Thinking Sideways: Miyazawa Family Murders

every winter. Again, The Snowman opens October seen I'll expect to see you there. It's also brought to you by ourselves and our little get together this weekend, this weekend being October fourteenth, two thousand seventeen, six thirty pm at

the Lucky Labrador Pub on killings Worth in Portland. So again we're gonna be there, hopefully at least unless we get in the car wreckt And we'll see you all there right, So again October four Lucky lab Killingsworths, see you there, Thank you well, Hey there, and welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, of course, joined by Joe, and once again we have a creepy story for you, creepy Halloween mystery for you, even because

not boo, it's week two, not week boo. Serious, Joe, I didn't mean bood a week too. I just meant boo. I was trying to scare our listeners. Yeah, it was a ghostly joke. I get it. I get it. Well, this is week too, So just like last week, we're going to bring you a creepy, scary story. What we think is creepy and scary. Yeah creep Yeah, So there is there is a little bit here that I'd say maybe could qualify as a little ear warning, So use

your discretion. Yeah, if you have little ears, don't listen. Yeah. Okay, So now that Joe's done with that, let's start this week's story, which is the discussion of the Miyazawa family murders, which you will also see in some places referred to as the set of Gaya murders. And this is a set of murders that happened in Tokyo, Japan in two thousand. Yeah, quite a while back, and we got a lot of suggestions for this. I looked at the list and we

had it suggested by Ali Barry Hannah and Morgan. And then I also want to send out a big thanks to experts Adrian. She helped me out a lot with pronunciation, as did Morgan because he sent me a bunch of stuff to help out, which was phenomenal because otherwise I'd have butchered some things we have, Margan. It also set us a bunch of pictures. Yeah, yeah, to the neighborhood and took pictures of the house and everything on site investigation. It's taken at the next expert level. So let's get

on with it, shall we. Yeah, all right, So our story takes place on December two thousand, as I said before, in a place known as Setagaya, which is a ward of Tokyo, Japan. It's roughly six to ten miles, or if you convert that, it's ten to fifteen kilometers southwest of Tokyo. The home of our victims is in what is today known as Kami Soci Gaya Park, which is a small park in a kind of suburban neighborhood. Yeah,

along the Sun River. Yeah. And originally this community where this home was, it was about two homes, but there were some changes in the neighborhood and the homes will, as you'll find out, we're being removed to expand the park, which is always so weird in such a in a place that's so crunched for a living space as the areas around Tokyo. I wonder I was. I was sort

of wondering about that too. I was wondering if maybe they discovered that the houses were in a floodplain so they figured out, screw it, will make it a park. I don't know. I saw in quite a lot of places where they're like, this is very unusual, because the local governance was buying the homes from these people to expand this once rather it was like a baseball diamond and then another small green space and it just kept expanding south along the river set and just I mean,

they decided to take all the homes out. But it is unusual, although you know, as we live in a place where public parks are like a huge thing, and I can understand why you would want more of those. Plus the river sun is the reason that we have spirited away. So yes, true that. But what's weird about the park too is that this the actual from because I've gone and looked at it on the street and

actually I don't believe it or not. The actually they're making kind of a half hearted the tip because the original subdivision, there's a street that goes through it and then parallel to the river essentially, and there's a lot of little short streets dead ends that stub out from that towards the river, and there are houses lining in those little streets. Whether those stub streets are still there, think they tear those out and put grass or something

in there. Yeah, it is. It is strange that they tore out all the homes, but then they didn't actually follow through on the actual development of it. And you know, I always go on Google Earth, and so I looked through the satellite images in time sequence, and you can see the homes disappear and then really not much of anything happened. So it's it's weird. It's like something stalled.

Maybe that well, maybe it's that last house. There's that there's that one guy in the in the neighborhood that just won't sell and just won't move out, and the whole project is held up by him. But as we will discover in our story, there is at least one house left. But let's not get ahead ahead of ourselves here. Okay, So, as we've been talking about, there's this push to get all the homes in that neighborhood out because they wanted

development as the park. At the time of our story, from what I can tell from reporting an imagery, it was about a dozen homes left, not all of them were occupied. People have been selling their homes for you know, a decent amount of money and finding new homes somewhere else, but of course they hadn't got around to bulldozing them all. So the family and question here though, the Miyazawa's, they had been in their home for about ten years at this point, but like all the rest of their neighbors,

they were intending to sell. The reporting says that their plan was to be out of the house by March of two thousand one, so they were already planning to get out sales in the process. So it wasn't as if they were a holdout and within a couple of months. Yeah, it was just a couple of months away. I mean,

I feel that's reasonable rate. I mean, you need to buy another house, the logistics of moving all your stuff, and it sounds like they had family that lived right next door right, correct, So probably it's a double logistics at that point. Right. Yeah, And and we'll talk about the house. But where their house was on as Joe would describe it, a little stub street, there were actually four residences side by side in a row. And so the houses town houses, No, they were actually independent homes.

They no, not all of them shared walls. They look like townhouses, they're tall and skinny. But yeah, there was not. The Miazawa's house had a shared wall within itself, which we'll talk about. But the other two on the other side, or two or three, they were separate. They weren't all joined up. Okay, Okay. So the family in our story, who we've talked about a little bit but we're actually going to meet now, it's a family of four. We have the parents at forty four year old Mikio Miyazawa,

his wife forty one year old Yasco. They had two children, eight year old Nina and six six year old boy Ray. Technically, this is where we were just getting at it. Like I said, there was a shared wall. Their home was actually more of what we in the U S would call a duplex. There were it was, It wasn't there were no internal doorway between one home and the other. There was unique or separate front entrances to the two homes, and they shared a dividing wall here in the States,

yeah exactly, but but there was between the folks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot like that as well. And this will this will come to play later on in our story because the folks that live next door our family and will well yeah, yeah, they they are family. It was Yasco's mother, her sister, and her brother in law. So Yasco's sister and then Yasco's brother in law were the ones that lived in that home next door, right right, And Yasco's mother yes Japanese, Yes, the elders of your family. So

it's traditionally. It makes total sense. Okay, I'm stumbling a little bit here because we're about to dive into a lot of the case and there are a lot of details because the Japanese c s I apparently you're the best in the world, and they gather amazing amounts of details. But that makes his story a little hard to follow because there are so many details. And we're going to do our best to keep this as straight as possible.

But you know, if you're doing something else and you're not paying attention, Be careful because you may miss something and then be dropped and lost about what's going on in this stuff. And unique about this guy too, is he made the murderer, made no attempt at my giving anything way by the same murderer. No, no, we've already said it's the family murder, so no, no playing there.

He made no attempt to cover his tracks whatsoever. It seems like he left a huge amount of evidence, physical evidence behind somehow and somehow we don't know who he is. And still, yeah, it's funny. But if you're driving or you know, I know a lot of you guys like listen while you work. I listen to you know stuff while I work. You prepared to hit the back button, Yeah, to rewind a little bit, especially if you fall asleep to Joe's soothing voice. You say, that's going to be

mostly Steve talking. My voice is not soothing. It's got that kind of high, nasially pitched and everybody loves everybody loves it. Yeah, yeah, okay, Well, let's let's talk about this story. Let's there there. You will see this story ordered in a number of different ways across the Internet. I however, am going to start on the most important date, which is the December two thousand. It was a dark and stormy night. No, actually it was kind of a nice day in Japan in December. No, throw him off.

