RedHanded - Episode 203 - The Miyazawa Family Massacre

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

30th December 2000, in Setagaya Japan, the Miyazawa family were preparing for the upcoming festivities. Tragically, however, the family wouldn't live to see the new year because that night they were all brutally murdered in their own home. A plethora of evidence was left behind at the scene, including DNA, fingerprints, half-eaten food and even an entire outfit, but still to this day this case remains one of Japan's most notorious unsolved murders. Follow us on social media:InstagramTwitterFacebookVisit our website:WebsiteSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome to Red Handed. This week, we are covering one of Japan's most infamous and tragic unsolved murder cases. Welcome to Setagaya City, the second largest of Tokyo's 23 districts, located just southwest of the capital. And although Setagaya is one of the most populated residential areas of Tokyo, the neighborhood where this particular case takes place had essentially become a ghost town by the year 2000.

However, it was once a flourishing development in the early 90s, with around 200 families living there. But over the following decade, Tokyo's municipality began buying their homes back. And this was because the neighborhood ran along the boundary between acres of parkland known as Shoshigaya Park and the Sen River. The government had plans to demolish the houses to expand the parkland even further and as a result, by the year 2000, there were only four homes remaining and it was in one of these four houses that the Miyazawa family lived, in a three-story house that was split into two. In one half lived 44-year-old Mikiko Miyazawa, his 41-year-old

wife Yasuko and their eight-year-old daughter Nina and six-year-old Mikiko Miyazawa, his 41-year-old wife Yasuko, and their 8-year-old daughter Nina and 6-year-old son Rei. In the other half of the property lived Yasuko's elderly mother, and in the late 90s, Yasuko's sister and brother-in-law also moved in with her too. By all accounts, the Miyazawas were an ordinary middle-class Japanese family. Mikio worked for a huge marketing agency called Interbrand. It's the company that coined the word Wi-Fi, by the way. That's a good fact.

That is a good fact. What a claim to fame. Imagine being the marketing person or the, I don't know, brand director or whoever it is in that company that was like, I know, we'll call it Wi-Fi. That's it. Genius. Did you see on the news this morning that the guy who made McAfee is dead? He died in a Spanish prison cell. No.

Yeah. Apparently, yeah. So it's all over Twitter this morning. Mystery death. I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll talk about it in Under the Juby. I said that like, I will solve it. No, I just mean I will read an article and then I will regurgitate it to you in my own words. Yasuko ran a cram school from home. If you don't know what a cram or a cramming school is, Japan's education system is incredibly stratified. So like,

it doesn't matter how many people take the exam or how they do, only 10% will get the top mark. So that leads to a lot of discontent among young people. Well, what's the point in me studying it because it doesn't actually matter. Like I could get 100% in this exam and still not get into Tokyo University. But it also means that children are worked incredibly hard and cram schools, it's like a homework club. They're just tested and tested, tested, tested, tested

until they get it right. And that's how it works. And it's called Juku is the word. And you're expected to do like, you know, and that's how it works. And it's called juku is the word, and you're expected to do, like, you know, play an instrument or a martial art or whatever, or all of those things at the same time. How very Asian.

Japan was my ethnographic area of study in my degree, so I have a very, like, academic view of Japan, which is probably flawed. So please feel free to get in touch if you think I've got it wrong. And also, I went to university, like, nearly fucking 10 years ago, so it might be different now. I doubt it, but it might be. which is probably flawed. So please feel free to get in touch if you think I've got it wrong. And also, I went to university like nearly fucking 10 years ago, so it might be different now. Doubt it, but it might be. So Nina was in the second grade and was quite a gifted child who was a year ahead in her studied and played piano and loved ballet,

which is basically the perfect Japanese child. Yeah. And when your mum's running a cram school, you can't be the kid that is not gifted a year ahead doing ballet and playing the piano. Yeah, at the same time. The family had just learnt about little Ray's learning difficulties, and this had been suggested as the reason the family had delayed moving for so long, because they wanted to find a more suitable school to take care of his needs. But as the year 2000 was coming to an end, the Miyazawas sold the land in the area and they were planning to move away for good in the following few months. Meanwhile, the ever-expending Shoshigaya Park was becoming busier and busier every day. It was a frosty

winter's evening on the 30th of December 2000 and the Miyazawa family had spent the day out shopping together. In Japan, and I didn't know this, apparently New Year's is one of, if not the most important of annual holidays because it represents new beginnings, gives families the chance to reflect on the past year and to think about their dreams for the future. And I think this is definitely true of Korea and I have a feeling it's true of Japan as well.

Everyone turns a year older at New Year, so it's everyone's birthday. Oh. It's me, the fact check fairy. It's been of Japan as well. Everyone turns a year older at New Year, so it's everyone's birthday. It's me, the fact check fairy. It's been a while. They've been on their game. But obviously, Hannah has let the side down, as usual. As said at the beginning of this episode,

Hannah does have some things wrong about Japan. She is not an Asia expert. So anyway, turns out, no, people don't get a year older in Japan on New Year's Day. In Korea, it's a little bit more true, but it's more traditional than usual. And Korea and Japan, although geographically close together, extremely different places. You'll probably hear from me again later on. So like you don't really have birthdays. You have Girls' Day, Boys' Day, Mother's' Day, Fathers' Day, Teachers' Day.

Interesting. Yeah, and in Korea, you're already born one. Like, your time in the womb counts as a year. So, like, Koreans will be like, oh, my Korean age is 28, but my international age is 27. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, it's a whole thing. And they don't do horoscopes with, like, zodiac signs.

They do blood types. Facts, guys. All the Asian facts you could need right here on Red Handed. Any fucking excuse for me to talk about East Asia. But little did the Miyazawas know that they would not live to see the new year. Because as they approached the turn of the new century, their lives would be cut short in the worst possible way. That evening, Mikio was sitting in his office browsing the internet whilst Rei was playing by himself in his bedroom.

