True Crime Campfire - Let the Right One In: A Halloween Special

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Monsters in folklore are easy for us to comprehend. You can only kill a werewolf with a silver bullet, to stop a zombie for good, you have to destroy its brain, and vampires can’t enter your home without your permission. They also have pretty straightforward motivations. Werewolves: Animalistic rage. Zombies: Brains. Vampires: Blood. Human monsters have motivations that are a lot more opaque. What would possess someone to kidnap a woman in broad daylight? To break into a home in the middle of the night to kill the strangers inside? What if no one saw anything? How do you catch a ghost?Case 1: The Murder of Ethel KiddCase 2: The Miyazawa Family MurdersSources:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/07/jonathanwatts.theobserver https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/drumoorhouse/setagaya-family-murders-unsolved https://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=1784https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/TreatyBodyExternal/DownloadDraft.aspx?key=ymB6nZIkmtMHmD4fHNtFClpXxLVi5INdtxEH7GVV6SO/J3tQV0Oi1OZsY1fMY0sHi8/+hJhQOuHrWPxzeSFPfA==https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/new-book-claims-to-shed-light-on-2000-setagaya-family-murders https://mcsmrampage.com/2020/10/text/ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/garden-of-unborn-children https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-29/the-house-of-horrors-in-setagaya-japan/11771304https://smol.news/p/the-scary-strange-setagaya-family https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHI4Q6bmnnU&t=270shttps://medium.com/the-mystery-box/what-we-really-know-about-the-setagaya-family-murder-a87389875e71 https://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/multilingual/english/safe_society/wanted/seijo.files/eng.pdf https://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/multilingual/english/safe_society/wanted/seijo.html Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack, Season 4, Episode 3 https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1074838/edward-wayne-beverly-v-commonwealth-of-virginia/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Monsters and folklore are easy for us to comprehend. You can only kill a werewolf with a silver bullet. To stop a zombie for good, you have to destroy its brain. and vampires can't enter your home without your explicit permission. They also have pretty straightforward motivations.

Werewolves, animalistic rage, zombies, brains, vampires, blood. Human monsters have motivations that are a lot more opaque. What could possess someone to kidnap a woman in broad daylight? To break into a home in the middle of the night to kill the strangers inside? What if no one saw anything? How do you catch a ghost? This is Let the Right One In, a Halloween grab bag. Case 1. Depravity, the murder of Ethel Kidd.

It was April 13, 1989, and Ethel Kidd's daughter was wondering where she was. Her parents had purchased some land about a mile away from her house, Burr Hill, Virginia, and were building their dream house in preparation for her husband's retirement. The house was almost done, and Ethel often stayed there while her husband Gilbert was still working in Washington, D.C., but Ethel spent a ton of time with her daughter. The previous day, Ethel spent most of the day with her and the kids, but this morning she hadn't heard from her. She called the new house, but got a voicemail. Hmm. That was odd, but not unthinkable. Maybe she's already on her way for a cup of coffee, she told her

husband Thomas as he left for work. As he drove along, Thomas passed by Ethel and Gilbert's house and saw that Ethel's car was still in the driveway. It gave him a sick feeling. Ethel rarely missed a call if she was home, so he decided to go check on his mother-in-law. When he pulled up to the house, he saw a book laying open on the lawn. When he inspected it, he saw it was a road atlas. He grabbed it on his way into the house, thinking maybe Ethel just dropped it without noticing. He tried the front door, and when the doorknob gave, the panic rose in his chest. Ethel, who lived much of her life in the big city, would never, ever leave her door unlocked.

She kept the door locked even during the day when she was home. As he walked through the house, calling her name, he was struck by how quiet it was. Not only that, but it seemed undisturbed. There was still some construction material being used, but it didn't appear that there was any kind of a struggle. And Ethel had just disappeared without a trace. Not knowing what else to do, Thomas called the police to report Ethel missing. Something was clearly very, very wrong. Ethel's son-in-law speaks very highly of her.

