← Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
159. The Mystery of The Setagaya Family Murders
00:44:22
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Hey, Sal. Hank. What's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.
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Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.
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It was New Year's Eve in Japan in the year 2000. In an isolated home on the southwest corner of Tokyo, an elderly woman named Haruko picked up the phone and dialed her daughter, Yasuko. Haruko and her daughter spoke every single day, especially around this time on Sunday mornings. But on this particular morning, the phone rang and rang without an answer. So Haruko tried again, but still nothing. Now it was the day after New Year's and it was a Sunday. There was no reason why Yasuko, her husband Nikio, and their two small children that made up the Miyazawa family wouldn't be home. So Haruko, who actually lived in the attached home right next door, just figured she would walk over and knock on her daughter's door. Maybe her daughter just couldn't get to the phone and she wanted to see her. But when she did that, there was still no answer. It was like no one was home. She started getting a little bit nervous. So she just grabbed the key to Yasuko's front door and let herself in to check on her daughter and her family. But almost instantly, the metallic smell of blood hit Haruko's nose. Before she had time to really register what she was smelling, she looked down and saw something that made her gasp in horror. There on the floor was her son in law, Mikio. He was lying motionless on the front of the staircase with bloody wounds all over his body. But it wasn't just Mikio. As Haruko ran through the house calling out for her daughter, she saw that the entire family Mikio Yasuko and their two young children had been murdered sometime in the dead of the night by an unknown assailant. So Haruko did the only thing she could think of in her panicked state, and she called the police. But when they arrived, they realized that the scene was not like anything they had ever seen before. It seemed like not only had a killer meticulously moved from room to room to attack the entire Miyazawa family, but he had spent hours in the home both before and after the crime took place. He even put on Mikio's clothes at some point and used the family computer. So now the question became not only who had done this, but why? Welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding. I'm your host Kayla Moore, and today we are going to talk about one of the most unsettling stories to ever come out of Japan. And it's still one of the country's longest standing mysteries. It's a story that to me at least, is a good reminder that if you ever get the feeling that you're being watched, if the hairs on the back of your neck ever stand up because you sense danger, even if you can't see it, you might just want to trust your gut. This story had me looking out of my windows at night and here in the rogue detecting society, we're just surrounded by woods and a graveyard. So that actually wasn't very helpful. And quickly, before we dive in, I wanted to actually give a shout out to a listener, Tessa, who is training to be a crime scene investigator and just learned how to dust for fingerprints. That is something that's going to come up a lot in this story. But but in general, I love hearing about your darkly curious jobs and hobbies, so please keep them coming. You can always send me your submissions@heartst pounding.com. okay, now let's get back into this story and I just want to give a heads up that this episode deals with the deaths of children and it also references animal abuse. So if you ever want to double check an episode's content warnings before diving in, you can check out the description.
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This episode is brought to you by Alma.
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A year from today, who do you want to be more patient?
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Maybe less reactive? I always think about these things around the new year and I know I want to work on managing my anxiety personally. Well, you deserve to feel like the future version of yourself and the right therapist can really help. With a network where 99 of therapists accept insurance, Alma helps connect people to in network care that aligns with their preferences and coverage. People who use ALMA to find a therapist who accepts their insurance save an average of 80% on the cost of sessions and 99 of Alma's therapists accept step insurance, making it easy to get affordable care. I've used therapy before and I know that when you want support, the last.
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Thing you need is to hear that.
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Someone is not in your network. ALMA really helps make that part easier. A year from today isn't that far away. Get started now@hello Alma.com heart starts that's hello Alma.com h E-A-R-T s t a.
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R t s that's h e l.
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L o h a l m a.com heartstarts this episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. So the other day I got a phone call from the woman who owns.
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The place where I send my beloved.
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Dog Fitzgerald to daycare. She told me that she was so sorry but she had double charged me for a few months and she would be sending me the money back.
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And I was so thankful but also.
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A little embarrassed because I know there are so many other things on my card, namely subscriptions that I get charged for and don't even know about except they're not going to call me. That wouldn't happen with Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spendings and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.