Yasuko phoned her mother next door at around 7pm to ask whether it was okay for little Nina to come over and watch TV with her. The show finished at around 9.45pm. Nina came home and went to the attic bedroom with her mother. At 10.45pm, Mikio accessed a secure work email using his password. And that's the last evidence we have of the family being alive. Yusuko had made plans for her mother to come over the following morning to help prepare for the New Year's festivities. But when the time came, the Miyazawa family weren't answering the phone. In fact, the call wasn't even going through. Yusuko's mother tried again and again, and still the phone never rang. So around 10am, she decided to knock on their door.

There was no answer. Immediately she knew something was wrong and so she let herself in using her spare key. Taking just two steps into the house, the elderly woman was met by her son-in-law, Mikio's bloodied corpse sprawled at the foot of the staircase. In a state of shock, Yusuko's mother made her way through the house, calling the names of her daughter and grandchildren. She discovered Yasuko and Nina's bodies on the first floor landing. They had been so brutalized they were hard to recognize.

There was blood absolutely everywhere. Horrified, she continued moving through the house, holding out hope that at least she might find her grandson, six-year-old Ray, unharmed. But her hopes were crushed when she foundold Ray, unharmed. But her hopes were crushed when she found his cold, lifeless body still in his bed. The police arrived on the scene shortly afterwards, and they could hardly believe their eyes. After all, Japan has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world. In 2018, there were just 0.3 cases per 100,000 people. In comparison, that same year, the homicide rate in America was 5 cases per 100,000 people

and 1.2 cases per 100,000 here in the UK. However, while those numbers may seem very impressive, all may not be as it seems. The LA Times released an article in 2007 titled Japan's Police See No Evil, and it opens with the story of how Tokyo police discovered the body of a 17-year-old sumo wrestler with a deep cut on his right arm, bruising on his neck and chest, a swollen face covered in cuts and legs pocked with cigarette burns. Now, imagining that scene in your mind, you wouldn't have to be a genius to see that something like that would generally be concluded as foul play being afoot, right? Well, the article goes on to say that the police almost immediately declared that the boy's cause of death was heart disease.

They reached this verdict without even conducting an autopsy. And actually, that's pretty common in Japan, especially in less urbanised areas. Autopsies are only performed on 11.2% of cases in Japan. Some pin this shocking figure on low budgets, shortages of pathologists and a cultural resistance. So family members are reluctant to have such invasive procedures conducted on their loved ones. It's really interesting because I hadn't really thought about the cultural implications of autopsies being conducted. But you remember when we spoke to Sonia Falario, the author who had written The Good Girls? Yes, yeah. When we did the interview with her. And if you haven't watched that, I believe the audio is out for everybody and the

video is up on our Patreon. But basically, we spoke to this lady, Sonia Falario, who is an Indian author. And she was saying, especially in India that people don't want to a have autopsies done on their loved ones because it's seen as like desecrating the body and also secondly especially again in less urbanized areas of India performing autopsies is seen as a really dirty job so people don't want to be pathologists and so in the case that she went there to investigate which was the death of these two young girls, the local like fucking, what was he like, the butcher or the street cleaner or somebody was just doing it with like knives that he had bought at the market. And he had no medical training. And he was just doing it in a shed in this village in India because no one wanted to

do it. No doctors wanted to do it, which is just unbelievable. Oh, I can completely see that happening here. Like Japan, although it doesn't have a caste system, there is an overhang of like dirty jobs. Interesting. All the facts, like I said, hashtag Asian facts coming at you here on Red Handed. But yeah, it's fascinating.

It's fascinating. Until you explore the cultural nuances of criminal investigation in different countries, you just wouldn't know it. And that's actually one of the reasons that at Red Handed, when we first started the show, we were like, should we just be like a British show? And we were like, no, because we're like super fascinated in the cultural implications that feed into crime in various parts of the world. Totally, totally.

So back to this LA Times article, which is super interesting. The article goes on to say that many frustrated doctors, pathologists, and even ex-police argued that Japan's police culture is the main obstacle, rather than any sort of like cultural resistance to chopping up dead bodies, which like, okay, but like that cultural resistance is 100% there. Japanese police have in the past discouraged autopsies that they knew would lead to homicide investigations, and instead decided to pressure doctors to falsely attribute unnatural death to health reasons. Which means that there are many people who have and likely are getting away with murder in Japan,

as the country hides behind statistics that paint it as having the lowest per capita homicide rate in the world. Here's the thing. Justice moves super slowly in Japan. And, like, they love bureaucracy. They love red tape. Everything takes a really long time. So, like, I can completely see police people being like, if you make this a homicide,

the next five years of my life are ruined because I will just have to do this. And also, we'll come onto this a little bit later, often you will see if there is a famous crime that they can't really get around, it will be reported that they're not actually Japanese, they're from somewhere else, they're Korean or they're Chinese. Oh, of course.

Even if, like, born and raised in Japan. Absolutely. And also here it's very much like the optics of it. That's something that is inescapable. I think they very much want to have the... It's similar to when we've looked at crimes and like talked about crimes in Russia and places like that where they feel like oh well you know that's a very like serial killing and killings like that murders like that that's a very western thing it doesn't happen here because we don't have the societal or

the cultural breakdown that leads to people being killers like that and so the optics of being able to say that you have the lowest homicide rate per capita at just 0.3 cases per 100,000 is also definitely, I think, a motivation for the police to not want to investigate or not want to call something that is clearly a homicide, a homicide. 100%. Yeah. So Hiramasa Saekawa, a former member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Security and Intelligence Division, is even terrifyingly quoted in this article as saying, quote, you can commit a perfect murder in Japan because the body is not likely to be examined. Senior police officers are obsessed with statistics because that's how you get promotions.