On an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, he talks about how Ethel was a fantastic cook and grandmother. She loved hosting the whole family for meals, and she was one of the most kind, generous people on the planet. She was just likable. investigators got to work searching for Ethel and trying to trace when she'd been seen last. On April 12th, the day before she disappeared, she'd spent the day with her daughter before getting home at around 2 p.m. There she was seen retrieving her mail and then nothing. Ethel Kidd had seemingly evaporated into thin air. Police put together a search team to comb the nearby Woodland area but had no luck finding her. Eight days later, about three miles from

Ethel's house, a hunter was walking in the woods when he came across a scene right out of a horror movie. There in the woods stood the body of Ethel Kid. She'd been tied upright to a tree, lifeless eyes gazing toward a logging road about 50 feet away. The most terrifying thing is that this exact area had been searched thoroughly eight days before. The killer had specifically dumped her body in a place that had been crawling with police just a few days prior. It felt like the killer was taunting them. Her cause of death was found to be strangulation. An autopsy found signs of sexual assault

and placed her time of death at around seven days before. And this is the strangest part. Her body showed signs of preservation, leading investigators to believe that the killer had stored her in a deep freeze or even a refrigerated truck. So strange. The cord used to tie her body to the tree was traced to a type of drapery cord sold to hospitals and hotels,

not anything that was available to the general public. Her clothes were covered in fibers from the type of upholstery used in cars, proving that her body had been transported. The real treasure trobe of evidence, though, was the road atlas that Thomas found in Ethel's yard. Tucked between the pages were notes, scribbled in a unique handwriting, written on sheets of paper from a national hotel chain.

The notes appeared to be a list of sexually explicit messages, possibly used as flashcards to solicit sex workers. It featured phrases like, let's fuck, and pull over, want to fuck? The second note seemed to be some kind of macabre shopping list. It is so freaking creepy. One of the lines said, ID, ASAP, and then in parentheses, paper trip book. This is in reference to the book by Barry Reed, published in the 70s, about how to create a new identity for yourself. Other items included business dress, shirt, slacks, cologne, choose location, glasses, hat, cosmetics, and an abbreviation, H.C. T.P. S.G. Which police surmised to mean handcuffs, tape, and surgical gloves, or stun gun.

Ugh. The police believe that the killer approached Ethel while she was still out on her lawn. He was holding the road atlas and appeared to be a traveler looking for directions. Always friendly, Ethel obliged. Then, either stunning her or using some other method of control, he got her into his car, where he took her to a second location and held her there for at least 24 hours. Oh, God. The police believed him to be a white male in his 30s or 40s, who most likely lived alone and had few friends.

He had some kind of job that kept him staying in hotels frequently, such as a trucker or a salesman. He most likely had poor relationships with the women in his life and had never been successful romantically. Unfortunately, without many leads, the case went cold for about two years until it was covered on Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack in October of 1991. RIP Robert Stack. I know.

Legend. Jinks. Oh, my God. He really is. I just kidding. Every time he's mentioned, I just have to, like, give a shout out. Yeah. He's honestly, like, how many crimes has he been responsible for solving, you know?

No kidding. A viewer saw the handwriting and recognized it as belonging to Edward Wayne Beverly. And that's nuts to me, that somebody recognized his handwriting. Yeah. Well, it was really distinctive, as I recall. It was like not normal looking handwriting. And also, we have to point out that how many friggin serial killers have the middle name Wayne? I swear to God, it comes up like constantly, especially the serial killers from like the 70s, 80s, 90s.

It's always freaking something, something, or something, Dwayne something. Yeah. It's just wild. We should study that phenomenal. Like, it might just be the law of large numbers, like Wayne was a very popular middle name, but also... Right. I mean, I'm sure... We might just be naming our kids with serial killer names, you know?

Investigators tracked him down and discovered that he was serving time in prison on a burglary charge. They learned that Edward Wayne had lived down the street from Ethel and moved out of town very soon after the murder was committed. They matched his DNA and fingerprints to those found at Ethel's house and at the dump site. He was charged with sexual assault, abduction, and murder, and was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. He died in prison in 2008. There's not much out there on this case except the original Unsolved Mysteries and its update, but I'd love to know how accurate the profile was. I can't find where he worked anywhere.