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HSP the Miyazawa family was the very model of a modern middle class Japanese family. There was the father, Mikio. He was a business consultant who had creativity just coursing through his veins. At work, Mikio helped design corporate logos and in his spare time he loved things like anime. He even worked on a manga comic and painted model planes. Mikio's wife was Yasuko. She also worked full time running a tutoring business that in Japan is known as a cram school. Yasuko ran this cram school out of their home where they lived with their two small children, Nina, who was described as being just energetic and academically gifted and then Rei, their youngest son, the baby of the family. He was this adorable little boy who did struggle in school and had recently been diagnosed with a developmental disability. Because of this, Yasuko was highly protective of him and his needs. She wanted the world to be kind to little Rei, and she wanted to see him grow into himself and find his confidence, just like his big sister had now. Like so many Japanese families at the time, the family of four lived in a duplex, and their home shared a wall with the home next door where Yasuko's mother, sister, brother in law, and nephew all lived. And to protect the privacy of the families, Mikio actually had built some soundproofing into their shared wall. Both families had young kids, and it would get very loud sometimes, so he figured it was the least he could do. From the outside, they seemed like this tightly interwoven family, a dream for so many people. But on the inside, they were all a little bit unsettled. And that's because there was something weird happening in their neighborhood around this time. See, the family had bought the duplex in 1990, and at the time, it was located in a well populated suburban development in the neighborhood of Kami Soshigaya in the southwest Tokyo district of Setagaya. This house was one of about 60 houses in the immediate area, and many of these homes were also duplexes, so there were well over a hundred families in this neighborhood. But then in 1998, something unexpected happened. 1998 was the year that the Tokyo government voted to expand a nearby park called Soshigaya park.
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And.
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And that meant that they needed to clear out the land in the neighborhood where the Miyazawas lived. So over the next two years, the city developers began slowly buying out everyone that lived in the neighborhood and demolishing their houses to clear way for the park's expansion. And I mean, the government paid the families for their homes, so most residents took the checks and moved elsewhere. But the Miyazawas didn't do this. At first, they wanted to stay in the neighborhood as long as they could. They had really made this house a home. But by March of 2000, the neighborhood that was once sprawling and alive with people and children everywhere was now totally desolate. And the Miyazawa's home was one of less than half a dozen that was still in the area, which honestly made it a little creepy. The neighborhood was dead silent at night now. It was rare to see anyone outside, ever. And the Miyazawa home just stood amongst empty lots where other houses used to be. Eventually, the Miyazawas and Yasuko sister and her family finally decided to accept the city's offer. And they agreed that they were going to vacate the house in March the following year. And honestly, this felt like a weight off of Yasuko's shoulders, because she was starting to get really nervous in this neighborhood. At night, she would just look out of her window and see empty blackness on every single side of her house. But that wasn't even the worst part. One morning, when she walked outside to grab the morning paper, she saw a dead cat on the side of the street. And it did not look like it had died of natural causes or even like it had been hit by a car. No, it seemed like it had been killed by someone wielding a knife. And not long after that, Yasuko went out and grabbed the morning paper once more, and she saw that there was actually an article about that cat in the paper. It turns out that a few people that still resided in the empty neighborhood had reported seeing mutilated cats all over the empty streets. Who could be doing this? Yasuko wondered as she stared out into the bottomless darkness outside of her window one evening. And maybe this is why Mikio started getting into it with some of the local skateboarders. Now there was a skate park that was a literal stone's throw away from the back of the Miyazawa's home, with just a small fence that separated them, the noise was starting to become a problem. With no one left in the neighborhood really, the skater kids figured they could be as loud and rambunctious as they wanted to, with no consequences. And so Mikio started wondering if it was actually these skaters that were responsible for the dead cats. On one occasion, Michio had confronted some rowdy skateboarders, and it led to a pretty ugly screaming match. And after that, the two groups really did not interact. So by December, Miyazawas were incredibly ready to leave this house. In just three months, they would be in their new home and they would no longer have to worry about any of this. Or so they thought. When the police arrived at the Miyazawa's home, the scene was brutal. Mikio was lying at the foot of the stairs, covered in deep, deep, thin knife wounds. A trail of blood led down the stairs, making the police think that there was some sort of struggle with the attacker that had started on the second floor. Now, up on the second floor, they found two more bodies. It was Yasuko. And right next to her, with her back against her mother's back, was eight year old Nina. Their bodies were bloodied and also were riddled with the same kind of