Japan and December is kind of like Portland. It's like rainy and cold usually Soti December. It's you know, it's the day before the celebration of the new Millennium in Japan, because they celebrated it between two thousand and two thousand one, unlike us here in the States, which was but for the family, it was just another day. They were going about their business. Uh. They went to the market for a while. They then came home. I think they got

home at about like six thirty in the evening. Around seven o'clock that night, Yasco called her mother next door to see if Nina could come over, because Nina wanted to watch a television show that had been recorded on the on grandma's computer. So Nina goes over, watches the TV show and is home by it's reported about nine forty at night. Didn't stay later. Huh, oh, you know what, I think she would have had to say much much

later to to avoid what's going to happen here? Yeah, we know that that evening, Mikio, the father, he was working on his computer, which was in the first floor of the house. We know that he was working because an email was received by the computer that required a password to open. And that's you know that that leads everybody down the path of well, it must have been from his job, probably because Mikio he worked for a company called Interbrand, which is a multinational branding company, really

creatively named branding company. But they are actually a creative company. I mean they actually I didn't know Interbrand, but I didn't know this until I did all the research on this. Do you know who came up and branded the term WiFi? Them? Interbrand? Oh my god, they changed the world. But you know, it's actually it's yeah, it's a pretty successful company to be in multiple countries like that and have that kind of thing happened. Call them in that has I've been

thinking about our brand. I think we need to, like, you know, make it better somehow. Okay, we should name it WiFi WiFi the podcast. But it's also not unheard of, I mean Japanese that that's like a very stereotypical Japanese thing that like men tend to work absurdly longer, I mean, like very often they were, they have at a different apartment in the city. They work just crazy hours. They work themselves to death often. Um. And so the fact that he would have been working at ten pm on

like on a holiday not surprising at all. And he nothing that I have read indicates that he was some high powered exam creative. I get the feeling that he was just another cog, just a middleman who just worked all the time, and that that is the typical thing, right, is that like the guys who are super super high up, they don't seem to work. I mean just the same in America, right, Like they don't seem to work that much.

But the guys who are kind of at all they were, they're the ones who work themselves to death and the ones who just go crazy. Yeah. I don't think he was the tiniest of cox in the corporation though, because but he wasn't. He wasn't he was not a big wig. But but if you look at their house, they lived in the suburbs. Yeah, oh I guess that's true. Okay, well forget it. Yeah, he was in town. Yeah, so

it doesn't matter. The point here is is that Mikio is working and he was alive at because assuming the killer didn't kill him beforehand and didn't happen to like, you know, torture, now, we're pretty sure that that none of that, Joe, We're pretty sure that the times that

things took. So I appreciate the excitement there, but no. Okay, So Mikio is on the first floor, he's on the computer, his son Ray is asleep, and the second floor in one of the bunk beds or one of the beds in the bunk bed I don't I don't know what they're correct. Burbage use for that have bunk beds too, Yeah, cool, everybody has bunk beds. It's an efficient use of space.

It is. It's believed that Yasco and Nino we're up in the third story bedroom, which, to be honest, that third story bedroom really is just a converted attic space that has a bed and a TV in it, and it's a weird access point. But we'll talk about Yeah. Well, yeah, you climb up a ladder to get to it. Yeah. Absolutely, So at some point after the email, so this is where the family is is and then at some point after that email came in a spoiler alert, somebody came

in and murdered the entire family. That's why we call it a massacre. Remember I told you that the park was expanding around the home, well directly behind the home. This and this is based on the police investigation. This

is how they think this might have happened. But there's a rather tall chain link fence abutting the back of the house, and what they think happened is our killer climbed the fence, then hopped the short distance from the fence to the home and either caught a hold of an electrical conduit, you know, kind of one of those bigger tubes of electrical wires it goes up the side of the house, or maybe there's an a C unit

is there as well. Might have got from one to the other and then from there and then how how far was his leap from the fence to the wall of the house. Really it's maybe it's not a huge distance. I'm not thinking about being able to I'm just thinking about doing it without making a huge noise. Could very

you know what, I could very easily see. Let's say it's about four foot I could see somebody's kind of standing ish on the top pole of the chain link fence and then slowly leaning forward with their hands forward to then take the cushion of the impact and pull them back and then pull themselves up. It would be possible. Plus, there's some people listening to the TV. Stuff like that was kind of small or stealthy. Let's say they're stealthy,

some ninja type. Maybe. Actually, if they if they did get in this way, and it's kind of ninja, it is kind of ninja. Yeah, So go Jimmy's up the pipe across the A C unit and the second story bathroom window was open. So where a bad guy goes through that window into the second story bathroom, This is where the story will kind of diverge and will bring

it together. But according to the official version, what happens here is the killer comes out of the bathroom, turns, walks across the landing at the top of the second story stairs into the bedroom where Ray is at and smothers him six year old six year old Ray. At some point in the process of smothering Ray must have made some kind of strange noises, probably Ray struggling because

he's being smothered. Uh yeah, well, I mean at this point, Mikio apparently must have heard something because he gets up from the computer and he walks up to the walks up the stairs, at which point he finds the killer. Now, the killer has with him a sashimi knife, which is a thinner, long blade, single sided bladed knife. It sounds

like in this particular instance, it was a bamboo handled knife. Question. Yeah, how do they know they brought the killer brought it with them because it was in the home after the fact and it wasn't one of their belongings. How that I'm guessing that the family said that's not their knife. That doesn't match any of the knives that they have in the home. Question. Yes, we're at Joe's house once

a week. We're not Joe's family. But okay, but do you think you could say like that that's not Joe's for reasons of plausible deniability, I never looked through Joe's knife drawer. I'm just saying, in our house right, like, we have a knife block that has a full set of knives, and then we have a we have like duplicates of knives that we've gone to you. You guys know, foodb on, So like we go and buy knives, they're

like honestly once every six months. Because once the knife that we buy, it's like five bucks this knife, right, and it's great for six months, but it's like way cheaper to just it's really not, you know, and I we have a number of knives that are like that that. Frankly, I don't even I don't think anybody in this world could say, like other than the two of us could say that is or is not part of this collection.

There is. But but the investigators will link that knife to a store not far away, and it appears to have been recently purchased. Sure, but I'm just saying, like I understand what the market that day, maybe they bought a new knife for their market. But the thing is also if indeed, okay, if in this version of the beginning of our story, the killer did not bring the knife with them and so smothers Ray and then Mikio comes upstairs, well that means Mikio must have brought the

knife upstairs, which is a little weird. Why because he's in the he's in his own home, and he hears a weird noise and he has a family. Not many normal family men come stalking up the stairs when they hear a weird house in their family full of people, unless they hear somebody, as Joe said, going die die. I mean, because we don't know everybody that was a witness to this crime is dead. Okay, I'm sorry, I

just I'm trying to do the understanding King well. And also, you don't you don't even know that he attacked Mikio at the top of the stairs with a knife. He might have just jumped him, knocked him down the stairs and then got it ruin and gotten a knife and then come back. And I thought there was blood down the stairs. There's there's blood. There's bloody Okay. So now I wanted to stipulate that he brought the NiFe. Okay, let's for now. And he was also, by the way,

it was incompetent in his choice of knife. Not a good assassin, Okay, So bad guy, bad assassin shows up with the Sashimi knife, which is just a bad tool. But but he kills Ray. And according to this this narrative, Mikio comes upstairs, at which point encounters the killer. The killer then slashes at Mikio and apparently caught him several times on the shoulders and the neck. Mikio then falls down the stairs, and when his body is found, he's

dead at the bottom of the stairs. There's an alternate version of this portion of the story, which is it is possible that and this kind of goes towards maybe what you were heading for, Devon, is that our killer came in through the first floor or through the front door, and chased Mikio up the stairs, apparently along the way, grabbing the knife that was in their home, and then

ols him and knocks him down the stairs. Now in a way that to me almost makes a little more sense, because what's weird is that if the guy came into the house with a knife, why would he go to the bother of smothering Ray rather than just cutting his throat and being done with it fast. If you know what I'm getting at here, I think that actually smothering him makes sense. I mean, because you cover his mouth with a pellow and everything. He can't yell out or

anything like that, and he's only six years old. He can't really you know, fight back to any hughes degree, I would think it would be fairly actually quieter potentially than slitting us throat also leaves less evidence. Yeah, but and the thing is, I don't remember anything about there actually being blood on Mikio or the sheets around him, So this version probably might what I think is probably he's your version is probably wrong, you know. I frankly, I am not willing to rule out the fact that