But the fact that he chose a victim so close to home indicates that this was probably his first murder. And, like, I shudder to think what would have happened if he'd been out of prison, like, during the time after the murder. He definitely would have done it again. There's no doubt that this kind of a murder, you don't be just one of those unless you get caught. And he was bold. He, like, you know, left the body. Oh, God, incredibly. Yeah.

Broad daylight, too. And to go back into an area where the police have been in the past, you know, 72 hours to dump the body is just incredibly, like. like reckless, stupid, you know, you might call it, because they might be surveilling. I mean, it was, yeah, definitely. He was a guy who did not have a lot of impulse control. So he would have done it again for sure. Ethel Kidd deserved to spend her retirement spoiling her grandbabies and visiting with her kids and spending time with her husband.

Some selfish asshole prevented that solely because he had fucked up fantasies and problems with women. It's unbelievable how unfair it is that Ethel Kidd was taking. from this world, and stupid creep Edward Wayne got to breathe one second of free air after what he did. We hope her family has found some peace. Moving on to case two, Goldilocks, the Miyazawa family murders. So, campers, for this one, we're in the Setagaya neighborhood of Tokyo, Japan. It's the kind of sleepy, suburban neighborhood that business boys the world over move their families when the bustle of city life is too much.

Makio Miyazawa had moved to a roomy two-story home in 1991 with his wife, Yasuko, when the pair decided to start a family. They welcomed two children together, Nina and her little brother, Ray. McKeo was working as a marketing consultant while his wife ran a tutoring business from home. Yasuka's older sister, On, lived next door, but spent most of her time overseas with her husband and son, so their mother, Haruko, lived there instead, ready to help with the kids whenever possible. The house was a large duplex, sharing a wall, and Macchio was initially hesitant to live so close to his in-laws. I mean, understandably, right?

But eventually he agreed to make the purchase on the condition that they could soundproof the houses, something that Onn readily agreed to. Since On's, yeah, I know, since On's house was mostly vacant, Yasuko could bring her students there for tutoring. As the millennium came and went, the Miyazawa family was living a quiet life. McKeio had turned 44 and his wife was 41 while Nina was eight and Ray was six. Nina loved ballet and was a talented piano player. Ray had just started kindergarten. The biggest obstacle they really faced was that the city of Tokyo was buying up their neighbors' properties, planning on expanding the nearby Soshagaya Park.

By the end of 2000, only four homes remained, including the Miyazawa's. Most families were eager to sell off their land and leave, but yes, Choucault was initially resistant to the change. She didn't want to pick up and move her family's life, and she worried about little Ray, who had a developmental disorder, acclimatizing to a brand new environment. Not to mention, she kind of had a sweet deal

tutoring from her sister's house. Most other spaces would cost money to rent, and it was really convenient to work so close to home. The family eventually agreed to sell their land, planning to move out in March of 2001. On December 31st, 2000, Hariko was having a hard time reaching her daughter. The phone line at the house had been disconnected,

so she just popped next door to see if the family was in. She rang the doorbell and called out for her daughter, but nobody responded. Assuming they were running errands and would be back soon, she led herself into the house to wait for them to come back. She stepped inside and was met with an eerie silence. After slipping out of her shoes and putting on some house, slippers, she walked a few feet past the family's computer that was set up in the entrance

and toward the stairs that led to the garage. Lying on the landing was Mikio Miyazawa in a pool of blood. He had been stabbed multiple times with a thin, sharp knife. Haroko screamed and started racing around the house, calling for her daughter and the children. She found them upstairs. Ray had been strangled to death in his sleep, while Yasuko and Nina suffered from multiple stab wounds. Their bodies were close together. Ray had still been in bed, while Yasuko and Nina were lying on the floor near the stairs. Haruko touched her daughter, hoping it was just a dream that it was some sick prank. But no, her daughter was dead. Her grandbabies were dead. She called 110, the Japanese emergency number, and the police soon swarmed the scene. The most widely accepted