That's interesting because then it's not just like the greater good for the nation, we're doing the optics. It's also for my personal gain and promotion. Oh, totally. So another interesting thing that the article points out is the difference between the philosophical approach to death investigations between the West and Japan. In the West, autopsies are performed to determine the cause of death, whereas in Japan, the investigations are not concerned necessarily

with the cause of death as much as they are in determining whether a crime was committed or not. Many of you will also be aware that Japan has one of the highest suicide rates per capita in the world, accounting for more than 30,000 deaths a year. But shockingly, for the majority of these apparent suicides, Japanese police will request that there be no autopsy, and they would tend to conduct nothing more than a simple visual examination of the body. That is terrifying. The idea that someone could just kill people and then just make it look like a suicide and nothing more than somebody coming along, a police officer coming along and being like, oh, well, look, they seem to have taken an overdose

or they seem to have hanged themselves. It's a suicide. Rubber stamp, move on. And the fact that the decision on whether to perform an autopsy or not is down to the police could mean that, of course, numerous homicides in Japan have been put down to suicide or natural causes to avoid, you know, those pesky little homicide investigations rearing their ugly heads. Coming back to the 17-year-old sumo wrestler we had a look at earlier, his name was Saito, and once the police were done with his case, they delivered his body to his sumo coach, who told the boy's parents that they didn't need to collect the body because he would cremate him for them.

Suspicious. Why? Why? Why, if I die, why would my body be given to my sumo wrestling coach? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes no sense whatsoever. Don't understand what's happening here. He has parents. He's not like an orphan that just grew up in a fucking sumo wrestling camp or something. What? He has living parents. But the parents being parents

obviously demanded to see their son one last time and they were shocked when they saw his battered remains. Saito's parents then independently had a doctor conduct an autopsy and it was found that Saito had quite clearly been beaten to death and it was fuck all to do with heart disease. The subsequent actual police investigation

then found that Saito had been murdered by none other than his sumo coach, after he told him that he wanted to stop training. Dun-dun-dun! What a shock. Yeah, like, oh my god. The coach was arrested and then charged, but none of this would have happened if the parents hadn't insisted on seeing their son's body and independently carried an autopsy themselves at great expense, I'm sure. We don't know what, if anything, happened to the original investigating officers.

I would doubt anything. I'm sure they were just allowed to go on with their lives. Absolutely, because if everybody's doing this kind of thing within the police service, then no one's going to be like, oh my God, you did what? How dare you? We're going to punish you. No, of course not like because everybody's fucking in on this scam so now let's get back to the miyazawa's so after walking into this horrific murder scene at the miyazawa home the police knew that covering up the massacre of

an entire family as a result of health reasons was not going to be an option here. Autopsies, therefore, were indeed carried out, and they found that Mikio, Yasuko, and Nina had all died due to blood loss from their stab wounds. Mikio had been stabbed mainly in the neck area, but also had wounds to his head. Gan, stop fucking stabbing people in the head. I can't. Yasuko and Nina had also been stabbed,

and they had been attacked particularly brutally. In fact, the killer had continued stabbing them both well after they had died. And this kind of overkill is often indicative of substantial rage. And in this case, given that Yesuko and Nina had many more stab wounds and had been seemingly much more brutally attacked than Michio. It's possible that that rage was, for this killer, focused around women. Overkill can, of course, also signify that the murder was personal and that the killer knew his victims. This is something we'll come back to exploring a bit later,

but it's worth mentioning that there was definitely overkill on the two women. Six-year-old Ray was the only one who hadn't been stabbed. He'd been strangled to death in his bed, which led investigators to believe that he was probably the first one who was killed. The strangest discoveries, however, were made when the police and the forensic team did a full sweep of the house. The entire house was full of evidence. It was a treasure trove of evidence.

The forensic team found the killer's fingerprints, his ice cream wrappers, his blood was found on a bunch of bandages, which curiously also had Nina's blood on them too. They found the murder weapons and even the killer's poo unflushed in the toilet, just like the Amanda Knox case. That also happened. Yes, yes, yes, you're right. And we say he because the DNA analysis determined the killer, presumably from the blood and the poo, determined that the killer was male. But keep hold of DNA analysis in your brain pin pad because we're going to come back to it. Yusuko's mother told the police that she remembered hearing a loud thud at around 11.30m on the night of the murders but she had thought nothing of it police suspect that the noise was likely caused

by makio falling down the stairs after having confronted the killer slowly the investigators put together the most likely timeline of how they thought the murders had gone down they believed that the killer had first cut the miazawa's phone line before gaining entry through a second-story bathroom window by climbing a fence and tree at the back of the house. Now, this in itself would have been a really difficult task, mainly because of how small the opening of the bathroom window was, and this led the police to believe that the killer was likely of slender build, yet, given the intensity of the killing, very physically capable.

The timeline that we're about to walk you through is what the Setagaya police deduced likely happened that evening. They think the killer first made his way to Ray's room, and although he was armed with the most Japanese weapon of all time, a sashimi knife, he decided to strangle the six-year-old. This probably wasn't a quiet affair and perhaps the father, Mikio, started making his way up the stairs to see what was going on. Given where Mikio's body was found, it's likely that he came face to face with the killer on the staircase where a struggle ensued. Mikio was stabbed

repeatedly in the neck and head and eventually fell down the stairs. It was during this attack that police believe the killer injured his hand and also broke his sashimi knife. Yasuko and Nina were found on the second floor landing at the bottom of the pull-down ladder used to access the attic room. It seemed to investigators that they had come down when they heard the noise of Mikio fighting with the killer. And this is likely when the killer began attacking them both with the broken sashimi knife. At some point during this attack, the killer stopped and ran away down the stairs. Yusuko and Nina were badly injured and they were both losing blood at an alarming rate. And now the killer had left, Yusuko quickly made her way back into the attic room to get a first aid kit. Now back on the landing at the

bottom of the ladder, Yusuko began bandaging up eight-year-old Nina's wounds. But to her horror, the killer suddenly reappeared and he was making his way back up the stairs towards them. He hadn't left at all. Instead, he'd just gone into the kitchen to find another knife. And it's just such a fucking like heartbreaking part of the story because the mother and daughter, Yusuko and Nina, had like just gone back into the attic room, maybe pulled the ladder up behind them. And then I guess they couldn't have called the police because the phone lines were cut, but maybe there was some way they could have survived. It's just so sad that they thought he was gone and he wasn't. He had just broken his sashimi

knife and was getting a different one. After having committed a risky home invasion and not so quietly massacring an entire family, you might assume that one would leave the scene of the crime as soon as possible. Not this guy. As we mentioned earlier, the killer had injured his hands during the attack on Mikio and it must have been pretty bad because the forensic team found large amounts of his blood on the bandages that Yasuko had used on Nina and on some sanitary towels that they found in the house too. So clearly the killer had tended to his wounds and after this he felt a bit peckish because the police found four empty ice cream tubs scattered around the second floor and weirdly they'd all been torn up suggesting that the killer had not used a spoon and just eaten the ice cream straight into his mouth by squeezing the cups really hard.