Miko came up the stairs with a knife. I I've lived in places, and maybe this is just because I do this podcast. I don't know, right, But no, I don't always. But you know, every once in a while, I've definitely heard sounds in my own house when my significant other is not there, where I've thought I'm gonna I'm taking that gun that we have in our bedroom, and I'm going to go investigate what that sound is, whether or not it's you know, he got home early,

it's the wind, like whatever. There have definitely been times in my life where I've thought I'm just gonna take a weapon with me, just sometimes fondly as nine to no. But I mean, like, I I don't know if that's just unique to like me being a paranoid female or like or if there are other people in this world I know you, but I think I do think that there are people in this world who, like you know the normal sounds, you even know, the normal sounds of

your six year old having a night hare versus something's wrong. So maybe you grab the seshimi knife, you know. I So I'm not willing to necessarily discount that he brought it up and it got wrestled out of his hand and then he got killed with it, which is why they always say don't take your gun because you'll get shot with it. Yeah, okay, Well, here's here's one thing

that you need to know about. And this, by the way, is where the two versions of the story kind of coalesced, because everything that happens from here forward seems to be pretty well figured out. But during the struggle with miki O, that seshimi knife was broken in some fashion. From what I understand, it was a bamboo handled knife, so I'm guessing that where the bamboo and the blade came together probably snapped right around there, which makes it really bad

for going slash slash just right. So there's no there's no um, what do they kind thing? No, No, that the part of the medal goes through the handle. Oh, Yeah, that that long shaft, the tail, the tang, Yeah, that bit that. Yeah, it didn't have a long when that apparently ran through, or maybe it did and it was just hard to hold on too. I don't know, but it's everywhere says the knife was broken. That'll make that

will be important here in just a minute. The yeah, and and some some knives, the cheaper ones, you know, the tang kind of tapers and it's just the handle is just basically glued on. I've also seen somewhere the tang is like an inch or two long and in there, and I think that might actually be more likely what we find in this situation. Yeah, so apparently killer found that the knife was not nearly as strong as he

thought it was. He bought a budget knife. Okay, So whichever version happens with with the deaths of Ray and Mikio happened at this point Yasco and Nina are upstairs and our killer makes his way up to them. Now, the layout of their house. H We've have talked about this little bit already, but it's a little confusing. And by the way, if you need to go on the internet, because there's reconstructions of their home and there's photos taken of the home. It's a scale model that is disassembled.

I'll warn you now though, that the jerk that took the models didn't think about the fact that they were rotating the pieces of hundred eighty degrees back and forth of the model. Yeah. Yeah, so you you have to stop and stare and figure out where one piece actually connects. But it'll it'll help make this make a lot more sense. So he finds Jasco and Nina and he tries to attack them, but of course, lo and behold, he's got that broken knife, so he needs to go get a replacement.

So he goes to the kitchen and he found them third floor. It's believed that they were in the third floor. And to get to the third floor, it's up the ladder, up the ladder from the second floor landing where Mikio and our killer have their struggle, right, So he he like comes up the ladder and he's like, dang it, right, it doesn't work, okay, so he goes back down the ladder and it goes downstairs and goes down the stairs again, and would would at least the daughter, right, and Nina

had kind of like slashed at her. Well, we don't know how. It's so both women were caught extensively and badly, so we don't know exactly which wounds were the initial ones, at least in the reading. But what Joe is getting out here is that Nina was caught and Yasco and Nina went and grabbed a first aid kit care that

came down the ladder to the second floor. They must have come downtair the ladder to go to the bathroom to get that, and I think they went back up the ladder because it's easier to barricade or keep a bad guy from quote unquote breaking in when it comes up the lad before you pull the ladder up. It was a ladder was built in. But this is one of the things about this story that I've always found kind of head scratching. It's like, you know, they the

mad slashers in your home. He's just left you long enough to go get another weapon, and what do you do, quick, quick, quick, at the first aid kit, get some bad aids what I would be doing. But the thing is is that, you know what, maybe they tried to get the phones and and call out for help, but it would be found later that the phone lines were unplugged, so they couldn't actually have called for help, and they may have in their panics to be like, oh my god, oh

my god, the phone's not working. Go hide quick, go hide, go hide, And by the time they maybe would have realized, oh wait, let's bang on the walls to get our family next door to figure it out. Maybe you pick up something heavy that clock the killer over the head with you know what comes up, dragged the bed across. I mean, there's there's a whole bunch of things that a us. After the facts seteen years on, we're gonna like,

see that would have been easy. And here's what I'll say also about the first aid kid, is that since we don't know which of the injuries were inflicted, it is possible right that maybe he like slashed the jugular or whatever. It was one of those situations where like a mother of a child had to say, like, wow, right, it's not like you have a little cut on, let's put a band aid on it. It might have been like you were going to bleed out if I don't get some kind of pressure with some kind of pack

on this. So let's go here, like and you consider the end results that they would have been better off looking for weapons. But that's but Devin. Devin's got a good point, because here's the thing. The details of exactly what went down at this point were so sketchy. All we know is that the women were killed with a knife that was procured in their own home. They were

stabbed repeatedly and excessive blee. Now there's that whole uh well, the two women, I don't know of the two who received the staffs everybody in the family who got stabbed the most one of the two, I don't know which of the two women. The husband did not get nearly as many wounds as the two women did, as Nina and Yasco did. So it appears to be that, you know, there's that whole well, they angered him, and maybe they did.

I mean, it could be that they were at the base of the ladder and you know, Jasco is trying to give first aid, at which point our lovely jerk face comes back up the stairs with his new knife and takes it for a test drive. Well, and he was. He didn't come out unscathed eeter either, right, So it's certainly possible that they inflicted some of the wounds on him, and so he was like, oh my god, you dumb whatever bleeps right, I cannot believe that you have the audacity,

especially if he's like he or she. I mean, again, we don't know if it could have been a woman, but I'm going to continue with that. Yeah, I agree, But you know, it's possible that we've seen instances like this before, right where it's like the man who's attacking these women is like okay, but like I have I have so much power over you, Like what how dare you offend me? In other cultures that exists even more and I know, having been close to Japanese culture for

a while for reasons I will not explain here. Um, that's true, that like that is, that's a big thing. That subserviance of women to men is a big thing. And for women to fight back, even young girls to fight back, even if it's to save their lives, that could have been a huge I don't like offense. It could have been, but also maybe not. Yeah, so yeah, we don't know. What we do know is that at the base of the first floor stairs is Mikio's body. At the top of that flight of stairs is the

bodies of both Yasco and Nina. Uh so that's where that's where their bodies are. Of course, Ray is still in the bunk bed where he was smuggler. Yes, we know with pretty good certainty that the family died around eleven thirty at night. There's a couple of things that pinned that down for us. One would be the contents of their stomachs. The other would be that the family that lived on the other side of the house, on the other side of that shared wall, heard at least

one or two banging noises. And then later on we're able to the sisters and brother in law and mother of Jasco, and they were able to pin down the time based on a TV show that they were Oh it was during whatever whatever. But what did they think? Well, they don't know, but you know what I mean, We've all lived in apartments where there was suddenly a bang and like, what the hell was that? Realistically, every time, I like, I haven't really cared about the people who

were loving next. I frankly, I've definitely been a number of apartments where I thought, Wow, that didn't sound good, but am I gonna go check it out now? I don't care about that person but I have no think I've ever been in a situation where I've heard of sound like that, where I thought it might be somebody I cared about, where I was like, I remember, it's a home with two young children, and children can be

rambunctious and things you have dropped and round. So it's it's very hard again, seventeen years on, it's easy to cast that Yeah, yeah, maybe yeah, maybe they were a noisy bunch. Maybe they made that kind of noise all the time. They might have Well let's let's so, so

this is, this is what happens in the murder. Now there's more going on here, and yeah, and Devin loves this part because I had to resort to not only bullets, but sub bullets for all of the stuff that we're I did, but that's because I copied it off of the inter So our bad guy during the struggle, Devon alluded to this a little bit earlier, was hurt during the attack. We believe that's during the attack of Yasco

and Nina accidentally slashed himself. He kind of hand in some way and bandaged himself with the bandages that were found in the home. He would then eventually go on and uh, it's always funny to me. Um, they call him what do they call him when they see it? It's the feminine hygiene pads. I mean it's it's it's pads.

