of Disappearances, a Spotify original from Parkast.

In 2020, I used social media to help bring justice to my sister Alyssa's nearly two decades long disappearance. Now, I'm exploring the many reasons people disappear, and finding that the truth may be even harder to locate than the person. Who forced a famed explorer to lose his way? What did a missing Hollywood starlet leave behind? And how could the heiress to a Chicago candy fortune just vanish? Every Thursday on Disappearances join me for a deeper look into history's most gripping missing persons cases. Tracking timelines, analyzing clues, and piecing together as many answers as possible to find the actual truth. Follow the Spotify original from Parcast Disappearances.

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low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-9-9-9 or visit zepbounce.lily.com. Now back to the story. In the summer of 1988, 26-year-old Soutomo Miyazaki was more alone than he had ever been. Alone in a pit of despair, he looked inward for company, and waiting there for him was the rat man. As we said earlier, the ratman was a character Miyazaki created in his youth, an eyeless humanoid rat person. Miyazaki would later claim that he saw his creation on a regular basis, and it would tell him to do things, to scratch itches he knew he shouldn't. But with no one to pull him back to reality, Miyazaki apparently started to listen.

If he truly was hearing and seeing his creation come to life, it's unclear exactly why Miyazaki started interacting with it. Though psychologists have theorized that the rat man was a symptom of undiagnosed schizophrenia. Schizophrenia consists of varying symptoms, the most notable being delusions and hallucinations. But it should be noted that not all schizophrenics are violent. In fact, there's a marked difference in how violent and nonviolent schizophrenics experience their hallucinations. In a 1997 study on the role of hallucinations and delusions in schizophrenia,

Dr. Peter Chung found that non-violent schizophrenics found their hallucinations and delusions made them feel happy and elated. However, violent schizophrenics reported their hallucinations and delusions made them feel angry. It would seem that Miyazaki was violent. It's possible that the ratman told Miyazaki that the world was against him and that he should take what he wanted. Perhaps Miyazaki thought he could have it all, power, sex, acclaim. Most notably, he could regain the person he missed most, his grandfather. All he had to do was find a suitable sacrifice to conjure these things. And the day after Miyazaki's 26th birthday, he found that sacrifice. On August 22, 1988, 488, 4-year-old Mari Kono was walking home from a

friend's house in Iruma Village, Saitama, about an hour from It'sukaiichi. It was a short walk, but the weather was sweltering. Mari could feel the waves of heat radiating from the sidewalk. She wiped her sweaty face on her pink and white cat t-shirt. She was desperate to get out of the sun when a car pulled up next to her. A young man with a round face and overgrown curly hair rolled down his window and smiled at her. He asked if she'd like to go somewhere where it was cool.

Mari wiped another bead of sweat from her face. Cool sounded nice. So she got into the car. Miyazaki almost couldn't believe what he'd done. He'd been driving around Iruma Village in his Nissan Langley when he'd seen Mari walking all by herself. That's when the rat man whispered in his ear, telling him she was a suitable sacrifice to resurrect his grandfather.

Take her, the rat man said. So he had. Miyazaki drove in the direction of his house. He filled the silence with questions and small talk. Finally, after over an hour, he pulled over at a familiar hiking trail near his parents' house in Itzukaichi. Miyazaki led Mari down a heavily wooded path toward Komina Tunnel.

They walked for another 30 minutes or so, then he led the girl several meters off the trail where they sat down for a rest. Sitting in the cool shade of the cypress tree, it began to occur to Mari how far she was from home and how little she knew the man who had brought her there. Silent tears filled her eyes, and she began to sniffle. Miyazaki noticed the change in the little girl's demeanor.

He glanced around. They were alone, but they weren't far from the trail. If the girl were to start to cry, she might attract the attention of passing hikers. As Mari's lip began to quiver, Miyazaki started to panic. He grabbed Mari by the neck. She wasn't hard to overpower, and he squeezed until her face turned white. Finally, she fell limp in his lap.