theory of the crime goes like this. Sometime during the evening on December 30th, an unknown person disconnected the phone line and entered the Miyazawa home, most likely through the second floor bathroom window by climbing a nearby tree and squeezing his way inside. From there, he took a few steps to the children's bedroom, where he found little Ray sleeping in bed. His body and clothes had no traces of blood, which is why the investigators believe he died first. Just down the Stairs, McKeo was likely working at the time on the computer in what we would call the foyer. He might have heard a disturbance upstairs and started ascending the stairs to see what was going on. And at the top, he met the killer, who savagely attacked him.

An autopsy would later show that McKeo's attack was absolutely brutal. He was stabbed dozens of times in the torso, thighs, chest, and back, as well as in the head. While stabbing his head, the sashimi knife broke, leaving a fragment in Mikkio's skull. Does that sound like overkill to you? Yeah, like enormous overkill. And as we've talked about before, we see that kind of attack from a couple different types of killers, those with a personal grudge against the victim, and sometimes serial killers in search of sexual release. And sometimes a killer with a grudge against somebody else who's using,

this victim as a stand-in for the one that they're really angry at, like Edward Kemper. Yasiko and Nina had been sleeping in the attic. It's clear to me that the killer had been watching the house or had even been inside before because the attic was closed off

and only accessible by a retractable door. The killer climbed the ladder and attacked them where they lay on their futon with the broken sashimi knife. Their stab wounds were primarily on their heads and faces, which is also So incredibly rage-motivated.

I mean, that is so personal to stab somebody in the face. Right. And it's not efficient. Like, it's not an efficient way of stabbing. No, no. So... Absolutely not. It's anger.

Nina had two teeth knocked out, pointing to a physical assault of some kind. The broken sashimi knife probably wasn't as effective as he hoped. So the killer left Yasuko and Nina to grab a knife from the family's kitchen. Seeing an opportunity, Yasuko tried. to stem Nina's bleeding with a tissue and some bandages and rushed to get her out of the house. She carried her daughter down the stairs, but it was too late. The killer descended on them again, stabbing them repeatedly with the family's own knife.

Their bodies were found lying close to one another, backs touching. Nina's death was ruled as a cervical spinal cord injury caused by a backstab wound. Police found signs of overkill with these two as well. they were dead long before the killer stopped stabbing. At this point, the killer took his time. He left the bodies where they lay and visited the family's kitchen. He found a first aid kit, which he used to try and treat a wound on his hand, presumably from when he was using the knives on the family.

Then he found little cardboard cups of ice cream in the freezer. And instead of using a spoon, he squeezed the cups and bit into the ice cream. And I don't know why, but this detail really freaks me out. Yeah, that's such a peculiar habit that I can't imagine that it wouldn't stand out to someone who knows this guy. Oh, for sure. Somebody knows this dude. Like, that's not a normal way to eat ice cream. And that detail, I think, is really important because somebody is going to remember, like, some dude they were in the army with or something like that. Somebody they worked with that used to eat ice cream like that. Somebody watching him biting into that ice cream like a freaking feeling kind of vaguely sick to their stomach and not knowing why. Yeah. I just, it's like, it hurts. Not only does it hurt my teeth, but it's so, like, I don't even know if this is the right word,

but it's inhuman. Like, it's an inhuman way to eat ice cream. Alien, yeah. Yes. Thank you. An alien. Thank you. He also drank some barley tea he found in the fridge for going soda or beer.

Then he used the family's toilet, taking a poop, and then not flushing. Yeah, which is weirdly common. Like, there are a number of cases of, like, break-ins and murders, too, where the perpetrator, like, drops a deuce and doesn't flush. which I guess it just adds to the disrespect, but ugh. Later analysis of the feces showed that earlier that day, he'd eaten green beans and sesame seeds. Ugh, gross. Yeah, it's our first fecal matter analysis on the show, so happy Halloween.