He's using pads to try and staunch the bleeding. Now, you would think that this guy, having caught himself at this point, he's probably just gonna do a quick look around the house and try and grab some stuff and get the hell out. And if that's what you think, you're gonna get really freaked out, because that is not what he did in any way, shape or flour. Yeah, when I'm murder people, this is what I like to do to like to hang out. I mean, that's a warm,

nice spot with talking to them, talk to the corpses. Yeah, alright, so here's here's what goes on. So, yeah, our killer did look for money. He did. It's possible. It's it's listed as possibly stole a hundred and fifty thousand yen, which is at the time, well it's about twelve American dollars a lot. It's it's money, but it's not a huge sum of money. But then he didn't leave. He lingered in the home hinter kai going he pulled the hinter Kai efect and stayed for somewhere between ten to

eleven hours. What did he do while he was there, because it's all the things I would have done, okay, well some of them, some of them because I'm a lady, so I don't. Okay. So he ate some melon out of the fridge. Do you want to get it? Before I went bad? He made some tea and drank it. A herbal team, as we said before, tried to bandage the wound on his hand first from the first aid kit and then used feminine pads or sanitary napkins. They are made to inscore blood. They are men soka blood

makes total sense. By the way he left those, those bandages and the sanitary napkins in the home. He didn't care, just left him around. He ate several ice cream cups. They're They're referred to as popsicles in some places and ice cream cups in other places. But he ate four of those and left the rappers to those four in two different trash cans in the hall. At one o'clock in the morning, he went onto the family computer and he browsed the Chiky Theater's company's website. Tried to buy

tickets for an upcoming show. By the way, you mean what a play? Yeah, it was a play, And so he didn't enter credit card information. Well no, see that's the thing is the link for that theater company's website was already on the browser, so he basically pulled up a saved link and then tried to buy the ticket. I did not enter any payment information, so it was not successful. I kind of feel like maybe he thought it was saved in the browser, wouldn't be in Chrome. Yeah, Like,

I'm sorry, Like, don't do this ever. But if you guys ever were to get to my computer, my Chrome has all of my credit card information, so you just have to type in the first four digits. So you have to know the first four digits of my card information. But yep, that's it, first four that's what my bank issued the card to me. Yeah, but I mean, I have it saved because I don't like to remember how

that stuff. But I don't think in two um oh, and by the way, so going to the theater website, that browsing session lasted for a total of five minutes. In eighteen seconds. In the process of using the mouse, our killer would leave behind at least one, if not

too bloody fingerprints, so readable fingerprints, not smudgy things. At some point later in the morning, the killer would get back on the computer again we don't I don't have a timestamp for this, uh, and then would go to the site of both Mikio's employer and then raise school that browsing session would last only four minutes in sixteen seconds,

so not very long. And then after that the killer would unplug the computer from the wall, and I got the impression that not only did he pull the cord from the wall, he pulled the cord out of the back of the machine as well, which I heard of one place at least said he actually took the card with because I don't know it was there, it was there. That was a translation issue, because I know the post you're talking about, and then there's updates saying, oh, yeah, no,

it was totally there. It's just like there's talk about the fact that because it's the New Year, the family had what we would equate to Christmas or New Year's cards in their home, and some sites will say and those cards were taken by the killer. Now they were actually taken by the police to confirm do you actually

know these people? When did you? You know, it's kind of part of the investigative process that it was returned to the evidence of the home, so that that's one of those little, uh, little bits of misdirection that's unfortunately

from translation. Frankly, that like browsing the the school and the workplace, to me a little bit feels like that person trying to figure out if they can delay any alarms going up, trying to see if like I don't know, but like to do that investigation of like, well, can I call the school and say, oh, my kid is six, so they're not coming in, and can I call this person's employer and saying, oh, hey, I am so and so and I'm I'm sick to extend the time that

people would not realize that they were exactly and because they stayed for a long time, whoever it was that wasn't they stayed pretty much until we'll talk about this, it seems until they realized I'm busted, and so I wonder if there was a bit of that sort of Okay, well, you know, this person had a job and this kid was going to school because the other kid wasn't old enough to be in school yet, right, thing, I thought six was the oldest one. No, it was eight. Nina

was eight, the girls eight. Ray was six. Okay, well, and I think Ray had started school because like there's a whole bunch to talk about the fact that Ray had a bit of a speech impediment, so they were he was getting help with that, so he was definitely he was in. Maybe those were just the two first ones. Then, I don't know, I mean a little bit. It feels like somebody trying to figure out, can I find the boss at the company, Can I find the teacher or

whoever I'm supposed to call the school? Can I figure out can I figure out how to extend my stay here longer? Or maybe? But also maybe it's just like extra creepy. Yeah, was bored, and just you know, I didn't want to actually do any web searches because those might be a little incriminating. Actually web searches at those times we're pretty clunky. Remember this is still two thousand. It's really hard to do web searches. Yeah, very true, So clicking I saved lengths might be the easiest. Yeah,

oh yeah, I was just gonna say. It's also totally possible. Those were just the same links right then. That was like most recent browsing history. That like the father had been like, oh yeah, I'm gonna check out my son's school, you know, well, um in Japan, and he's the thirtieth obviously it's thirty first next day as New Year's Eve, and you most people have New Year's Eve off in schools? Is it off? But yeah, it's a it's a holiday. As far as I could tell, it was a holiday.

The whole thing was a holiday time. It wasn't as if they were supposed to be at school the next day. I don't. I mean, I think Devin might have hit the nail on the head in the beginning, and that Mikio may have been expected to work from home on the holiday, but not necessarily go into the office, not explicitly expected, but that stated that he should be working. But he should be working. Thing, I have a job like that too. Okay, what else did he do? Well?

He ransacked their house. He went through he found family documents like bank statements and credit cards and driver's license and other things like that. He cut up some of the documents and by the way, there was no evidence that they find any evidence that anything was missing, any of the documents taken, not explicitly. No, nobody has said,

oh the blah blah blah was gone. But it does appear that he cut up some of this documentation because that in the card, the credit cards and stuff like that. They're all found in the bathtub, which is weird. Sam's water by the way, there's no water. It's not like there's fingerprints all over there. Yeah, so there's fingerprints and probably d n A because he was bleeding all over all this stuff just sitting in the bathtub, of which

is freaking weird. Let's see what else. Oh well, just you know, understandably, so all of this exertion, it takes its toll on our killer and he decides to take a nice nap on the family's couch for a while. Was that because they could tell because he was bleeding. I'm guessing that it's it had to be part of it. I'm guessing that the couch may have been in a bit of a disarray. I'm not positive how they figured

that out. It Yeah, eventually nature would call uh and our killer would decide that it was time to take a poop, and he would not bother to flush the poop. I don't know. That's funny to me. He left the pooper emoji? Did he leave love toilet paper in there too? Doesn't The toilet paper quantity usage is not explicitly stated, so we do not know if he's a four or

an eight sheet kind of guy. I know, but so well, you know, you're you're a guy, you know, you know occasionally go into public restrooms and some guy will have come before before you and left the big Please tell me you're not going to get too explicit here, but some guy will drop a deucee and just leave it right because he's so proud of the mad pooper. Yeah. What's always amazing to me is there no toilet paper? They eat the dude with no toilet paper because they,

you know, a mudd. I don't know what. I don't know if they if they stand up and sort of waddle over the next doll real carefully and they clean up the mess there. But you know what I'm talking about, right, you see it? Right? Sad to say, that's what I've always wondered about. It's like, dude, where's the toilet paper? But yes, that's why I'm asking this question. So we're not only did he also maybe he leaves some clothes

or some fake please yeah, ok, some of those stuff. Yeah, he God, there's still more stuff that he leaves behind, other than at some point in the evening, our killer decides that it is shot, time for a change of wardrobe, so he changes his clothes. Because what we know this because there's a set of clothes left behind in the home. So they mean they miss presume he took some of the father's close Well, we don't know if he took some Amikio's clothes or if he brought a change of

clothes with him for his killer sleepover. Again. Yeah, like you wouldn't be able to telefy. Yeah, so that did anybody know? Did they do an inventory of the clothes that were in the house. There's nothing definitively took dad's pants and sweatshirt. Realistically, even like Boof, who like sees my clothes every dang day, the entire world probably wouldn't know. Yeah, I wouldn't even probably know. Actually maybe it depends on what it was. But there's some of my clothes where