It was done. Once he got over the shock of what he'd done, Miyazaki worked quickly. He sexually abused her, taking pictures with his professional quality Mamma brand camera. When he finished taking his pictures, he gathered Mari's clothes and left her body in the woods to rot. When Mari's disappearance was reported, it caused a national uprored. in a country with extremely low crime rates, the disappearance of a young girl quickly took the spotlight. In almost no time at all, 50,000 posters featuring her face papered Tokyo. Police officers visited every home in the area, and squad cars roamed the streets, their loudspeakers warning

parents to keep their children close. Days after Mari disappeared, her mother Yukia Kono went on television and begged viewers for help finding her daughter. The next day, a postcard arrived at the Kono family's doorstep. It read, There are devils about. After that, the Kono's also began to receive unsettling phone calls. If they answered, the caller would hang up. If left unanswered, the phone would ring endlessly,

sometimes for as long as 20 minutes. Police rode off the postcard and calls as a cruel joke, but it was little comfort to the Konos, who waited for any new. of their daughter. Despite national press coverage, the search for Mari eventually went cold. Japan started to move on, but Miyazaki didn't. When his grandfather didn't rise from the dead, the ratman demanded more blood.

So within six weeks of Mari's murder, Miyazaki was once again on the hunt. On October 3, 1988, Miyazaki was driving the streets of Hano in the Saitama Prefecture, when he noticed a welcome sight, a younger or a young girl. walking alone. Within minutes, Miyazaki lured seven-year-old Masami Yoshizawa into his Nissan Langley and sped toward the woods where Marikono's body still lay undiscovered in the dirt. Miyazaki's latest victim met the same fate as the first. The only difference came when he was photographing the young girl's naked body. As he cataloged his latest conquest, a post-mortem muscle spasm caused Masami's body to twitch suddenly.

Shocked, Miyazaki fled the scene, ignoring the ratman's cries to stay. Tokyo roused once again to search for the missing girl. But just like before, authorities found no leads. Police quickly connected the newest missing girl to Mari Kono, but because Miyazaki chose his victims at random, it was difficult to investigate patterns. Beyond the lack of clues, Japanese authorities were also at a distinct disadvantage, given the country's low crime rate.

Few, if any, detectives had first-hand experience investigating a single murder, let alone a serial killer. Frustrated and out of options, police again watched the case go cold. In Miyazaki's mind, the rat man was proud of him. His second murder had gone off without a hitch, and he'd gotten more perverse photos to add to his collection. But the task wasn't yet done. Miyazaki's grandfather was still dead. The rat man needed more sacrifices, and Miyazaki figured, He figured he may as well have some fun along the way.

On December 12th, he noticed four-year-old Erica Nambaw walking alone on the streets of Saitama. It was barely two months since his last kill, but the rat man was becoming restless. Erica's kidnapping went like all the others. Miyazaki convinced the young girl to get into his car, then drove away with her. But this time, Miyazaki had a new destination in mind. He drove for about an hour and pulled into the empty parking lot of the Nagorno- Guri Youth Nature House. Miyazaki stopped the car.

This time, he wanted photos of his victim alive. The terrified girl followed his instructions, and Miyazaki began to photograph her from his spot in the front seat. At some stage, he tied her up using a nylon cord. He took photo after photo, practically entering a trance-like state. Then, all of a sudden, a beam of light fell across Erika's terrified face. Another car had entered the parking lot. Miyazaki snapped out of his trance, panicking.

Miyazaki dove into the back seat on top of Erica. He quickly killed her. When he looked up out of his window, the other car was gone. But Miyazaki was still shaken. He removed Erica's body from his backseat and put it in the trunk. Now he just had to find a place to hide it. Miyazaki drove his car into some woods behind the parking lot. The road was rough and overgrown, and partway down the pack.

one of the wheels of his Nissan slipped into a gutter. The car lurched to a halt. Miyazaki tried to free the vehicle from its spot, but it was no use. He was stuck in the woods with a body in his trunk. Knowing he had little time to remove incriminating evidence, Miyazaki turned on his hazards, then wrapped Erica in a sheet. He carried her deep into the trees where he left her on the forest floor. Then he folded up the sheet and made his way back, to his car. But when he arrived back at the Nissan, a distressing sight awaited him. There were two men waiting next to the vehicle.

Miyazaki calmed the rat man's shrieks and walked back to the car. He casually put the sheet back in his trunk and explained to the men that his wheel had gotten stuck. The men looked this pudgy, unassuming man up and down and decided not to ask any questions. They helped Miyazaki pull his car from the gutter, desperate to leave before they got suspicious. He sped away without a word. In the book, The Best New True Crime Stories, writer Joe Turner sketched out what happened next.

The next day, a Naguri Youth Nature House employee happened across girls' clothing in the woods. Recalling the citywide search for Mari and Masami, the employee called the police. Within a few hours, 500 officers were picking their way through the woods. They found Erica's body there, her hands and feet still tied behind her back.