Then he went through the family's documents, pulling out all the drawers from their filing cabinets. He took them all upstairs and dumped them in the tub. Then he dumped out Yasuko's purses, Macchio's wallet, Lukowski's and other official documents and put them in the unfleshed toilet, along with a towel smudged with his own blood and one of the empty cuffs of ice cream.

That's so weird. I mean, he could have been trying to, if he was hip to this stuff, which not everybody was in 2000, but it might have been a way to try and dispose of some DNA, but then I think he left his blood elsewhere, right? Yeah, he was not very effective if so. No.

Footprints at the scene showed that the killer, around with his back to the wall using small steps, which creeps me out. I'm not going to lie, it kept me up at night a little bit. It's very creepy. And some enterprising internet denizens who are all on the case, by the way, if you look it up, they're on it. They think this shows army training, which is weird and not how army training works. But investigators actually attribute this strange gate to trying not to slip on all the blood, which I think makes way more sense. Like, the, you know, McKeio was killed on the bottom landing of the stairs and, um, Yasko and Nina were killed at the top.

So there was probably a lot of blood dripping down the stairs. Yeah. At 1.18 a.m. he used McKeo's computer connecting to the Wi-Fi for five minutes. During that time, he created a new folder on the desktop and went to a website for a local theater, which McKeo had bookmarked. And the guy attempted to buy a ticket, I guess. But that's all. And, you know, yeah, we don't know if he put anything in the folder,

but that might just be something they're holding back as part of the investigation, you know. Or it could be an empty folder, which is weird. At some point during all this, the killer took a nap on the family sofa and changed his clothes. He left his old clothes folded neatly on the sofa with his other belongings. Investigators would find his jacket, a long-sleeve baseball, quarter-sleeve t-shirt with purple, sleeves and a light gray torso, a bucket hat, gloves, jeans, and a fanny pack. Investigators believe he either brought a change of clothes or took some of the kios, but English sources on this case are either like weird translations or secondhand

like rumors, so it's hard to tell like what's a fact and what's just like what somebody on Reddit assumed. Also left behind were dozens of footprints and fingerprints as well as heaps of DNA. For a long time, for a long time, it was believed that the killer had been in the house until at least 10 a.m. Because McKeo's computer connected to the Wi-Fi again at that time. However, that would mean the killer was in the house at the same time as Haroko, Yasko's mother. Investigators now theorized that in her panic of discovering the bodies, Haroko knocked the mouse off the desk, causing the computer to wake up and connect to the Wi-Fi.

I think that makes sense. Yeah, and they did an experiment where they did something similar and it worked exactly how the second connection happened. Whenever the killer left, he took about 150,000 yen, which is about 1,500. US dollars. Investigators got to work interviewing the people around the Miyazawa family. Who would want them dead? Turns out not many people. According to some witnesses,

McKeio had some kind of conflict with skaters that used the park near the house. One source indicated that there had been a heated argument between McKeio and a group of skaters, but investigation into the kids that frequented the park turned out to be a dead end. There's also the fact that everyone around McKeo thought the world of him. Some of his co-workers told the Guardian he was a congenial man who got on well with everyone. Definitely not the sort of person to make enemies. Which, like, with

Japanese stoic culture, that's like basically, like so much praise. They basically were like, he was the most wonderful man we've ever met. You know, that's their version of he lit up a room when he walked in, you know? Right. Of course, the stolen money could have been the motive, but the

brutality of the killings combined with the meager amount taken kind of makes that theory hard to believe. Further, the killer sought out Nina and Yasuko to kill them. He could have just left them and taken the money. A money-motivated burglar just doesn't want confrontation, especially the kind of sustained invasion we see here, where the killer clearly took pleasure in the violation of staying in the house with the bodies.