I I would just like wouldn't even know. I think that maybe they've just been disintegrated or something. So here's sub bullet time. We're going to go through the list, a partial list of the clothes that were left behind. There's there's more to it, but it becomes just at nausea at some point here. So they're a pair of sneakers which were Slaszinger brand. They were sized in Korean. So remember when you buy shoes, they typically have a primary country sizing on them, whether it be US or

European or whatever. These ones were in Korean. Okay. A dark green hip bag was found. It's kind of like a Fannie pack, but apparently they call it a cooler bag than a Fannie pack, which I don't didn't know that was possible. Your hip not your Fannie. Take that as you will, U K listeners. Okay, A black handkerchief was found, a hat was left behind, a scarf, a down jacket, and a pair of winter gloves. It was December,

so that all makes sense. Yeah, yeah, And and there's a lot that's been put into not only all of those actions that we just talked about, but also the clothing that was left behind and what the meaning of all of that was. And and we'll get into some of that actually we get into it in theories from one. Yeah, but we need to finish our timeline here because we

still haven't finished this story, believe it or not. So at some point in the morning, our killer decides that it's time to leave the home, and so he takes off. We don't know exactly when. What we do know is that Dijazco's mother tries to call she can't get through the phone is literally just not working, which is weird. She then goes over to the house herself. We don't know if when she got there she if the door

was locked or not. This is a weird thing to us as Westerners, but in Japan, apparently it's not totally uncommon for people just to not bother to lock their doors, because it really is kind of that's safe of a country most of the time. So either the door was locked and she went back to her home and got the key and came back over, or the door was unlocked and so she just went right on in. But she goes in the house, she finds Mikio's body on

the first floor. She then goes up the stairs and she finds both Yasco and Nina's bodies on the landing at the top of the stairs. Um it appears that at the bottom of the ladder, right, Yeah, yeah, toss of the stairs and bottom letters damning the same thing. Yeah, absolutely, Um, she was not one of those people who screamed and ran away and said. She was one of those people who jumped in the middle and tried to see for

is her daughter and granddaughter alive? Um, So she ended up, you know, having a lot of blood on her as well. But they do, they call the cops, The police come and they investigate the crime. By the way, I know that we talked about this offline, Joe, is that in the beginning I had said, was it Tanner? Eleven hours? Is how long our killer stayed? We don't exactly know.

And and this guy could have if the door was locked, he could have heard yas because mother trying the knob and you know, did an os moment and said, I got to get out of here to back way. Well, and he might have gone out the second story window again, which is weird. Or he might have just bolted out of the front door, you know, and chanced it, or he might have left just minutes before over. Yeah. Well, frankly, given that we don't know how thin those walls were.

I mean, I would assume they were thick enough that there was they couldn't hear like streaming or whatever. But if you're just a single dude kind of like puts ent around the house and you hear a conversation happening through the wall where you hear somebody go, oh, that's weird. They're not answering. Okay, I'm gonna go next door to see. I mean, you can hear. It's possible, like having lived in places that have shared walls, you can sometimes hear

those things. It's also possible that he just heard I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go next door and see what's he sounds of life. He realized people were getting up next door, and I was I was going to say, the other exterior door for the other part of the dwelling open and closed, and we're like, oh, hell, just like Joe saying people are up and about. But he hears it because it's the front door slam and that startles him out of his new you know, comfy little nests.

Also not impossible that the killer was in the house when the mom was in the house. That's highly highly doubtful. No, it's not impossible. I mean it's doubtful, but it couldn't impossible. But I highly doubt it. It's possible, like that third floor, right, it's unlikely that the family went up to the third floor because all the family was dead on the second floor.

So it's possible. Okay, it's unlikely, granted, but it's possible that that person was like, oh crap, that door is opening, I can't get out the back anymore for whatever reason, I'm just gonna go up here so hidden, you know, around a corner, and she went by and went up the stairs and he slipped out. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of ways. There's a million ways, and this is a James Bond movie in the making. I do suspect.

I think I think the door must have been locked, though, because if assuming a killer has any common sense at all, he's gonna lock the door, if he's gonna hang out there and taking nap would hell yeah, you don't. Yeah, Yeah, There's there's a whole bunch of ways. But it could have happened. Okay. So the police come to the home and they investigate, and as I said before, they recovered tons and tons and tons of evidence. Unfortunately, none of them led them to any firm suspects, and to this

day the case is unsolved. This is one of the things that I find as an outside oddity about this story. There's always outside oddities with the stories I find for some reason, and I don't search this out. But on the after the investigation was done and the investigators left, they posted a police guard in front of the door of the house. Seventeen years later, there there is still a Japanese police officer standing in the entry way of

this home. They have cordoned off the exterior of the home with that tall blue netting so that nobody can break in from the backside. All the other homes that were right next to it, because like I said, there was four of them in a row. Those other three homes are gone. This home is still there, and I find it so weird that after all this time, it's still there, like they as a crime scene. I would agree with that, I would Why the hell else, why do you want to build your park keep it around

for all that time? It must dave. It must be because it's a crime scene. And in the case maybe they signature yeah, yeah, it's an active crime scene technically, right, I mean, they have not solved this murder, and yes, they've collected DNA and fingerprint evidence from this place. But I don't know the Japanese system well enough to know if it would behoove them to keep that crime scene uncontaminated for as long as they possibly can. It says it's in the middle of the park, they can, right.

It's not as though somebody's like, oh, I got to move into that apartment tomorrow. Yeah, exactly, it's it's a safe crime scene to just keep. Well, it's ironic that, you know, I mean one of the motives, one of the ones has been proposed, is that somebody wanted them out of there because they wanted to develop that point and it would be isn't that ironic? Yeah, it's like, oh, it's a crime scene now, it's not going to get demo. Probably maybe shouldn't have murdered. That's not the first time

we've come across that as a theory. That would it the backfire motive. We've seen that before and I can't remember what case, but at least one other we've seen that. We've only done two hundred and twenty of them. Now, it could have been it could have been the opposite, though, the opposite of the people who wanted to develop a new park. It could have been somebody who wanted for

whatever reason, just pure spite. Maybe it's despite the people who really, really really had a huge thing for having a park there, to the point where they demoed the entire neighborhood but a couple of houses. And if you have that must spite in you to go murder the entire family, turning the house into a crime scene, therefore stopping the house from being removed, and sticking a finger in the eye of whoever you don't like that wanted it there to be a park there. You know what?

That sounds like a theory? It does it? Does? You know? You know what I'm getting ahead of it. I was I was waiting for you to run out of wind, and you have amazing lungs, so I couldn't do it. All right, that is all of our story, So it is totally totally Finally, after this whole poor thing, finally time to get into theories. But before we do that,

let's take a quick break. Hey, gang, this episode of Thinking Sideways is brought to you by Universal Pictures, which has a new movie coming out called The Snowman, which has theaters on a The movie is based on the book by Joe Nasbo and it's about a psycho killer who murders his victims during the first snowfall of every winter. Who The Snowman stars Michael foss Bender, who you might remember from Alien Covenant, where he played a robot. Actually played two robots, but he has is His role in

this one is Detective Harry Hole. When Harry investigates a disappearance on the first snow of winter, he begins to suspect a connection to a string of old cold cases. He realizes that he has only until the next snowfall to catch the killer. In other words, just sounds like it's right down our alley. Murder mayhemm and history. Snow Man is about a cat and mass game between a killer and a detective. I haven't seen it yet, but I have seen the trailers. It looks actually pretty good.