The discovery of Erica's body was devastating, not just for her family, but for the loved ones of the other missing girls too. There seemed little doubt about it now. Japan had a killer on its hands. The media dubbed him The Little Girl Murderer and the entire country tuned into the story with horror and fascination.

At the same time, any hope of finding Mari and Masami alive faded. When the media reported the details of Nambah's murder, the two men who helped Miyazaki get his car out of the gutter came to the police. But unfortunately, they made a crucial mistake. When asked what kind of car Miyazaki had driven, they said it was a Toyota Corolla. Operating on misinformation, police checked nearly 6,000 corollas, which was one of the most popular cars in Japan at the time. They had no idea they were searching for the wrong car entirely.

Meanwhile, Miyazaki was shaken. This was the closest he'd come to being discovered. He decided to lay low for a few months before choosing a new victim. But that didn't stop him from doing other things. A week after he killed Erika, Miyazaki reached out to her family, sending them a postcard with words cut from magazines. It read, Erica, cold, cough, throat, rest, death. But that wasn't all.

With the dawn of 1989, Miyazaki began to be able to. to look back over his first crimes. Fueled by nostalgia and whispers from the ratman, Miyazaki returned to the woods where he killed Mari Kono five months earlier. Miyazaki traveled into the woods and found Mari's decomposing body. He cut off her hands and feet, then burned the rest of her remains. When nothing was left but a pile of ash, Miyazaki gathered his charred trophies into a box and headed back to his parents' house. He had work to do. Up next, Miyazaki feels the net close around him.

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may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes, gas, floating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. Now back to the story. In early 1989, Soutoumu Miyazaki had taken the lives of three little girls. After the body of Miyazaki's third victim was discovered, all of Japan became engrossed in the case of the little girl murderer. Miyazaki liked the national attention.

He did anything he could to milk his past kills for everything he could. He'd taunted his victim's families. He'd call their houses. and hang up once they answered. He'd even send them postcards with cryptic messages cut from magazine pages. But it wasn't enough for him. It appeared he wanted to elicit larger reactions.

On February 6, 1989, Shigeo Kono, the father of Miyazaki's first victim, opened his door to find a box filled with ashes, teeth, and young girls' clothing. Included with the box was also a note from the killer reading, Mari, bones, cremated, investigation. prove. Shigeo gave the box to the police, who had dental professionals examine the baby teeth.

But surprisingly, experts claimed they did not belong to Mari. Dr. Kazuo Suzuki announced the findings in a televised conference. Mari's mother, Yukiya also spoke, saying that the report gave her a new hope that Mari might be alive. Miyazaki didn't like that. Just days later, both the Kono family and one of Japan's national newspaper, received a letter claiming the remains in the box belonged to Mari Kono. In the letter, Miyazaki said he wrote the confession so that Mari's mother wouldn't continue to hope in vain.

The note was signed Yuko Imada, which in Japanese has a double meaning of, Now I have courage, and now I will tell you. Ultimately, Dr. Suzuki changed his mind and stated the teeth were Mari's. Forensic analysts also confirmed the remains belong to Mari. They also determined that box contained an entire skeleton, except the hands and feet. The Kono family was devastated. In his book, The World's Worst Serial Killers, author Victor McQueen describes how they publicly begged their daughter's killer to return her hands and feet so that she could, quote, walk and eat in heaven. Miyazaki ignored their request.

On March 11th, the Konos laid their daughter to rest. When they returned home, they found another horrifying note from Miyazaki on their doorstep. This one contained a graphic description of how Mari's body had decomposed. It was more of the same from Miyazaki's twisted mind, but little did he know. Law enforcement was tracking his behavior. Police found a number of leads from Miyazaki's harassment of the Konos. They learned, for example, that the photo of Mari's clothes was taken by a professional Mamia camera. The postcards had also been copied with a...

an industrial copier that would not have been available to the general public at the time. Had they realized that, investigators might have been able to trace the copier, perhaps it would have led them to their killer. Alas. While authorities chased their tails, Miyazaki resisted the ratman's calls to violence for another three months. Then on June 1st, he caught another young girl in his trap. He began to take naked pictures of her in the back of his car, but this time, local spotted him and ran toward the car. Miyazaki managed to speed off before they got to him,

leaving the scared girl behind. But even after such a narrow escape, the rat man refused to stay quiet, and Miyazaki tried again. Less than a week later, on June 6th, he noticed five-year-old Ayako Nomoto playing alone in a park. Miyazaki introduced himself to the girl and asked if he could take some photos of her playing.