There's no way money was the motive here. There's just no, no way. Police chief Takeshi Sushita led the investigation from the day of the murder until his retirement. He ordered his people to find the stores that sold the items left at the house, and they had paid art. His hat was sold at a store called MX around Tokyo, between 1998 and November 2000. Almost 3,500 of them had sold during that time. The Windbreaker-type jacket in size large had sold 82,000 since October of that year from Uniclo, both from brick-and-mortar stores and online and in catalogs. The scarf he left has not been

identified, but was green with red, black, blue, and orange tartan checks. It didn't have a tag. His gray fleece gloves were sold by jeans mate and MX between 98 and 2000. Between the two retailers, almost 11,000 were sold. His shoes, which were not left at the scene and were identified with footprints, were identified as Slazinger brand tennis shoes that were manufactured in Korea. While the brand and style of shoe was on sale in Japan, none had been sold in the size of the killer. They were around a men-size-10.

in U.S. terms. Most likely, they'd been bought in Korea. Now, after these were identified, we get into the really, really specific stuff. The killer had left behind a hit bag that was made by a manufacturer in Osaka that was sold at a number of stores between 95 and 99. About 3,000 of them were sold. Inside the bag were two types of sand. The first type was from the Meura Peninsula, which is where the Kanagawa Prefecture is located, and the second type of sand, is found in Southern California, specifically a region in little east of Los Angeles. They also found some highlighter ink and two strands of short black and black brown hair that appeared to be cut by clippers.

Then there's the handkerchiefs. The killer had purchased two black handkerchiefs from a store called Mugi. Between 95 and 2000, almost 67,000 of these were sold. One of the handkerchiefs had a slit cut in the middle and seemed to have been wrapped around the handle of the sashimi knife. Investigators found that handkerchiefs were used in a similar way at fish processing factories

to help workers hold on to their knives as they clean the fish. Also found on the handkerchiefs were trace amounts of Dracar Noir Cologne. Draccar Noir was sold in Japan for many years by that point, but it's definitely like a younger choice of Cologne. I mean, the Gen X folks, I know y'all are going to remember Draccar Noir because every guy

in the world wore it. And the night. The knife used in the murder was one of 1,500 sold in 46 stores in and around Tokyo. In fact, one witness identified a man wearing similar clothes to the killer buying a knife in the same neighborhood where the Miazawa's lived on the day of the murder. That is big. Oh, yeah, it is. Finally, we have The Shirt. Now, if it sounds like I capitalized that, it's because I did. The shirt was sold by MX between August and December of 3rd.

2,000 and only 130 of them were sold. The police have managed to track down 12 of the owners and clear them of any wrongdoing. It seems like the police believe this to be their best chance of tracking down the killer, which you can kind of see why. I mean, 130, that's a manageable number. I mean, it really narrows down their suspects for millions to a few dozen. Those are way better odds. Oh, yeah.

A press release posted in English by the Metro Police even maps out prefectures in Japan where the shirt was sold and identifies the number of shirts whose owners have been, you know, tracked down. I'm not exaggerating when I say this is the most thorough press release I've ever seen in my life. It's crazy. This thing is fascinating to read, too. We'll post it. From his clothes, police estimate that the killer was around 170 centimeters or about 5'7, and fairly slim, and five of the items could have been purchased in the neighborhood around the Miazawa's home, leading some investigators to believe he lived nearby. They believe he was between the ages of 15 and 35, was right-handed, and he has type A blood.

So clearly, our killer has links to many different countries. Obviously, his clothing items were mostly purchased in Japan, with the exception of the shoes. His knife skills were linked to Chinese fishmongers. The sand is the thing that caught our attention, though. Sand traced to two unique regions that have one particular thing in common. That particular thing is that these two locations are both close to American Air Force bases. Kanagawa is home to the Naval Air Facility at Sugi, which is run by both Japan and the U.S. And Edwards is home to Edwards Air Force Base.

Now that is one strange connection. Was our guy an American? An American airman? That's kind of our pet theory at the moment. It's only reinforced by the DNA. DNA analysis shows that the killer was male with an East Asian father and a southern European mother. The DNA didn't pop when they ran it through their database, which led the investigators to believe that the killer may not have been a Japanese native. Online, people wave away this theory, saying all foreigners are fingerprinted when they enter the country, and that's true.