It opens again October, and I don't know about you, what I do plan to see it, so maybe I'll see you there and you will get extra points if you wear your Frosty the Snowman suit. The Snowman again

in theaters October and We're back. The first theory is kind of it's really unsatisfying because the first theory is that this was just a random killer, and it's a random killing some m So the way this theory goes is that this creep a zoid picked this family out to brutally murder for no other reason than he saw them, and he decided to start stalking them and then eventually would commit the crime. There is a little bit of

back history that potentially supports this. Part of that is that Yasco apparently said to her father in law on the twenty December that for several days in a row somebody had been parked in front of their house. And that's weird because in this park area there's a lot of parking, so there's no real reason to park in front of their house. So people say, well, obviously that was the killer parking and staking them out in scoping

the place out. It could have also been somebody who just decided that was where they like to park their car, but it is weird. On the December, someone was reported to have been seen wandering around this home and the other homes near it, I will say, well, that guy was described as being in his four season. By the way, the ages on people who are described in the theory set and both this one, all of our theories they bounced between twenty and forty, just so you're warned and

don't get thrown off by that. But this particular person was described as walking around the house, being a forty year old man, so wandering around the side of the house,

not the inside. Correct. Correct. And I will tell you that I find this rather innocent because of the fact that a it's a public park space at this point, and to be it is entirely possible that it's somebody who's involved with the conversion process from residential homes to park space assessing the space and oh what's going here? What's that? I mean, it could be people just looking at it. So a guy wandering around, just isn't that out of the organ or somebody lost? Yeah, very true.

The closest road. Yeah, I'm sorry, it's not to think about it. This is evidence in any one of the theories, or kind of is. But I'm throwing it all on the random killer because well it's just random information. So that worked weird. The day before the killings, a man is said to have been seen wearing the same outfit as the one that was seen in the home. This guy is supposedly spotted at Sajoe cagu in My station, which is about a mile or so away from the home.

I believe that's the southern station. There's more than one train station about a mile or so away from the house. Talking about train station, yes, so this that is the

train station. There's one south and one north. But reportedly people noticed this guy and remembered his outfit because it wasn't appropriate for the weather and the bag was so unique, So that's why people figured it out, were just misremembering possibly or that was like a popular fashion at the time, the sort of kind of for a certain ilk, which we will discuss soon. Oh by the way, also on this particular day, someone had purchased sashimi knife in the

area around the station. They did find record of a sale of sashimi knife, so well, so we don't know it wasn't the family, that's true. Are they Are they popular? Yes? In Japan? Not not too surprising. Then let's see what else is there. There's also reporting that someone presumably someone walking in the park By the way, this is at night, on the night of the murders. Saw another person heading quickly down the path in the direction of the family's house. I'll be honest, I think that's a bit of a

red herring. I think that's an easy I stitched this on because the Mayasawa's were killed, and that's just kind of probably a junk state. Yeah. Similarly, like I see people walking around Joe's house all the time and I never see them again. But I don't say that that's because Joe killed them. Did you I don't remember, Okay, blackouts, I don't know, did it. Yeah, So that's the random

killer theory, which I don't know. It's bad, I think, But frankly, none of these I was about to say, you know, all of these theories have giant, gaping holes in them. Yeah. The random killer one kind of does fit the least. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's got a big enough hole somebody could skate right through it. There. Let's talk about there be said, there are things about this murder that suggests that whoever it was, it did it. Whatever the motive, they had a motive, it wasn't just randomness.

We'll talk about that in a minute. Yeah, So let's let's talk about theory number two, which is the skater punk theory. So if you remember we talked about the fact that the house is low catered in a park, and when you do the reading, you will see people talk about the fact or you will see it in the reporting that there is a skate park right adjacent

to the home. Well, that's the thing is that people always say it was right behind her, right next to the house, which is not actually true because there's the driveway that intersects the main road, which is about a hundred feet or hundred twenty feet maybe a hundred meters away from the house, and then the skate park is on the other side of the street. And by the way, this is the famous looking skate parket. They're definitely not

featured in Tony Hawk Pro Skater Team. No, because there's there's a couple of concrete berms that go up, two of them, one, you know, up and down, up and down. Then there's a small half pipe and an even smaller quarter pipe, and then a big plasa space. It's very plain, it's very benign. It's there's nothing that says to me, skater die, Like nothing like that in that space. Yeah, okay, But people make a lot out of it because of the fact that a few days before the killing, Mikio

was seen. He's apparently, according to different theories, he was seen arguing with different people, but Mikio was seen arguing with a skater. Surprise, nobody ever fights with skater teenagers. Ever. They are the most agreeable bunch of all of the humans. Actually, I kind of get the feeling that these Japanese skaters probably are a very tame and nice bunch. It doesn't

seem like they're actual skater punks. But but even skater punks, like, they're not going to go break into somebody's house and murder on people's Unlike, yeah, they will keep your car that they might like, you know, three sixty heny grind onto your yea, you were trying, you were really trying.

Well done. Um. But the fact that people saw or say they saw Mikio arguing with a skater, combined with the clothing that was found in the house discarded, which people say is skater garb or something that you know at the time was in fashion with skaters, would lead them to say, well it had to be it. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the clothing that was found in why this kind of the textiles, Yes,

the text tiles. Okay, So there was that down style jacket, um, which was an air Tech brand jacket, and it apparently had both sweat and blood in it. That blood type was a but that didn't DNA linked. The DNA from that didn't link to anybody, didn't link to the killer's blood left behind in the house even you know, I actually haven't seen that the two were connected. It may have been, and it's just not reported that way. Again, this is one of those issues with translations, so I

don't know for sure. Might have nobody connected it was a victim or or in the system. I just met that bought it a second hand store and already had a little bood on it. Yeah. Maybe. Uh that there was a hat left behind, which was a crusher hat, which is I always described this as remember Gilligan's Island and Gilligan had that silly sailor hat with the with the the edges that folds up folded down. Well, it was that made out of fuzzy material. You see rappers

wearing them. Um, was it? What there was? Was it I remember L L. Cool J back in the day rocking one of these. Don't You're right, I don't. I don't know who LLL cool J is. I all his name on the internet and I used it. Yes, I do. Was a cigarette. Um. But okay. The other things that were found is there was a shirt and it was a it was T shirt, cotton fabric, but it was white across the chest. And then the arms, the long

sleeve arms were made out of there was purple. Only a hundred and thirty of those shirts were apparently sold by a local shop in Marafuru, which is very close by. Um, so it seems like there's not a whole lot of them sold. And then the shoes that were sold, um, which I don't. I gave you the brand earlier and I've lost it. Slazenger, I believe it was, but they were apparently favored by skaters. Again they were the sizing was in Korean and it was a size eight. Oh

my god, no, it doesn't work like that, career. Um. There there are quite a few weird things in the clothing though, that are also found. I said that there was a black handkerchief was that was found that had cologne on it, which was the car help me hear devndcar nor is that right? No, thank you, I've been saying all kinds of words, right, so the simplest ones I have to fly Okay, let drek our noiyard by

Guy Laroche and so okay. This is the other weird thing about about the handkerchief is that it had recently been ironed, which leads people to think that this was a skater who still lives at home and his mom irons everything for him. I don't know, I feel like there's like a very I think it's dumb. Japan. Is this really amazing place for street fact s? Like crazy amazing?