That's what it's like. I mean, if you're going to eat four ice creams, you clearly feel like you've got all the time in the world. Why would you not just get a spoon? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Why would you do any of this? Yeah, bizarre. I think it depends what the ice cream tubs look like in Japan.

Quite a lot of ice creams are just in containers that you just squeeze out. Not all of them, but I would say that that is pretty East Asian. But it depends what shape they were. Maybe it's not as weird, but it's all irrelevant because eating four whole ice creams when you've just murdered people is the weird part. There was also evidence that the killer had spent some time napping on the family sofa, possibly as a result of a sugar crash after four ice creams. Almost every drawing cabinet in the house had also been ransacked.

The killer had to even carefully laid out the family's utility bills, credit cards, various IDs, receipts and bank statements on a table in the lounge. He'd also spent about an hour on Mikio's office computer, visiting the websites of both Mikio's office computer, visiting the websites of both Mikio and Yasuko's employers, and just looking at a theatre website as well. It's really very strange. I mean, we're going to come on to analyse the crime scene in a bit more detail, but I think just hold in your minds the kind of mixed motivations, the kind of mixed behaviour that you're seeing here, and we'll come back to it.

So the police initially believed that the killer was around 15 to 20 years old based on his disorganized behavior, the mountains of evidence left behind and the fact that he'd eaten four cups of ice cream yet left the beer in the fridge untouched. Also juvenile killers wouldn't have been anything new in Japan. For example, the Kobe murders that had taken place in 1997, where a 14-year-old had beheaded two other young boys. And we've obviously talked about the case of Junko Furuta, again, where the killers were very, very young. They were like 15, 16 years old. It just doesn't feel like an odd thing, killer kids in Japan. And I think it does in some ways link back to what Hannah was saying earlier, that immense amount of pressure that as

a society, Japan places on its young people and its children and possibly that leading to them to break. I don't know if that's a fact, but it feels like a hard connection to ignore, possibly. And when we talked about mountains of evidence, did we mention that the police also found the killer's entire fucking outfit left in the house? And I think this is another reason that they possibly suspected that the killer was quite young. Because I don't know if I buy the whole them not touching the beer thing. I know that is a theory that's quite like often bandied around. But I was like, I don't feel like a 15 year old be like, well, well, I better not drink that beer. Like, of course, they're going to to drink the beer if they want the beer.

Yeah, duh. Yeah, so I think this is maybe more indicative of it being a younger person, perhaps. Because the police found the killer's trainers and his T-shirt, jacket, trousers, a bum bag, or fanny pack for all of you non-Brits. Classic. Scarf, gloves, and a bucket hat all neatly folded up in the house. It's unknown what the killer therefore left the crime scene wearing, given he left all of his clothes there, but one of Yusuko's coats was missing, so perhaps he left just wearing that.

We don't know. And the clothes that the killer left behind suggest that he was around probably five foot seven tall and all the clothing was very similar in style to the way that skateboarders in japan dressed at the time so in the 2000s and if you remember we mentioned that there was a skate park directly behind the miazawa's house it's kind of a weird set of connections, isn't it? Totally. And like, maybe this person is just making a point about how ridiculously easy it is to get away with murder in Japan, because they've made no attempt to cover up the fact that they were there. No. And this is the thing that I find really interesting. Okay, so if you look at a home invasion, when there is a family at home, unless you're going there to kill them that is a very

like criminally unsophisticated thing to do this killer is also very forensically unsophisticated because he leaves his fucking blood and a load of evidence behind at the scene of the crime which is very strange and then you have the things like the eating of the ice cream and the bizarre overkill on the family but then you also have the rifling through the internet and like laying out all of the IDs and bank statements and bills as if you're looking for something. It's very strange because it's almost like super paradoxical in terms of criminal behaviour.

But again, we'll come back to it later. It's just worth pointing out how so much of the behaviour at this crime scene comes across as very contradictory. And it's so deliberate. Like the ice creams and stuff like that like I can kind of see like someone like a in some sort of psychotic state just like not really like understanding especially the psychotic state being that possibly they took off all of their clothes and put a coat on and left wearing just that especially in December in Japan I'm guessing it's fucking cold outside. Yeah, but like the laying out of their receipts and stuff, like it's all so like calculated.

So aside from the killer's taste and size, the police deduced a number of other interesting things from the clothing that had been left behind. The t-shirt was a purple and grey long-sleeved baseball tee. After tracking down where the t-shirt was sold, investigators found out that only 130 of them had ever been bought in Japan. But the police only managed to track down 12 of those people and none of them were suspects. The trainers he'd left behind were Schlesinger running trainers and although thousands of these trainers have been sold in Japan over the past few years, that particular size and style had never been sold in Japan, only in neighbouring Korea. I'm really not being facetious with that. Like the, do you remember the Lucy Blackman case? All of the coverage was like, oh, he's not Japanese.

He's not Japanese. It's fine. It's fine. We're still fine, guys. He was Korean. It's just that age old racist thing of like one drop isn't enough. Yes. Totally. Totally. Totally. It's called Nihon Jinron, which means like the discourse of Japanese-ness. And you cannot become Japanese japanese you cannot assimilate to becoming japanese you are either born japanese or you are not and that is just it so for example like making yourself look un-japanese is seen as like a very negative thing so if you went for a job interview you would never dye your hair you would keep it black if you're trying to impress a kindergarten so your child can go there you go with black hair it's really, really interesting.

And also like any, we've got some listeners in Japan. Like I have a very macro view of Japan. And I'm sure like individually there are different circumstances. But I'm an anthropologist, so I'm always going to talk about overarching themes. So inside the bum bag, police found a piece of skateboard grip tape. And most importantly, Saruti's absolute favourite, some sand.