Wounds that covered Mikio. Just a few feet away from them was a child's bedroom. And the light had been turned off, which was different from how Haruko had found the rest of the house with all of the lights on. The police braced themselves. They knew what was coming. Haruko and her grief and panic had bravely searched through the whole house and reported what she saw to them. So even though police weren't surprised when they found the body of six year old Ray lying in his bed, they were still devastated. But Ray hadn't been killed like the rest of his family. He didn't have the knife wounds or the bloody stabs that they had. It looked like he had been suffocated. And this was the first of many strange oddities about the scene that police would notice. See, police were starting to note the overwhelming amount of evidence that was left behind by the attacker. First, police found a broken sashimi knife on the second floor. It it's this long, thin and very sharp knife, and this one definitely did not belong to the family, meaning that the attacker must have brought it with them. The remainder of the blade was eventually found still inside of Mikio. It must have broken off during the attack. Then there was another knife found at the scene, a Santoku knife from the Miyazawa's kitchen. Police assumed that the killer grabbed this knife to finish the attacks after the knife he brought was broken while he was attacking Mikio. Now, police also noticed that the window of the second floor bathroom at the back of the house, which was near Ray's bedroom, one that faced the skate park, was open, with the window screen cut away and lying on the ground below the window in the mud nearby, there were footprints that matched ones that were found inside of the residence. A tree branch near the fence behind the residence was also broken. Police theorized that the killer scaled the back fence and climbed up the air conditioning to enter the house. He then probably strangled Rei in his bed, first attacked Mikio, and then grabbed a new knife to finish attacking Yasuko and her daughter. But the amount of blood at the scene showed that not only had the family fought back massively, but the intruder was most likely severely injured at some point. Analysis showed that his blood was all over the house, including inside of the attic. One of the killer's fingerprints was found on a band aid container in one of the bathrooms. And a bloody band aid with the killer's blood on it was found near the sofa in the living room. Based on just how much of the killer's blood was found in the house. Police assumed that the wound he received was pretty significant, but that was the evidence that police found from the actual attack. The strangest thing in all of this was it seemed like the killer had spent a significant, significant amount of time inside of the home after the attack had taken place. And there was a lot of evidence of that as well. First of all, the house was completely ransacked. It looked like not only had the killer gone through multiple drawers that contained family documents, but he also carried one of the drawers up to the second story bathroom, filled the bathtub halfway with water, and then dumped the papers into the bathtub and toilet. Now, this was something that had to have happened after the family was already dead, because it would have woken the entire family up if they had done this while they were sleeping. The documents that were in the tub were mostly related to Mikio and Yasuko's jobs. They didn't really seem particularly important, though. The attacker also cut up some advertising flyers with scissors and dumped those in the bathtub as well. The parents wallets were found empty and also in the tub. But most of the contents of those wallets was actually in the hallway outside. Now, no one could figure out exactly why the attacker had done this. Some police officers wondered if he had been going through the wallets to find their PIN numbers and then just threw them in the hallway when he did. In that same bathroom, the killer actually defecated in the toilet and didn't flush. And the police were able to collect that for forensic purposes. They thought maybe it would be helpful later. The refrigerator downstairs was also a huge mess, and it looked like someone had scooped a message melon inside with their bare hands. Police were also able to put together that the attacker most likely ate ham out of the fridge and drank barley tea from a plastic bottle. And then there were little ice cream cartons, five of them, that the killer had opened and eaten without a spoon and just dropped the containers all around the house. It also seemed, from the way the couch was left, like the killer had potentially taken a nap on the second story couch at some point. But perhaps one of the strangest parts of the scene was the pile of clothes that was found neatly folded on the second story couch that very obviously did not belong to the family. The clothes consisted of a crusher style gray hat, a dark plaid scarf, an air Tech jacket that was sold at Uniqlo stores in Japan, a Raglan style shirt, a fanny pack that was manufactured in Osaka, and blood soaked Edwin style gloves. DNA testing would later show that the blood belonged to the killer. There were also two dark handkerchiefs found, one believed to have been wrapped around the knife handle for a better grip. And they could tell that because the handkerchief was blood stained and it had a hole the size of a knife blade in it. And the other was folded into a triangle with narrowed ends, indicating that it was maybe used as a face mask that the attacker wore when he entered. And there was also a pair of Schlossinger brand sports shoes left behind. Foreign footprints found inside and outside the house matched these shoes. Now, the clothes were believed to belong to the killer, but that would have meant that at some point in the night, he had stripped