And I would say that there is um a real pride within certain groups of people in your appearance to a Hollywood level, Like they're definitely certain subcultures in the fashion of street fashion fashion street. Yeah, whatever's the matter that Like the dudes like I think we're going to talk about like the dudes who dress like Elvis, like and and their pompadours are so giant, and they like there's a there's a very meticulous they're like they're oh

my god. There are some amazing documentaries on Netflix and YouTube. About the women who take part in this and the men also take so deep part in this that like, it doesn't really surprise me, that is, with your own fashion and appearance, particularly in the tiny the tiny excess reason that you know, we would think like well, like, okay, maybe he looked with his parents or whatever, but like a guy who was into this kind of subculture, that's that's not crazy to me that he would iron his

especially he might have even ironed it so it looked wrinkled. Yeah, you know, because that was the style. It's crazy. There's a crazy amount of thought and time that goes into a lot of these subcultures. And that's true with things even like skaters, where you would think, well, it's just like form over or function over form, but no, there's

just like it's just it's crazy over. It might have also been just iron so it wouldn't I take up a much space in your pocket too, But well, but it's it's weird that it had the clone on it, because that's isn't super popular through most of Japan, which is also an oddity about it. There's some other things, Okay, so there was the hip bag a k a. The Cool Fanny Path, back. Uh, And it was as I said before, it was nicer than your average kind of

bag like that. But the really strange thing about the bag is what was found inside of it, which was some sand, specifically sand that they traced to be I'm guessing they must have done it by the mineral counts and stuff. We talked about this in what was Princess do. Princess Doe was the last one we talked about this, but they traced it and they said it came from California and more specifically in the area around Edwards Air

Force Base in California, which is just craziness. It was just like some it was like what a handful of sand like I don't think it was even a yeah, just a you know, a couple dozen grains or something like that. I mean, those guys are nothing that gets into the seams and it will just never come out, you know. I mean, I think about your shoes when you go to the beach and just never everybody ever imports sad and like for aquariums or for god knows what.

And so I'm gonna have you hold onto that bear with me here because I've dropped to cliffhangers on people. One is the sand two is the Korean shoes sizing. And because I'm a jerk and I like a good cliffhanger, I'm gonna make people wait and we're going to talk about that later. Instead, we're gonna go to a completely unrelated theory. Yeah, let's go to the third theory. Theory number three. Well, this is actually very similar to theory

number two. This is the biker gang theory. Basically, the only difference here is that instead of having fought with a skater, Mikia was actually seen outside fighting with a local biker. And the bike gangs in the area are are called bozozoku. I believe it's how you're pronounced. Listen, I'm I'm really trying on this. Japanese is not my language, so thank you for everybody and helped us with that.

But they're the biker gang. So they're the ones we're just talking about with the leather jackets, because they got these crazy leather jackets, the giant pompadoors, and they're they're generally a nuisance. Actually, I was reading a really interesting article on Gelopnik about the fact that this culture is getting the biker culture is actually waning. As the Japanese economy is waning. Because the bikes are expensive, a bunch of them are out riding scooters. But even then, modifications

are not cheap. The jackets aren't cheap. The embroidery on those jackets is super expensive. Like you got to have are insane. You gonna have a lot of money to be a bear do well, and nobody could afford to be this level of ne'er do well. But but basically the whole theory is that instead of a skater, he fought with a biker, and he offended that biker, and so this pompadour came in the house and killed the entire family. I do I do feel something we're going

to talk about. I do feel um that my understanding of these different gangs because they have I have spent no I I you know, going through costume scions, like my fascination with Japan in general, I have spent a fair amount of time researching the different street fashions of Japan and the kind of culture that comes around it. And I do feel like that culture around these kind

of biker gangs is more aggressive. Not to say I don't believe that they committed this crime, but I do kind of editorially feel like they are more likely than the Skeeter Gangs. Well, the way that I got the impression was is that they like to make a nuisance of themselves and generally rebel, but that rebelling doesn't appear to escalate to the level of any kind of major cry. They're more revel without a cause and more clue right. But I don't again, I don't believe that, like, certainly

not premeditated. If this happened on their part, well, that was the was the park to hang out for these guys, I don't I don't think. I don't think so Joe really heard. I've read a lot about this story, and I've never heard that, you know, I mean, at least the skaters they did hang out nearby, they had reason

to the bikers. I had never heard any of any evidence that the actual I really, like many stories, I feel like this was kind of just shoved in as a theory at some point by somebody, and it's been picked up in a number of places. That's really I don't think there's much to it, but which means we should probably move to the next theory, which is the Yeah, so the Yakuza. So anybody who doesn't know the Yakuza

is the Japanese mob. So the theory goes that this family was possibly killed because it was a hit, maybe because Mikio either angered the wrong people, or maybe he owed the wrong people and he wasn't paying up well, because it's usually the man in the family that gets the family in trouble because us men are dumb. Yeah, but he wasn't the one who was the most brutalized. True.

But but the point being, somebody in the family owed the yakuza, if if it's an o reason, unless it was a hit reason for some reason outside of that. But I know, I know. But but the point is that the yakuza hires somebody and then unbeknownst to them, the guy they hired decides to hang out and just make it a super creepy weird thing because well that's just what he decided to do. I mean, I know you're going to talk about this a little bit, but if he was an outsider that was hired, maybe they

didn't get him a hotel room. I mean, like you're laughing, but we didn't. He didn't for my room aboard. Fine, I'm staying in there. He just didn't have a place to go or things to do before his flight left, or maybe he was smuggling him out of the country happening, you know, like maybe somebody was maybe he had a ride, you know, the ride just said the other guy with d his ride just said, I'll swing by and pick

you up at this hour, like nine am. And you said, you've got that entire window to get the job done. That's that's surveilled the house. Sneak into the house, kill them all, get the whole thing done, and I'll pick you up in this corner, you know, someplace at nine am. And so the guys just like, oh, you know, I guess some time to kill And it actually makes a lot more sense to stay here rather than go out, like you know, two in the morning and hang out

of the streets all night by myself. Makes a ton of sense. So let's let's talk about a bunch of stuff that's in here that people really like. For the yakuza hit theory, We'll start with the Korean angle, because that's what I brought up with the shoe being in the listed in a Korean size wa and then there's some details that I haven't shared so far about the

poop emoji. Uh So, investigators figured out that, first off, the poop contained several things Aside from DNA, it contained the remains of a meal, and that meal was a green bean dish with sesame dressing, which is kind of a traditional meal, so that it's a vegetarian meal. Yeah, it had it wasn't anything that would have had any It didn't have any meat in it. There was no meat found or you know, cast off of meat in the poop, so they said, well, he must have been

a vegetarian. They they also found through testing the genetic makeup of our killer, the killer was not of pure Japanese descent or origin. Instead, the killer's father was probably Chinese or Korean, while the killer's mother was, according to their analysis, most likely Southern European. And they're saying that she was possibly either from either the Mediterranean or the Adriatic Sea area. So that's that's pretty detailed. So were they able to tell anything else about the besides that?

That's really all that I've ever found in the released information. So ethnic heritage, that's about it. Yeah, it's the ethnic heritage, and some people make a lot out of that, because in the Japanese culture, if you are not Japanese there, just like any culture, if you're not of true, pure heritage, then there there can be some um racism. That's the word I'm gonna use, because that's what it is. And there are people who can never rise above a certain

station because of their herit. And so that's why people see this and look at this, and you'll see on the internet it breaks down how many you know, how many and how many Japanese versus Chinese versus Korean could have this. But the point is it's a mixed background. I don't know if there's a whole lot of it. But this this then goes ahead in the theory to say that, well, probably this guy wasn't from the area if he was of this mixed background, and that the

idea would be that the yakuza brought him in. They brought him in from somewhere else. You've got to you know, when you go through a border, you got to go through customs and all of that, and you gotta have your paperwork in order. But it is entirely possible to smuggle people, and it happens in every country in the world, and if you're the mob, you're probably pretty good at

smuggling people in. So that But again, though there's no there's not any hard evidence this person didn't live the next block over, nor is there any motive on DNA based on No, there's nothing to this person lives in country or has never been in country. But that's the This theory says that this person was brought into the country for this deed based on what the contents of the poop left in the toilet, of the DNA that was extracted from the poop em. Yes, the DNA, not

the contents as in vegetable matter. Well, I mean, like frankly, I'm not a vegetarian, but i've there's like aug weeks sometimes months at a time without eating meat. Not I mean just because I don't you know, it's not like a conscious thing one way or another. Sometimes it doesn't sound good, sometimes it does sound good. So it's not I don't think because if you you've had one BM that doesn't have planner, No, no, no, I don't think that's true. I kind of suspect that the killer didn't

flush because the killer wanted it to be found. More good, because because the killer probably was like, say American. So you know, if they analyzed one of his regular um what's the word. I'm thinking if they analyze one of the they would have found typical American. It would have been hamburgers and French fries and so one of the yeah, they're not a little I'd say Red Harry, but Morebert

Brown Herring and uh and uh. And so he ate nothing but vegetables for like a week before and that might be the reason that he actually hung out in the house. That might be the you guys, you guys have gone far afield. Let me do this for a second. So I mean, we're thinking about reasons why he could possibly stayed now so long. It might be if the guy really really wanted to leave that little calling card for whatever reason, that was what Captain sticking around because

it's like, oh, not quite ready yet. I'll eat some more ice cream, I'll drink some more tea. Yeah, and then finally it happens and then bam, okay, I can go the end. Literally. I mean, I don't think the yakuza is a good because I think he accused is usually cleaner. But I also don't see any motive. I also don't see the Tucusa. Would they take out an entire family like that or just take out Usually they would just like cut off the arm of the person who wronged them. I will be honest that I don't.