Good old sand. Good old sand. Can tell you so much. Can tell you everything you need to fucking know. No wonder it's worth bajillions and people vie over it. Can make glass, make concrete, and it can tell you so much about things. And silicone.

The dirt that just keeps on giving. And if you have no idea what we're talking about, you need to become a patron and go back and listen to the Under the Duvet where I talk at length about sand mafias. They're a real problem and how we're running out of sand. Just a few grains of sand can be used to pinpoint almost exactly what part of the world it came from. And it turned out that this sand had not come from Japan.

It hadn't even come from Korea. It had come from the US, near the Edwards Air Force Base, just north of Los Angeles. So the more they look at evidence, the more questions they get faced with. So one of the questions that they started to throw around was the idea of could the killer have been a member of the US Air Force who just so happened to be stationed in Tokyo. It wouldn't be the first time that US servicemen had committed violent crimes in Japan. Just five years before the Miyazawa murders in

1995, three US Navy seamen and two US Marines had been convicted of abducting and raping a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa. They spent eight hours in Japanese prisons and were subsequently given other than honourable discharges from the military. Eight hours in prison for gang raping a 12-year-old. Okay, okay, fine. And it just gets better because they let these men go and one of the Marines then went on to rape and kill a university student in her apartment in America before committing suicide immediately afterwards. Wow. In fact, in case you're thinking this is just, you know, an isolated incident, since 1972, U.S. servicemen have committed thousands of crimes in Japan, everything ranging from theft, assault, rape and even murder. And we'll leave a link to the overwhelming list of crimes that we found in the episode description. Just because we can't go through it here because we'll be here forever and we'll all be massively fucking depressed.

But go have a look at it if you'd like to, you know, burn those things into your brain. So knowing this, it wouldn't have been out of the question to speculate that the Miyazawa family's killer could well have been a U.S. serviceman. After all, Yokota Air Base was only 12 miles from the Miyazawa's house. Also, analysis of the killer's blood revealed some important things. He was of mixed heritage. His paternal genes showed that his father had a one in five chance of being Korean and a one in ten chance of being Chinese and his maternal genes showed that his mother was likely of southern European descent specifically near the Adriatic Sea so we're talking like Albania, Bosnia, Croatia,

Italy, Montenegro or Slovenia. So we've got two links to Korea. Japan occupied Korea for a really long time. 35 years. I mean, it depends how you define really long time, but yeah, 35 years. And they're not friends. I met a girl in Japan because I was living in Korea at the time. So I was like talking to her and she's like, please like, don't like raise your voice or like say this loudly, but I am Korean. I'm not Japanese, but had lived there her whole life, first language Japanese. And she was very ashamed of it also. So the two links to Korea that we have are the traders and the DNA. And a third tie to Korea comes from the forensics. The killer's clothing had been washed in hard water. Japan's water is mostly soft. It's why their fish is so nice. Korea, on the other hand, has a hard water system. The US and South Korea have strong military

ties. The demilitarized zone is run entirely by American GIs. Koreans are not allowed up to the DMZ. In the foreigner bars I used to work in, GIs everywhere. So the strong military ties between the US and South Korea could explain why there was sand in the bum bag from around a military base in America and how the killer could easily travel between the two countries. Furthermore, when the police ran the killer's fingerprints through their databases and compared them to over 5 million other fingerprints they had collected from neighbours, criminals, family, friends, ex-residents, they found absolutely no matches whatsoever.

And unfortunately, when they asked South Korea to check if they had a match on their database, the South Koreans said no, which doesn't surprise me at all. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey, to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues

around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the

biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+.

You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.

I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Okay, welcome back. Right, remember the faeces that the killer left unflushed in the toilet? Who could forget? Your favourite subject.

My favourite subject, and I refuse to call them anything but faeces. So that that was left in the toilet. Well, of course, they were analyzed by some poor person working in the fucking lab. But they weren't particularly helpful because all the police really learned from it is what the killer had eaten the day before. And it seems to have been string beans and sesame seeds, which I just feel like I cannot look at either of those things in the same way again. I just very... No, no. Anyway, so apparently the reason that this didn't help too much is because it's a super common home-cooked meal in Japan and it's just not something that would have narrowed anything down in any helpful way at all. But it did lead a lot

of people to speculate that the killer was perhaps something of a mummy's boy. But I'm not really sure what to make of that. Like, we don't know that it was string beans cooked by his mum. So it's a weird, like, conclusion that was jumped to. I don't know. Japanese people, help us out. Is that something only your mum would cook for you? I don't know. A handkerchief was also found in the bum bag and this handkerchief had actually been ironed, which is interesting. And basically some people jumped on this to also say that perhaps that indicated a mother's touch. And possibly it could be that, or it could also possibly be a sign again that the killer was in the military because we do know that, you know, people in the military love fucking ironing things, I yes very true i would not fit in the police also found

makio's computer had been accessed a second time at around 10 a.m because remember we said that the killer accessed it at night while he was there but it was also accessed again at around 10 a.m and this was very very close to the time that Yusuko's mother had entered the house using her spare key when she was getting no answer from her daughter, which could mean that she had possibly just missed the killer. But later on, she told police that it is possible that she knocked the mouse on the floor herself, which would explain why only bookmarked websites had been opened at 10am. So we don't know, it's just worth pointing out. So with that in mind, it's quite difficult to determine exactly when the killer

left the house, but we think he left the same way he came in, through the upstairs bathroom window. But before leaving, he did one final bizarre thing. He dumped a bunch of the Miyazawa's family's rubbish into their bath and just left it there. There's no obvious reason why he would have done this. Maybe he was searching for something in the bins and maybe it would have been easier for him to have it all in one place. Who knows? I feel like if he's going through receipts, maybe he was looking for something in the bin. I feel like that makes sense. Again, it's really confusing and I'm trying to save my wanting to just scream about the analysis of this person's behavior until we get to the end, just when we've gone through all of it.