Ayako didn't seem to see the harm in that, So she agreed. Once Ayako was comfortable with Miyazaki, he asked if he could take some pictures of her in his car. When the girl said yes, he shut the door and drove half a mile away. He parked and prepared to take explicit photos of the young girl. But according to a later confession, when he handed her a stick of gum,

she commented on the unusual shape of his hands. Miyazaki flew into a rage, reminded of the way kids at school bullied him. He put down his camera and choked her until she stopped moving. Then he put her body in the trunk, but he didn't need to find somewhere to hide it. Not this time. Miyazaki took Ayako to his room in his parents' house. For two days, he violated her body and took photos and video.

Eventually, the stench grew too strong to ignore. That's when he decided to recreate one of his favorite horror movies, Flowers of Blood and Flesh. Just like in the violent film, Miyazaki cut off his victim's hands and head. He then dumped her torso near a public toilet in a cemetery about 40 minutes from his house. But he didn't stop there. Miyazaki drank the girl's blood and cooked and ate parts of her hands. It's unknown exactly why he did this.

Perhaps it was to get back at the girl for commenting on his own hands. Perhaps the rat man told him eating the youth's own flesh would heal his own. Whatever the reason, he scattered the rest of Ayako's cooked remains among the hills behind his house. Ayako's torso was found days later. Her body was identified by matching the contents of her stomach with the meal she ate the day she disappeared. And as another family grieved the loss of their little girl,

police struggled to come up with any clues that might help them catch the little girl murderer. Once again, Miyazaki's habit of impulsively choosing targets at random had kept him safe. But soon, it would be his downfall. That twist of fate came nearly six weeks after Ayako's murder. On July 23rd, 1989, Miyazaki was driving around the Hachiochi neighborhood of Tokyo, but he noticed two sisters playing outside. One of the girls was nine, a bit old for Miyazaki's taste,

but the other was younger, and in Miyazaki's eyes, ripe for the taking. Miyazaki didn't usually approach two girls at once, and he debated driving away to look for an easier target, but the rat man was hungry. Miyazaki approached the two girls. He asked if he could take pictures of them, but when they agreed, he told the older girl to stay put. Then he led the younger sister to his car. If the rat man had his way that day, Miyazaki would have claimed another young life, but there was one thing neither of them expected. As the nine-year-old girl watched the strange man leave with her little sister, she knew something was wrong. She ran home and told her father about the round-faced man. Her grandfather called the police as she led her father to the scene. Miyazaki didn't spot the man and his older daughter hurrying toward his car.

When they arrived at the side of the Nissan Langley, Miyazaki was in the back seat, fully naked, attempting to get explicit photographs of his would-be victim. Terrified for his daughter, the man threw open the door and punched Miyazaki in the head. Miyazaki tumbled out of the car and onto the hot pavement. As the father pulled his terrified daughter from the car, Miyazaki fled on foot, naked. He disappeared into the foliage toward a muddy riverbank. Miyazaki was in a bind. Naked and separated from his car, he hurried blindly along the riverbank, trying desperately to stay out of sight. As he walked, he felt as though a transfer.

information had taken place. He had become the rat man, a naked monster scurring through the sewers of society. But eventually this state wore off, and Miyazaki realized the seriousness of his predicament. He was stranded in one of the most populated cities in the world, completely naked, and he'd been found taking sexual pictures of a little girl. Half of Tokyo probably knew what he looked like by now. He knew that if he had any hope of escaping, he would need his car. So Miyazaki made his way back to his Nissan Langley. He hoped the authorities wouldn't expect him to return so quickly to the scene of the crime. But his hope was in vain. The area was crawling with police. Law enforcement quickly spotted him. They rushed to apprehend him, and Miyazaki,

defeated, didn't put up a fight. Thus, Japan's massive manhunt ended with the suspect walking right into police custody. Miyazaki was arrested for child molestation. Authorities strongly suspected he was responsible for the murdered girls. They just didn't have proof, yet. But given all of Japan had been following the case of the little girl murderer for nearly a year, the media was primed and ready. Before police could even take the most basic investigative steps,

the press beat them to Miyazaki's house. They took video of his towering collection of anime and pornography, and broadcast it to televisions around the world. Rumors started to swirl about Miyazaki's connection with the killings. People even traded the title of the killer from the little girl murderer to the Otaku murderer. Otaku is a derogatory term used to describe fanatics of media like anime or manga, who are thought to become isolated and divorced from reality.