off his own clothes and then put on Mikio's before he left. It was very unclear to the police why the killer would have done this. Another strange detail was that Michio's computer was found unplugged, which was really unusual. An analysis of this computer showed that it was being used by mikio up until 10:50pm and then it wasn't used again until 1:18am Police believe that the family was most likely killed sometime in that window. So if the computer was being used at 1:18 in the morning, it was by the killer. Forensics revealed that it was connected to the Internet from 1:18am to 1:23am and during that time, police saw that an unsuccessful attempt was made to purchase tickets on the Shiki Theater Company website, which Mikio already had amongst his bookmarks. A new folder had also been created on the desktop, but that was for reasons unknown. But also computer evidence showed that the last time the computer was used was at 10:05am the following morning, just 30 minutes before Haruko entered the home, meaning that the killer was potentially in the house for around 11 hours. That time, the computer was used for a period of about five minutes, and the only page that was accessed was Mikio's company website, after which the power cord was unplugged. Now, some officers would later go on to say that the morning computer usage was probably due to Haruko as she ran around the house looking for all of the members of her daughter's family. Perhaps her running around jostled the mouse, making it look like someone was using the computer, and then maybe she tripped over the cord and unplugged it. And I think there's a chance those officers were trying to justify the computer's usage because for how disturbing this whole scene was, it was even more frightening to think that the killer had been in the home for so long after the crime had occurred. And besides that, there was more than just the computer usage that backed up the fact that they were probably in the house for that long. Because police started asking people in the area some questions. Did anyone notice anything that night? Did anything weird stand out to anyone? And they found that a newspaper delivery man and a passerby both reported that lights appeared to be off inside the Miyazawa's residence in the early morning hours of December 31, 2000. However, when Haruko discovered the bodies around 10:30am the lights inside the residence were all on. This could have been honestly from the killer turning the lights off to take that nap and then turning them back on later. And even more chilling was it was also discovered that a delivery truck had been backing up to the victim's house at around 10am that morning, and the driver remembered seeing a curtain over the window facing the road pull back as though someone was peering through the curtain back at him. So the police believed that the killer, in response to the truck's presence, unplugged the computer and then fled the house at this time. Now, once Haruko had started calming down after the weight of everything that happened had hit her, she started remembering more details from the night before. She initially had told the police that she heard nothing unusual that entire night, likely because of the soundproofing that Mikio had installed years earlier. But eventually she went back to the police and she said, wait, there is one thing that I do remember. It was after her side of the house had gone to bed at around 11:30pm the night before, and there was a loud thud that came from Yasuko and Mikio's side of the duplex. After much discussion, investigators would conclude that this sound was likely made by this retractable ladder the family had that the killer used to get from the Miyazawa's attic on the third floor down to the second floor. There was something else, though Haruko said she didn't know if it would be helpful, but she figured she would just tell the police anyways. The week before Christmas, she said, the whole family gathered together at the Miyazawa house. Yasuko was going to prepare this big meal for everyone during the day. While she was preparing this lunch, Yasuko kept noticing as she looked out of the kitchen window, something that bothered her. There was a car that she had never seen before parked right in front of the house, as though an uninvited guest had shown up to join them. There were no other homes on the block that the car could have belonged to. And from a distance, she could barely make out the outline of a person sitting in the front seat. Yasuko left the kitchen at one point to use the bathroom, and when she returned, she saw that the car was no longer there. She shook it off, and she served lunch to her family. But by the time she got up to start cleaning, she noticed that the car had returned. And throughout the entire afternoon, Yasuko kept noticing that this car would leave and then come back just to park in the same exact spot. Eventually, she was so uncomfortable that she mentioned it to her father in law. It looks like there's someone casing the house, she told him. And he could see how worried this was making her. And with everything else that had been happening in the neighborhood, he just told her that he would go and check it out. But by the time he stepped out of the front door, the car had once again disappeared, never to return. After learning this, the police canvassed the neighborhood, or at least what was left of it. And they learned from one of the Miyazawa's nearest neighbors that just three or so days before the murders, there was a suspicious man seen walking around the Miyazawa's property. And it looked as though he was examining their house. The eyewitness said that the man appeared to be in his 30s or 40s, and they had never seen him in the neighborhood before, and they have not seen him since. The first day of 2001 began pretty ominously in Japan, as that day's headlines were all about the horrific quadruple