But I don't know, possibly also throwing a bunch of trash into the bathtub. It can also be indicative of possible rage, of possible distaste, of jealousy, envy, something about maybe he thought these people were trash. He hated them. Maybe he's just trying to defile their home, which could also be connected to him leaving the feces in the toilet. It's about maybe that kind of power and dominance of going into a person's home and killing them and also destroying their stuff and vandalising their property. But again, I don't know. It's interesting. After the news of the heinous murders spread throughout the nation, the police received thousands of tip-offs and many locals came forward claiming to have witnessed a strange man

matching the description that the police had put out. Around six hours after the bodies were discovered, a man admitted himself to a hospital a few hours north of Setagaya. He had a severe wound on his hand, so severe that the bone was exposed. The hospital staff found him suspicious because he refused to give them his name or any details about how he got the injury. And also they thought it was strange that he was so calm about the whole thing,

even though his bones are hanging out. But at the time, the hospital staff weren't aware of the murders because they'd literally only just happened, so they couldn't have put two and two together. This man looked like he was in his 30s and was dressed in a black jacket and jeans. Possibly the most troubling witness statement that the police got was from a local supermarket worker who told investigators that a man matching the killer's description had come in the day before the murders

and purchased, you guessed it, a sashimi knife. As it turned out, it was the only sashimi knife that had been sold the entire day in the store. Again, obviously, that's not indicative of anything like people buying sashimi knives in Japan. Like, I mean, I don't know. It's like people buying chips in England. I don't know if that's super indicative of anything, but it is an interesting witness statement. Yusuko's father-in-law also told police that Yusuko had told him on a number of occasions about a strange car that she had spotted parked in front of their house repeatedly. And Yusuko had found it weird because the entrance to the park was on the other side of

the property and it had its own car park. And that's really the only reason that anyone would be coming there. Because remember, we said it's like a ghost town. There are only four houses there. And it just would have stood out to you and the only way apparently to have accessed the park from that side would have been to jump over the fence which like why would you do when the park has its own car park a cab driver also later came forward and told police that he picked up three men outside of sasagaya park after 12 after 12am on the night in question and drove them to a nearby train station. This cab driver felt that these men were suspicious because they never uttered a word during the entire journey except to say where they needed

to go. And when they got out, the cab driver found a large blood stain on his back seats. So this story gives rise to the idea that there may have been multiple killers. After all, there isn't solid evidence to suggest that there wasn't. Except they didn't leave any of their DNA lying around. The theory that there were multiple killers could explain why there was such contrasting evidence of behaviours at the crime scene and possibly why there were four ice creams eaten. Maybe one of the killers was much more organised than the other, which we've seen countless times in criminal partnerships, where usually, team killers, there is one who's more dominant than the other.

Not always, but most of the time. So if we're talking about the more dominant and organised one, they could have been the one who cut the phone line, purchased the knife the day before, staked out the house for weeks ahead of time, and searched through the family's utility bills and credit cards whilst the other more disorganized one was eating the ice cream taking a nap and forgetting to flush the toilet but even with the overwhelming amount of evidence and the witness statements on top the police still couldn't identify the killer and they couldn't think of a solid motive behind the murders either. It's literally like the hurrier I go, the behinder I get. The more that's collected, the more difficult it gets

to pin it on anything. Because after all, why on earth would anyone want to harm the Miyazawa family? Why would they kill the children? Nothing made sense. So the police, in a desperate attempt to try and solve this, had to think of some motives and they came up with three potentials. Money, a personal grudge, or what they called an unknown reason. So really, they only kind of have two. Yeah, I mean, I guess the unknown one could have been like, it's just a crazy person who like wandered into the house and killed everybody. I don't know. We'll talk about it.

And the money one really stems from the fact that a number of sources have stated that the government had handed out over 100 million yen over the years to the residents of that particular neighborhood to help them move out. Because remember, the government want to buy that land. They want to get you out. They want to make it as easy as possible for people to fucking piss off. So could it be possible that the killer knew that the Miazawas had had a paycheck from the government and this is what he was looking for? Possibly. But the money theory does seem slightly unlikely when you consider the fact whoever had come into the house and killed the family had only stolen around 150,000 yen, which is about $1,500. And they had actually left 190,000 yen behind that was in the

house. And they had a lot of time in the house. They were rifling through things. It doesn't seem like that money was harder to find than the other money. So it doesn't feel like maybe money was the real motive. And also not to mention that when burglars break into a house to steal money, they generally tend to do it when no one is at home. And like we said, that day the Miyazawas had been out all day shopping. Most burglaries, when it's a home invasion for robbery, happen in the middle of the day. They don't happen at night when the entire family is in the house because that's not what a burglar like that wants to happen. But just because the killer wasn't trying to rob the family, it doesn't necessarily

mean that the killings weren't money related. During the 90s, Japan entered what is called by some its quote lost decade, a period of economic depression that saw a huge rise in youth unemployment. By the year 2000, Japan's unemployment rate was over 4%, which might not sound loads, but for Japan it's quite high. Several large banks had crashed and getting loans was extremely difficult. In contrast, the Miyazawa family were pretty well to do. Their murders could have been at the hands of a disgruntled, underpaid, possibly unemployed, angry young man trying to get some sort of societal revenge, class war, maybe something. It could also explain the like vandalising that we see in the house, like the trash being thrown

around and the food being eaten. I don't know, maybe. And they're like feces being left behind. Yeah, like maybe, maybe. So that's theory one. Second theory is that the killings were a result of a grudge against the family. But it just seems just as unlikely as the robbery idea, to be honest. Everybody the police interviewed who knew the family said that Mikio and Yasuko were extremely likable people and they couldn't imagine why anyone would have had anything against them. However, culturally speaking, there is no way, especially in that sort of area, there's no way anyone would speak ill of the dead

absolutely not i'm sure they were nice but like i just don't think that we can take that without a grain of salt and as we said before the overkill especially on the women it does seem like there is some sort of personal thing at stake here and a number of internet sleuths because this case like i'm sure most of you guys have heard of this case, if you're not already sort of intimately aware of it, it is one that is sort of pondered over continuously on the likes of Reddit. And a number of internet sleuths have also suggested that Mikio regularly got into arguments with a group of teenagers for being noisy late at night in the skate park behind their house. And some others also say that he once had an argument with a local biker gang known as Bosozoku.