Now, Japan didn't start fingerprinting every visitor until after 9-11 and didn't really have an established system until 2007. Right. And add that to the fact that he may have entered the country as part of deployment. I'm not sure if he would have been fingerprinted at all. I'm curious if any military training would include how to wrap a knife with cloth to protect your hands or to hold on to it better. Yeah, good point.

I bet it does. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. After the murder, two people came to the police with reports of a suspicious man. Sometime after midnight on the night of the murder, A woman said she'd been driving outside the crime scene when a man ran out of the house and jumped in front of her car getting clipped by her bumper before scurrying away. Investigers don't believe this witness as there was no sign of blood on her car or on the street outside the house. Further, Haroko, Yasku's mother, reported that she unlocked the door the next morning and the killer had dumped all the house keys into the toilet. So he didn't run out the door, you know.

Yeah. The day after the murder, a man came to a medical center in a town about three hours away from the me and Zawa home, with a wound on his hand so deep that his bone was visible and he needed to be stitched up. The staff told police that he was in his late 30s, so the police let that lead die because they didn't think he matched the description of a youthful skater. Oh, come on. Okay, you'd think that they would haul his ass in, like, just to be safe. Anybody can buy clothes. He was just wearing a black jacket and jeans when he showed up to the center. That's hardly evidence that he's never shopped at Uniclo. And he might have been dressing younger on purpose.

You know, like to be in disguise a little bit. I mean, this just freaking kills me. Such a missed opportunity. Yeah. Also, because of the athleticism of the killer, they do believe he has a formal military background. But unfortunately, because of the shoes, the focus is mostly on a Korean citizen.

One Japanese true crime author named Fumaya Ichashi is certain that the killer is Korean and an assassin. He, yeah, his theory. is that Makia was involved with the sorry it's just so it's so wild he thought he thinks

the Makia was involved somehow with the Korean Unitarian Church with evidence that I have not seen by the way I don't know why he thinks that bananas I can't imagine yeah and this church

motivated by the money that the family would have made from selling their house ordered a hit on the entire family Ichashi wrote as the criminal left behind his knives, clothes, bags, fingerprints, palm prints, and footprints without care, I couldn't help but think that he was confident he would not get caught. And like, I don't want to criticize a writer for doing his job, but, you know, that's not how

any of that works. A hardened hitman just wouldn't leave behind that much evidence, nor would he be so messy and disorganized when there are two adults that need to be controlled at the scene. And he wouldn't kill them with that degree of rage and overkill. It would be quick and efficient. And also, how is the church going to get the money from the sale of their house? Yeah. Did a church get money from the sale of the house? I'm guessing no.

That's just bizarre to me. Did the family even have the money from the sale of the house yet? Like, I doubt it. It wasn't much. No. No. I wouldn't think so because it wasn't happening for months. It's absolutely bananas.

I don't get it. Yeah. And, you know, as we've pointed out, This has enough plot holes to drive a truck through. This theory also relies on something that no good camper around our campfire would ever consider xenophobia. Japan has a pretty pervasive anti-Korean sentiment, so it would make sense that it'd be easier for them to believe that a Korean national committed a horrific murder instead of a Japanese citizen. The investigators did request the South Korean government to help them with DNA analysis, but South Korea declined. It's unsurprising based on the history between the two countries, which we do not have time to get into.

But let's just say Japan did a bunch of war crimes that they have yet to apologize for in an official capacity. Yeah, if we were a history or culture podcast, we'd absolutely take you down that rabbit hole. But for now, let's just say that it's understandable that South Korea might not want to fork over their citizens' DNA just because some shoe prints were found at the crime scene. I don't think this theory holds a lot of water anyway, especially because if this was the work of a history, hitman. He's the worst hitman that we've ever seen in the history of our show. And we've seen some real bad ones. Yeah, we have. Right? And like, were they supposed to keep money in their house? This was 2000. And the killer only got away with like $1,500 maximum. This feels like a serial killer to me. It feels like a stranger murder. Big golden state killer energy, the way he hung around in the