homicide. The revelation that the killer spent so much time inside of the victim's house, ate their food, wore their clothes, slept in their bed, even led him to be known as the Goldilocks killer. Across all of Japan. Meanwhile, investigators were hard at work trying to figure out who could have done this. The man in charge of the investigation was this police chief named Takeshi Tsuchida. And when he took inventory of the overwhelming amount of evidence that his investigators had collected from the scene, he was pretty optimistic that this case would be solved fairly quickly. He believed that whoever committed these murders had probably committed other crimes as well. And the killer's fingerprints would almost certainly be in Japan's national database. So that's one of the first things that Tsuchida did. He ran the bloody fingerprints through the criminal database, and he waited for a hit to come back and tell him exactly who had done this. And the end result of that search was pretty shocking. There were zero hits. No one in the country's database of over 10 million fingerprints matched the ones that were left behind at the scene. So he decided to upload the killer's DNA. Now, Japan's DNA database was much smaller at the time because of the country's very strict privacy laws. So uploading the killer's DNA profile to the national database also generated no hits. It seemed like whoever did this had either never committed a crime before or had never been caught. But that got Detective Tsuchida thinking. He wondered why. What kind of person the killer might be. And there was one detail about the crime scene that really stuck out to him. See, he wasn't convinced that the investigators had reached the right conclusion about where the killer entered the home. The bathroom window that had been cut looked so small, he couldn't really imagine an adult male being able to squeeze through it. So either they didn't go in through that entrance, or. Or it was possible that the killer was younger and smaller. Maybe a teenager? He wondered. And based on some of the evidence that was left behind, it certainly seemed like that was possible. For one, when the killer's feces was analyzed in the crime lab, it was found that he had recently eaten a meal of string beans, spinach, pickled cucumber, and sesame seeds. It's the kind of mundane meal that in Japan is usually homemade. That's the kind of meal a mother would make for her family. Could it be that the killer still lived at home? And the clothing that the killer left behind was something that teens at the time were wearing. The crusher style hat, the raglan sleeve shirt, the fanny pack, the sports shoes. One officer even noted that it was the same exact style of clothing that a skateboarder might wear. And that was before anyone knew about the issues that the Miyazawas were having with the skaters behind them. When Detective Tsuchida learned about Mikio's confrontations with those teens from the skate park, he made it his priority to track down every single one of those kids and get fingerprints from all of them. And eventually, he and his team managed to do just that. But it was another dead end. Not one set of fingerprints from the skate park youths matched the killers. And all of the kids that the detective talked to seemed pretty spooked by what had happened. Sure, they thought Mikio was lame for screaming at them, but they didn't really think it was a huge deal. They were kind of used to getting yelled at by adults, and they genuinely seemed scared and sad when they heard the news. Investigators talked it over, and most Were in agreement that the level of violence that occurred that night seemed personal, like it was someone out for revenge. But if that was the case, then what was the motive? They spent weeks probing the family's social and professional circles. And at the other end of it, they were still left empty handed. These people were universally loved. Yasuko was loved by all of her students. Mikio was loved by all of his co workers. They got along with everyone. And little Nina was seen by her teachers as a kind hearted girl who would instantly make friends with the new kids everyone else would ignore. And Ray was just adorable. And people were truly, truly in love with him. The team of investigators also looked into the family's finances. They discovered that Mikio kept meticulous logs and ledgers of every financial transaction the family made. But they also saw that recently, the family had received a large sum of money from the city for the recent sale of their house. Did the wrong person find out about this transfer and decide to burglarize their home in search of those funds? Well, by examining Mikio's financial records, police were able to conclude that some money had been taken from the house the night of the attack. But surprisingly, it wasn't really a lot. It was 150,000 yen, which was the equivalent of about 1300 US dollars at the time. And yet, there was other money that was left behind in the house. Money that was left out in plain view, mind you. Like, there was an envelope that had 1,000 yen on a bookshelf, which was completely ignored by the killer. And as the months crawled by, police realized that despite the mountain of evidence that was left behind, it seemed like they were no closer to learning the identity of this killer than they were before. It was also beginning to appear that the killer may have been a complete stranger to the family. But then again, what was the motive if that was the case? Was it actually a burglary? Was it mental illness? Was it just a thrill of the kill? More and more of Tokyo's police force was being mobilized to investigate these murders. And over time, the investigation ballooned into the largest and most expensive investigation in Japanese history. And because of this huge investment of resources, investigators were able to learn a great deal more about this killer.