Both theories could possibly work, but it seems unlikely that a biker gang or a group of teenagers that Mikio maybe yelled at to keep the noise down would annihilate an entire family because of a noise complaint. But then again, you know, we can't entirely rule it out. It just seems strange. If you want to waste an hour, Google Japanese biker gangs, because it is fascinating. It's

this like exaggerated Americana. They all look like they're in Greece, but like times a bajillion, like they've got super high hair. It's fascinating. Go and look it up. Like the sort of subculture in Japan, subcultures plural are so interesting and biker gangs is one of them. Absolutely. I wonder if it stems from the number of years, well, number of decades that Japan was isolated and that it didn't have any contact with the outside world. And I wonder when it did, is it what led to all the springing up of all of these various subcultures there? It's interesting. I don't know. But yeah, I was recently watching a little art history documentary on The Wave

and yeah, they were talking about it there. I thought it was quite interesting. Oh, fascinating. I'll leave the link below if anyone's interested. Right, let's come back to the skateboard outfit that was found at the house because obviously if we're going to go down the theory that Mikio yelled at some skaters in the park and they're the ones who killed him and then oh hey there's a fucking skateboard outfit in the house

where they were all murdered some do think that this whole skateboard outfit could possibly have been a deliberate red herring by the killer in order to throw the police off I don't know about this because I'm like that would be very very highly organized behavior to come to the house with a set of other clothes to leave there in order to try and frame who? Some skaters down the local skate park? Very strange. It's not like you came there with somebody else's DNA and planted it. It's too vague to me to like be a real red herring. And again, if it was this highly organized, it flies in the face of so much else about this crime scene that seems to be the

work of such a disorganized killer. And also, does anybody really skateboard wearing Schlesinger running trainers? I don't know. We asked the boys who work for us, the young men who work for us, and they said no is the answer, but maybe he was just a poser. We don't know. We asked the boys who work for us, the young men who work for us, and they said, no is the answer, but maybe he was just a poser. We don't know. I can't comment on that. I don't know. Or was he wearing these trainers in order to blend in at the park whilst simultaneously watching the house and casing the joint? I don't know. Who knows? I think it's a very weird part of the story, the outfit left behind, but I don't think it's a red herring. I don't know why it's there. Possibly, like you said, somebody having a psychotic break took all their clothes off after they ate the ice cream, had a nap, and then left wearing the family's clothes. I don't

know. Maybe because like the saying one of the coats is missing. Like if I were to be home invasion murdered, I'd like live with my sister. I don't think my sister would be able to say, oh, like her purple t-shirt is missing. No, there's no way that my family could go through my wardrobe and be like, this outfit is missing. No chance. Yeah, no way, no way. Speaking of homicidal psychotic breaks, that is another idea that people talk about, this third possibility of a just homicidal sociopath. In the summer, the same year of the murders, residents had discovered the bodies of a number of stray cats in Shoshigaya Park, which harming of animals is very indicative of a troubled child who could go on to kill.

All of the cats had been mutilated. They'd even been skinned and some of them had had their tails cut off. We know that killers will sometimes practice on animals before they move on to humans and the police did follow this lead up but in the end it turned out that the person who was responsible for the cat skinning was some sort of bank clerk in the area whose DNA was not a match for the killers. He was just a cat skinner. Horrible. Keep a fucking eye on that guy. Yeah right but still that doesn't rule out that the killer could simply have been a travelling opportunistic killer. The eating of the ice cream

and the nap in the house almost suggests someone who might have been homeless or someone who just wanted a nice night in a family home with food, comfortable surroundings and the internet. Maybe the rage was due to the lives that the Miaazawas had that the killer didn't. It's tough. This killer could be almost anybody. Yeah, and that's why we're not probably going to give you a very specific answer in this episode, but we'll talk about all of the theories. So thinking back to what we said earlier about all of the evidence pointing towards the killer being of Korean descent, the paternal genes, the hard water, the Schlesinger trainers,

and the links to the American military base and the military relationship between the US and South Korea. In 2015, the Japanese true crime author Fumiya Ichihashi released a book in Japanese titled The Setagaya Family Murder Case, 15 Years On, The New Facts. Ichihashi is a former journalist and regarded as one of Japan's most famous investigative writers with a career spanning 30 years investigating unsolved cases. And according to his book, when Ichihashi visited

the Miyazawa house, which is the only house still standing now in Soshigaya Park, at least according to Google Earth, he collected soil samples from inside the property. And he claims that this soil can be tracked back to South Korea's Cheongji province, which includes the area surrounding Seoul. In his book, Ichihashi claims he spoke with a man he refers to only as K, and that K told him the news about the 100 million yen windfall that the government had given the Miyazawas

had become common knowledge. Presumably that 10 million yen is for their house. Yeah, to like, I guess, be like, get the fuck out, go find another place to live, please. Right, right, right, right. Kay apparently told Ichiyashi that a man named only as R in the book was hired to kill the family and retrieve the money by the Korean Unification Church. And these guys are fucking nuts the korean unification church otherwise known as the moonies which you're probably a little bit more familiar with as a term are a new religious movement in korea based on christianity loosely you've probably seen

the videos and images of the like football stadium mass weddings that's the moonies that's those guys oh yes oh yes catholicism is the fastest growing religion in korea oh i can believe that they love Football stadium mass weddings. That's the Moonies. That's those guys. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Catholicism is the fastest growing religion in Korea. Oh, I can believe that. They love shame. Ichihashi claims that because the Miyazawas refused to sell some of the land they owned to the church, the church actually hired R to assassinate them and take the 10 million yen anyway.