house afterward and went through their stuff. That shows a desire to take ownership of these people. You're mine. I'll do with you what I want. I'll disrespect your stuff. So maybe he was transient, like Israel Keys. There could be cases like this that they haven't connected yet because they're happening in other countries. And that would definitely fit the profile of the military man, the airman who's all over the world. Yeah. Police Chief Suchita believes that this book is more like a novel than nonfiction. He said, if the book was true, the criminal would have been caught. Yeah, true. I'd really like to know if the Japanese investigators have asked the U.S. feds to run the DNA against CODIS. The DNA markers are found in something like one in five Koreans, one in ten Chinese people, and one in four Japanese people. So statistically, I can see why they want to follow the Korean lead, but also it's not great practice to limit your investigation that much so early. That kind of tunnel vision can kill the case dead. And it's entirely possible this angle is just overreported by both Japanese and Western public.

so we can't really criticize the police on it at this point because it might just be overblown. The Metro Police actually still have detectives actively working this case. It's not cold. As of 2019, Detective Manabu eBay has taken over. It's not a cold case. They are actively on it. So if anything we've talked about today caught your ear, please reach out to them. We'll post their contact information on our socials. This is one of those cases that just sticks with the investigators. You can tell. it hit police chief Sushita hard. In an interview for ABC News Australia, he says that he's still working on the case in an unofficial capacity. He goes back to the scene to remind himself with details. The house is still standing, by the way. They have not sold it. And it's still filled with

stuff. It's so, it's so sad. He studies old case files. He stays in close contact with the family. He cooks meals and delivers them to Makio's mother, Setsuko. Oh, man. And it's hard to fathom her grief, she has a shrine up in her home for her family. All of Nina's and raised toys are still on display. Whenever he goes and visits, he greets her and then immediately kneels at the shrine to pray. There's one more disturbing detail about this case. On April 9, 2001, which was exactly 100 days after the murder, a two-foot-tall, 70-pound statue on a short pedestal was placed in the park close to the Miyazawa home. The statue is stone and it was of Jizo, a Buddhist deity that are believed to protect the souls of children that die before their parents and keep them safe from demons as they ascend

into the afterlife. When I visited Japan, I visited the Garden of Unborn Children at the Zajogic Temple. There are rows and rows of these little stone statues with red hats and flowers and other offerings. The temple holds memorial services once a month for anyone who's experienced pregnancy loss, a stillborn birth, or an infant death. And the mourners make a little red pouch to hold their offerings and drape them around the statues and leave other gifts. It's one of the most moving experiences I've ever had, witnessing the care and love given to these families who've experienced one of the most inconceivable losses a human can experience. So, Gizo statues are an important and well-known figure in Japanese culture, especially when it comes to lost children. A small Chinese character, translating to six, was carved on the bottom of the statue and on top of the pedestal. So this is interesting. Could this have been the killer?

Could it have been someone close to the family? It's not like it's something easily moved or concealed. We're talking about 70 pounds. Somebody had to heft this thing around and place it. The investigators have no idea who put it there, nor do they know who made it or where it was sold. It's just one more loose end in this case left unresolved. This is one of those unsolved cases that feels like it just needs a single push to solve. All the pieces are there. We're just waiting on the habeas grab us.

To me, it feels like a tribute rather than a taunt the statue, but who knows. We sometimes take for granted the safety we have in our homes. I'll leave you with this. In one media walkthrough of the house, one of Yasuko's sisters said that her family can't bear to demolish it. She points out the wall where Nina and Ray's heights were marked in pencil. She tells them, is it really okay to demolish the scene when the crime is being forgotten? I want people to know that the four of them were trying their best to survive in their small home. Let's all try our best the sweet campers.

For the Miyazawa family and for Ethelkid. So those were wild ones, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Lataja, Martha, Maxine, Liv, Angela, and Lydia. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you are missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes two, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. We'll be posting our Halloween patrons-only special in the next couple of days, and it is a banger.

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