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This episode is brought to you by Kachava.
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A couple of years ago, I was.
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On a little adventure, wandering around Hakone, this small resort town not far from Tokyo. I took the bus from our hotel and wound through the mountains. I got lost in some gardens on the hillside. That whole trip, I felt so connected to the places I was going, in part because everything I ate was fresh and season, from the field, from the sea.
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And that is not entirely how I eat here.
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Back at home. Here, my cabinets are more like a supplement graveyard. Which is why I love Cachava. I know I talk about it a lot, but Kachava has really helped me simplify getting the nutrition I need. Cachava is an all in one nutrition shake packed with high quality ingredients and.
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None of the nonsense.
- [31:07]
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No fillers, no artificial flavors or colors, no soy, gluten or preservatives. Since adding it into my daily flow, I've noticed steadier energy, better digestion and it has the nutrients to support my metabolism, cognition and immunity. And with six flavors, there's something for everyone. My adventurous twist. I blend the strawberry and chocolate together.
- [31:27]
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And it's so good.
- [31:28]
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Rewild your nutrition@kachava.com and use code HSP new customers get $20 off an order of two eggs or more now through the 31st. That's Kachava K A C-H-A V A.com code HSP this episode is brought to you by Just Thrive. If your gut is off, everything feels off. Your digestion, energy, mood, even focus. It all starts in your gut. And that's why I trust Just Thrive Probiotic. Most probiotics never make it to your gut alive and that's why they don't work. But Just Thrive is clinically proven to arrive 100 alive and deliver measurable results. And it does something no other probiotic can. It turns your gut into an antioxidant factory, creating protective compounds exactly where you need them most. Just Thrive Probiotic comes in capsules or in yummy berry flavored gummies. For over a decade, Just Thrive has been helping people take control of their health with science backed solutions you can trust. From their award winning probiotic to their full line of gut, immune and brain health supplements, Just Thrive is ready to help you live your healthiest life. So here's my challenge. Try Just thrive probiotic for 90 days risk free. Visit just thrive health.com and save 20 with promo code HSP. See the difference for yourself or get a full product refund, no questions asked. Take the 90 day Just Thrive Probiotic Challenge today at justthrive health.com HSP Be the Best you with Just Thrive.
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This episode is brought to you by Daily Look. January is the perfect time to revamp your wardrobe. Think new year. New personal style. I personally love trying new styles. If you watch the show or if you follow me on socials. You know that I'm not afraid of bold colors and patterns in my clothing. But it can be hard knowing where to start when you're putting an outfit together that looks interesting but also reflects your personality. And that is why I'm so excited to talk about today's sponsor, Daily Look. Daily look is a premium styling service whose mission is to elevate your style. Also, it's so easy to use. You get a real personal stylist, the same one every time, who curates up to 12 premium pieces tailored to your body, your lifestyle, and your taste boxes.
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Arrive at your door.
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You can try everything on at home. You just keep what you love and you send back the rest. Plus, there's free shipping both ways. You can choose delivery every 30, 60, or 90 days, which is perfect if your life is already full. Dailylook is the number one highest rated premium personal styling service for women. Take your style quiz@dailylook.com and use code HSP to get 50% off your first styling fee. I want to now go over what it was that they were able to learn about the attacker based on the forensic evidence that they collected from him. So the killer's DNA profile was sent in for anthropological analysis, and the findings were that he most likely had a mother who had Southern European, possibly Mediterranean ancestry and a father who was from Southeast Asia. The killer also had a very specific genetic sequence that was found in 1 in 13 Japanese people, 1 in 10 Chinese people, and 1 in 5 people from Korea. That last part really stood out to the police, that the killer had a genetic sequence that was common in Koreans. And that's because of something else that they learned about him. Investigators really looked at the clothes that the killer wore, and they realized that the shoes that had been left behind, particularly the model and that specific size, were not sold in stores in Japan. They were only sold in stores in South Korea. And forensic analysis of the shirt he was wearing found that it was laundered in hard water rather than soft water. And while hard water can be found in some places in Japan, it's really not common. However, hard water, at least at the time, was really common in South Korea. And investigators saw an advantage in this because South Korea keeps a national fingerprint database of all of the country's citizens over the age of 17. They also