But R is a soldier in the South Korean military. And in the book, Ichihashi claims to have made contact with R and collected his fingerprints. And he goes on to say that R's fingerprints matched with the fingerprints the killer left in the Miyazawa house. So he's saying that R is at least half of the man they need. But if any of this was true, especially the part about Ichihashi having matched these killers' fingerprints,

surely something would have come of it. And like Ichihashi like are you a fingerprint expert are you a forensic scientist are you a pathologist I think he says that he gets it like independently verified but I'm like why would that not have been groundbreaking information that was why would it be a secret why would you keep who R is a secret? And also, like, why would R willingly be like, oh, it was me, P.S., here are my hands? Like, no way. No, I don't know. I don't know. The whole case, like we said, is just very confusing. There's almost like so much evidence that it's hard to decipher what is relevant and what isn't. And all of the evidence doesn't really lead anywhere. All it does is drown the police in following these various bits of evidence that don't actually go towards pointing towards a specific person or even a specific motive. And so I guess like we could

throw theories back and forth all day. But if we were to talk about like what we think maybe actually did happen, personally, I guess that I find the theory that the killer was some sort of psychopathic US serviceman stationed in the area maybe the most plausible because of the sand. It came from a US base. There is one 12 miles away. It's not that far. We know that US servicemen had committed atrocities in Japan

and they likely knew that investigators weren't probably going to look that hard into the murders, given what was maybe known about the way murders and homicides are treated in Japan. Maybe it's just like an easy pass for them. I don't know. Yeah, totally. And also, like, people aren't going to like this, but American GIs have a horrible reputation in East Asia.

Horrible. So it would be assumed that any violence, especially sexual violence, was carried out by American soldiers. Although there wasn't any evidence of sexual violence at this crime. But like we said, there was a long history of violent crimes committed in Japan dating back decades by US servicemen. Like we said, there is a list in the episode description below and in the sources that you can check out. But check out sounds very casual, like I'm sending you to the latest fucking Britney music video. You know what I mean. So the only thing that gives me any kind of like

trepidation about the theory of it being a US serviceman is that back in 2014, so like 14 years after the murder, Japan and America came to an agreement to share fingerprint data with one another. And it came into effect in 2019. Barack Obama and the then Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, agreed to allow Japan's National Police Agency, so the MPA, and U.S. agencies such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to cross-reference biometric databases. All agencies can now request fingerprint data for any individual if they have cause to do so. The MPA says it has around 11 million unidentified fingerprints in its databases,

as well as 380,000 unidentified prints from unsolved cases. The FBI had found around 75 million fingerprint sets, and the DHS had almost 230 million. And with the Miyazawa family murders being one of Japan's most infamous unsolved cases that still has a whopping 20 million yen, which is $180,000 reward, to anybody who gives the police information leading to a suspect, it's hard to believe that they haven't cross-examined the killer's prints with the databases

of the American agencies yet. But maybe they haven't cross-examined the prints with the US military's biometric database. We couldn't find any information on it. And you would think that given that South Korea were reluctant to get involved, the American military possibly don't really want this on their track record, considering it is already so extensive. That's the thing. We know that they can share other databases, but whether they checked it with the US military biometric data, we don't know. But I would assume that if somebody building a more established DNA profile of the killer, presumably by looking at poo.

Scientists working on the case claim that there's a chance that this team can figure out whether the killer has any illnesses, what his skin colour was, and maybe even what his face looked like, which seems absolutely bonkers. So all hope isn't lost, because the Golden State Killer, if we all cast our mind back to that, that was wound up relatively recently. So it does happen, but the police aren't that gassed about it. But kind of at this point, what do they have to lose? It seems like what they have to lose is man hours and money and time. And I think they're all probably a bit sick of it.

Yeah, this is the thing, because I find it hard to believe that they're not more interested in what could come from the DNA. Because since the murders took place, around 230,000 police officers have at least at some point worked on this case. And 21 years later, which is where we are today, there are still apparently around 40 officers actively investigating the Miyazawa family murders. And every year on the anniversary of the killings, police officers visit the scene of the crime

and even lay flowers for the victims. Japan previously had a statute of limitation of 25 years for any crimes corresponding to the death penalty but in 2009 a group of grieving families got together and they successfully campaigned to abolish this statute of limitations. Good for them. And this next bit I like it's really really heartbreaking and quite eerie. Because to this day, you'll still find posters plastered around Setagaya City with a picture of a mannequin wearing the clothes that the killer left behind. And apparently in some of these pictures, there's a family sat in the background. Oh no, I don't like that.

I know. Absolutely not. And these posters are there to see if they can jog anybody's memory and, of course, urging people to come forward with any information they might have about the murders. But 21 years on, I don't know. Meanwhile, Miiko's mother, Setsuko Miyazawa, visits the family grave every day

and says a prayer for her lost children and grandchildren. And every day she waits for a phone call from the police to tell her that the suspect has been found. It's become a daily routine for her to cross out each date on the calendar until that day comes. It's so sad. She must be so old now. Like, I know they live a long time in Japan, but come on. So sad. So sad. I hate that. Oh, God. So yeah, that is the case of the Miyazawa family murders, often also referred to everywhere as the Setagaya murders. I don't know, tell us your theories. We like had a good old dig

around on Reddit. We really tried to think of as many theories as we possibly could. But I do think it's just it's a very difficult one. I do lean towards the US servicemen. Yeah, I'm also leaning in that particular direction. Would you like one more fact about Japan? Go for it. So there are three Japanese alphabets, right? And the one you need to know to be able to read a newspaper has 3,000 characters. That's terrifying. Terrifying. And also totally fucking wrong.

Sorry. There are lots of things you need to know to be able, there are lots of characters that you need to know to be able to read a newspaper. And there are four different ways of writing, I think. Who just, I mean, don't listen to Hannah, is what we've learned. I know. Fucking mad.

No, thank you. Imagine listening to a kid fucking recite that. No, thanks. It's fine, kid. You've done it. Well done. I know. Good work.

It's all those cram schools. So yes, guys, that is it for this week, at least on the main feed. If you are interested in extra bonus content from Red Handed, of course,

you can come over immediately now if you are a $5 and up patron over at patreon.com slash redhanded to watch the video of Under the Duvet or you can listen to the audio

right on your usual podcast player as long as you've connected the RSS feed. How to do that is also described on patreon please go find the video we made to explain how to use the rss feed we're going to take a little break from patreon names this week because we are exhausted and we didn't get the list together in time because lots of other stuff is going on but we'll be back next week with patreon names to say thank you to until then bye with patron names to say thank you to. Until then, bye. Bye. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder.

Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more.

Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.