After weeks of silence in police custody, Miyazaki finally started to crack, With his photos and tapes of the dead girls in detective's hands and the entire country speculating on his involvement with the crimes, the 27-year-old gave a full confession. Miyazaki told them the details of his horrific crimes and where he left the bodies of his first victims. He even introduced them to the rat man,

his only companion since his grandfather's death. His shocking crimes and twisted psyche prompted authorities to call in psychologists to evaluate the otaku murderer. Psychologists were split on Miyazaki's diagnosis. Some believed him to be schizophrenic, given that he seemed to be able to see and hear the presence of the rat man. Others, however, interpreted his alter ego as evidence of multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder. Dissociative identity disorder is when a person has two or more different personalities

that are foreign to their original identity. These personalities often have different names and characteristics, characteristics, and they tend to control the person's behavior with some amount of memory loss between them. According to a 2019 study on early childhood trauma by psychologists Amriq Singh and Ajoy Bata, dual personalities are often formed from traumatic childhood experiences. The child creates the personality to protect themselves. This would make sense given Miyazaki's tumultuous childhood. Regardless of which diagnosis psychologists favored, however, they were all in agreement about one thing.

Tsutomu Miyazaki was severely mentally ill. As psychologists debated Miyazaki's diagnosis, the country continued to focus all their attention on the case. During the months-long wind-up to the trial, media coverage was nothing short of cacophonous. Helicopters circled Miyazaki's neighborhood constantly. His family was forced into hiding. Miyazaki's father, Katsumi, basically disowned his son

and refused to use his wealth to hire him a defense attorney. Miyazaki, for his part, wrote his father a letter from prison, blaming the man for all of his crimes. One good thing did come during this time, however. In September of 1989, over a year after Mari Kona was killed, authorities found her hands and feet in Miyazaki's closet. They returned the remains to her parents, who took a small comfort in the belief that their daughter could walk and eat in heaven at last.

Miyazaki's trial began on March 30th, 1990, and lasted for nearly seven years. Throughout the entire process, Miyazaki never once expressed regret for his crimes. In fact, he often seemed bored during court proceedings, choosing to doodle in a notebook or take a nap while others decided his fate. Miyazaki's state-appointed lawyer argued that he was mentally ill. If he were to be found legally insane, he could avoid the death. penalty and simply get life in prison. But a few things worked against that argument. First of all, at the time of Miyazaki's trial, Japan did not hold jury trials. A panel of judges

would instead decide his fate. Unlike juries, who are regular people, often with no legal experience, judges and prosecutors are essentially colleagues. As a result, Japan had a much higher conviction rate than most other countries, over 99%. The judges were less than sympathetic to Miyazaki's case. Despite the unanimous belief that he suffered from at least one, if not multiple forms of mental illness, the judges decided that the killer could face legal punishment. Their reasoning was that because Miyazaki tried to hide his crimes, he understood that what he was doing was wrong. Such a long trial process also took its toll on the people in Miyazaki's life. His father shut down his newspaper in the early 90s, and in 1994, he took his own life.

Miyazaki had always blamed his father for his own crimes. When Miyazaki learned of Katsumi's death, he said it left him feeling refreshed, but it couldn't save him from what was to come. On April 14, 1997, Miyazaki was found guilty by the panel of judges and sentenced to death by hanging. Miyazaki's lawyers appealed the ruling, but the sentence was upheld both by the Tokyo High Court in 2001 and ultimately the Japanese Supreme Court in 2006.

Miyazaki awaited his execution for just over two years, until finally, on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, nearly 20 years after he committed his first murder, the 46-year-old was put to death. Like all Japanese death row prisoners, he did not know exactly when his last day would be until he was escorted from his cell and offered a cigarette. Miyazaki was taken to the prison's execution chamber.

where he was blindfolded and fitted with the noose. As was standard practice, three prison officials in another room simultaneously pushed a button to release the trap door beneath his feet. None of them ever knew which one of them was responsible for his death. Miyazaki swung from a rope for 15 minutes before a prison doctor pronounced him dead. His last words to his clinical psychologist had been, please tell the world that I'm a gentle man. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers.

We'll be back soon with a new episode. For more information on Soutomo Miyazaki, amongst the many sources we used, we found writer Joe Turner's section in the book, The Best New True Crime Stories by Mitzisoretto, extremely helpful to our research. You can find more episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Cereal Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast.

Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Brendan Hawkins, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, Carly Madden, and Joshua Kern. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Danny Messerschmitt with writing assistance by Sarah Batchelor and Joel Callan, fact-checking by Cheyenne Lopez,

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