fingerprint every individual over 17 traveling into the country, not just criminals, not just those accused of crimes, everyone. South Korea's database contained roughly 50 million sets of fingerprints at the time. If this man had ever Even so much has stepped foot within the country. At least when he was over the age of 17. Then he was as good as caught. And police held their breath as they waited for the results of this fingerprint match. Could it really be this easy? They were only one database search away from figuring out who this monster really was. The results finally came back, and not a single match was found. Either the killer was not from or had never visited South Korea, or he was still under the age of 17 when he was last there. But the police weren't ready to give up on the clothes just yet. Maybe there was another clue hidden amongst the killer's wardrobe. And there was, but in a place that no one really expected. See, inside of the killer's fanny pack and in one of the pockets of the Uniqlo jacket that he left behind were these microscopic pieces of sand. And that sand was forensically analyzed, and it was found to be a mix that was traced back to two different beaches. One of the places the sand was from was a beach that was 75 miles south of Tokyo. It was a beach, mind you, that was known to be frequented by skateboarders. And the other place that the sand was from was traced back to Edwards Air Force base, which is 90 miles north of of Los Angeles, California. How could this be? Had the killer been to America? Had he lived there? Did the killer have some sort of connection to the military, either being in it or having parents that were. It seemed possible. After all, the US forces Japanese headquarters was just 40 miles away from the Miyazawa's house. You could easily make that round trip in just a few hours. But without any hits on DNA or fingerprints, police were really at a loss of where to even start. I'm not sure they were even able to check the records at Edwards Air Force Base. Either they did and they didn't get any matches, or they just didn't. It seemed like even with all of this physical evidence, they were just really not able to get anywhere. But maybe there was still a little bit of a chance. Maybe eyewitness evidence could help them out. Because after all, a few more leads started coming in. And some of these leads were total duds. Like there was one that came in just a few days after the murders. A Setagaya taxi cab driver contacted the police in early January of 2001 to report a strange encounter that he had around the time that the Miyazawas were killed. That night, the cabbie told the police that he had been in the vicinity of the Miyazawa's home When suddenly, three middle aged men hailed him for a ride. After they entered the cab, the three men were completely silent throughout the ride. And this made the cabbie really uncomfortable. And after he dropped them off, he noticed that one of them had left blood stains on his back seat. The three men were never identified, but some reports suggest that the blood stains were then later analyzed and found to not even be blood, but rather chocolate. Most likely, these men had nothing to do with the crime, and the cabbie was just being overly cautious and reporting them. But then there was another incident, a more haunting one. Haunting because it feels like this could have really been the killer. The incident occurred on the afternoon of December 31, 2000, the day that Haruko discovered the bodies. But it wasn't reported until much later. It was at a railway station two and a half hours north of where the Miyazawas lived. Staff at the station observed a man who they said was about 30 years old, which was the oldest age that the police estimated the killer would be. And he was standing in a black down jacket and jeans. He was about 5 foot 9 or 170 centimeters tall, the same height that the clothing he left behind suggested he was. And what really stood out to the staff, though, was this man had a deep gash on one of his hands. It was a wound that was so deep, in fact, they could see the man's bone. It was very, very, very gory. It almost made the staff sick to see. And yet the man appeared to be totally unbothered by it. He sat there calmly, he was almost nonchalant. And when someone approached, he refused to provide his name or discuss how he got that pretty gruesome injury. And although the station staff were suspicious, news of the murders hadn't yet spread. So they had no reason to detain the man or summon the police at that time. And by the time they actually did report the incident, the man was long gone. And when police asked around the village where the railway station was located, no one in the area remembered seeing anyone fitting the man's description, or anyone with an injury like the one the railway station staff described. This is believed to be the only sighting of the killer after the attack took place. A chilling, brief glimpse of the man who then disappeared. 25 years have now passed since the Miyazawas were slaughtered by a nameless, faceless intruder. Or rather, an intruder who certainly had a face and a name, but whose face and name continues to elude Japanese investigators. As I mentioned earlier, Japan has really stringent privacy laws around DNA and Those laws really limit how DNA can be used. And so far, the country has not explored forensic genealogy, which has been very effective here in the United States, resolving decades old crimes. Since the Golden State Killer was identified this way in 2018, over 700 cases have since been resolved using public genealogical databases. But those kinds of databases just aren't available in the East. So even if police in Tokyo were open to using this tool, it would still still be a really long road ahead of them. Chief Takeshi Tsuchida retired in 2008, but the case has never left his mind, and it still haunts him to this day. And while Yasuko's mother, Haruko has since passed away, Mikio's mother, Setsuko is still alive, and she's in her mid-90s. Setsuko maintains a shrine in her home, honoring her fallen family members. And in a cabinet in the same room, she has all of her dead grandchildren's toys on display. Still, Chief Tsuchida has developed a friendship with Setsuko, though he sometimes pays respect to the Miyazawas at Setsuko's shrine. And in his spare time, he runs support groups for victims of violent crime. To date, over 300,000 Tokyo Police officers have worked on the Miyazawa murders, and over 50 million fingerprints and over a million DNA profiles have been compared to the killers without a single match. And since the September 11 attacks in 2001, Japan has taken to fingerprinting all individuals that cross into its borders, even if those individuals are Japanese citizens returning home from abroad. And to date, none of those fingerprints have matched the killers. Police also established a 24 hour guard at the Miyazawa house in early 2001, and they've maintained their presence there ever since. See, even though the rest of the neighborhood was eventually demolished, the Miyazawa house never was. Maybe police thought the killer would return, or that there was still evidence left there that would one day prove to be helpful. And now, every year, on the anniversary of the murders, police hold a vigil at the residence. And I will add, it could be that someone else is holding a vigil there too, in their own way. In March of 2006, an unknown party somehow slipped past police and placed a bouquet of flowers near the fence of the second story window that the killer was believed to have entered. Police guards that were posted at the house never saw the person who placed it there, but it reminded them of a previous discovery that was made five years earlier, in April of 2001. It was just four months after the murders, but There was something they found along the river that ran beside the Miyazawa's home. It was a small stone Jizo statue with the number six carved into its base. The significance of the carving was unknown, but the Jizo is a benevolent Buddhist deity, longed believed to protect the souls of children who have died before their parents. As such, children are not, according to Japanese beliefs, able to cross the river into the afterlife. Police never found out who placed the statue there, but they always wondered if it had been placed there by the killer, who was maybe plagued by a guilty conscience. If so, that would be the only time since the attack that police felt like they were even in the vicinity of the killer. He has remained a total ghost, and the people of Japan have really had to wrestle with the scary fact that he could be out there still, and he's never been caught. So either that was the only crime he ever committed, or he has continued to float away from crime scenes as a nameless, faceless ghost. Now, I've read a few different theories about what could have happened to him, and one theory is that he's dead. That maybe his hand wound was so bad he just walked into the woods and bled out and died. After all, no man matching his description was ever seen checking into a hospital in the area in the weeks after the attacks. So either he had the wherewithal to not go to the hospital, even with a wound that severe, or he. He just never made it. Another theory claims that he slipped away to another country. Perhaps he was actually in the military, or perhaps he was young and his parents were in the military. He was maybe still just a teenager. I imagine if that was the case, then he continued to commit crimes as he went from country to country. Or, you know, there's also the thought that he's still in Japan, potentially. Now he's 35 to 50 years old, a man that blends into society. Maybe he's married. Maybe he has a child or two. Maybe his neighbors think he's an odd guy, but nothing too out of the ordinary, as so many serial killer stories go. But it begs the question, one day, will someone who knows this story look down at that man's hands and see a deep purple red scar, One that the man covers quickly when he sees them notice? And will that person remember a headline from the early 2000s? And if they do, will they doubt themselves? Will they think that, no, this man is too nice? Or that was so long ago they were overreacting? Or will they, just to be safe, call the tip line. It's one of the many questions that still remains unanswered about this case. But if you are able to help answer any of those questions, the Police Station Special Task Force does want to hear from you. Still, they're still offering a reward of up to 20 million yen, which today is equal to about US$140,000 for information that leads to the identity of the Miyazawa family killer. It is the Seijo Police Department for those that are interested. But that's all I have for you today for this mystery. This is one that I think is going to haunt me for a long time. The idea of being one watched from afar is very, very, very scary to me. I'm curious if any of you have ever experienced anything like that. It's one of the scariest feelings in the world. Anyways, join me here next week. I will see you then. And until next time, stay curious. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Additional research and writing by Paul Haynes Sound design and mix by Petrie Sound Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe have a heart pounding story or case request. Check out heartstartspounding.
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