I haven't done enough reading on the yakuza to even know what they would do. But basically, let me just let me just cinch up the tail end of this particular theory. It's saying that this guy was so flagrant in leaving fingerprints and DNA around because he knew that he was not going to be in the Japanese system, and so there was no way that they were going to pin him down. And then he would just go to his his new employer and they would ship him home and he was scott free. I mean, that's that's

the way the theory goes. I will agree, it's there's again just like the other ones are giant holes in that idea. And I really don't, as Devon said, it don't really see why the accusa would go to that length because from what we can tell, this family had nothing that would have drawn that kind of ire to get them all wiped out. I will tell you, and these things, these next bits that I'm going to give you.

I think they're I really think that they're just kind of wild cards here, and I don't think they're they're actually connected. But on the early morning hours of the thirty one December, so this is the morning. You know, the killing happens late in the night, so this is the early mornings. A cab driver said he picked up three men sometime in the early morning around the area of the home, and one of those men had a wound on his hand, and he took them to a

nearby train station. They didn't talk during the whole time, which he said was kind of weird because early in the morning he expected them to be drunken revelers and instead they were very very quiet. There's also reporting that a man was treated for a deep knife wound in his hand at five thirty in the afternoon on the thirty one near tober Nico station, which is again, this is why I think this is just a wild and wild bit at seventy five miles away, which is a

two kilometers from the home. So I think that that's just some random, unconnected bit, but people people grab onto it. Speaking of the knife wound, let's talk about that for a sec. What Uh so the killer's blood was left behind some bandages and some sanitary napkins and and some other surfaces around the house. Yeah, okay, and also in his clothes and stuff. I don't know about the clothes, but I do know it was on surfaces in the house, like in the kitchen, on the mouth of the computer.

There was aces that it was found. Okay, okay, okay, never mind that. Okay, okay, Well, let's go to our next theory. I know there's you one, at least one of you has one more than I do. But we're gonna go to our next theory, which is a US airman. This theories hinges really on that bag and the sand that was found in it, because, like we said, it was all traced back to I'm guessing my mineral content

to the area around Edwards Air Force Base. And this leads a lot of people to say that, oh, well, it obviously it was a U. S airman who was out for a night of light murder, and then when he did the deed, he returned to his post and then eventually he went home. And I gotta tell you that, I think that's the dumbest thing in the world, because if The Japanese actually thought that, seriously, a U. S citizen had done this murder. They had gone to the

U S and militaries. Hey you get fingerprints? Yeah, hey, I think your guy killed somebody. Can you check his fingerprint? And they'd had him in the system, and he'd have been busted in arm. They might have actually done that. They might have actually run. Yeah. I mean, this whole thing, it's it's all based on the sand there there. Okay, this is dumb. You asked this before, though, Joe is like, there's some very innocent reasons how sand could have got there.

The second hand bag that was imported could have been something like you were asking about aquariums. You know, you ever see those um the little balls with sands and stones in them that are decorative. That maybe that came from the US and it broke. I mean, there's a ba jillion ways that sand from that region could have ended up in a piece of clothing. Devin would say, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Bingo, Okay, actually, I have one is so much dumber for you. Yeah,

I do. I do, because I and I have one. That's pretty good my comparison. All right, Well, My last theory is that this was all done by a corporate competitor he was in. It was corporate espionage to an amazing level. But again this is this doesn't make any sense because nothing in this says gives the slightest hint that Mikio was involved with anything that was of high enough importance that a rival branding agency would send a hit man to get what he had. Like I've seen

this people that they stole WiFi from. They were everybody steals WiFi, Joe WiFi. But really it's there's nothing that even gives me any inclination to say that there's anything solid in that. But you will see that kicked around the internet. Devin is over here like waving her hands. So I gotta know what is the theory that I have missed? Hey, did they fingerprint the family? I believe they did. Oh I tell you, wondering if maybe one of the people next door was the killer. I believe

they did. I can't say though, with any certainty, that they did. But knowing how the Japanese police in their c s I how procedurally bound they are, I would imagine that that is one of the thing you would do almost right away would also imagine that. But here's like, let me just run with a theory for like two seconds. I'm sorry, I guess my theory kind of goes twofold, right. Either, like they were starting this wall with this family and there was their family. How do you not hear this

bleep crap stuff stuff? Things go not right? I mean, like there's no way that there's not screaming and yelling and like help and he's killing it right unless somebody's involved, or I guess my main theory is that one of the people in this family did it and then maybe killed themselves or maybe got killed by a family member who came over to try to intervene or whatever it was. Six year old. Okay, wait, I'm trying to You're gonna

have to flesh that out. So let's say like the father's downstairs doing work and he just like loses it. He goes upstairs, he smothers his child. Okay, continue on, goes upstairs, smothers his son. The mom comes down with a daughter, and it's like what are you, Oh my god. He kills them either commits suicide or the family next door.

Here's what's going on, and it's like, I like the idea he kills them at the top of the stairs and then and then turns to trampically walk downstairs and get a beer out of the fridge and then trip accidentally stabbed and stabbed himself to death rolling down the stairs. But some sort of exactly but some sort of you know, family dispute. Again. The next door family is kind of involved in it. They are like, Okay, well, how do

we make this look like it was a mistake. They like do a couple of things in the computer, They like take a poop, and then like leave and then come back, and then they call the cops. And it's not a perfect theory. But none of these theories are perfectly so I guess I that's kind of my thought is like, well, what if it were in an inside job?

Kind of yeah, because somehow it makes more sense to me than somebody randomly breaking in and for some reason smothering a six year old and then stabbing a bunch of people and then hanging out for a while. I don't know. That's my the thing I have to contribute to this story. It's not good, but I would say

it's at least as good as the yakuza. Oh yeah, well, and and really there if this is not an inside job like you're saying, Devon, there is a pretty serious amount of planning involved to bring clothes to lead a falseter I mean, the clothes seem like they were brought to lead the police in the wrong direction, to misdirect them.

That's that's not just your random freak who decides to kill somebody climbing in the house and doing the deed and then decided to do something after the fact, Like there's there's somebody somebody had a real motivation to do this. It wasn't It wasn't random. So the random airman killer doesn't fit in the yucuza. I don't really get it. Well.

One of the interesting things about it is one of the theories that you always go to and when people get stabbed, especially like this, a very personal kind of burger, this sexual jealousy. You always look at ex boyfriends, ex girlfriends, things like that, and that doesn't seem to have been considered in this case. And the well, the thing about it is it's the other thing that it's been assumed from the get go that the killer was a man. Now imagine the Kailer was a woman. Yeah, I'm not

in that. Yeah, imagine that, that and that, And this woman deliberately brings where's when men's clothes there, leaves them behind, knowing that the Japanese police are gonna believe from the get go that it was a guy that did it, because I mean, who can come over and come into this place and overpower and stab a guy and stab a family to death. You know, it's gonna be a guy.

And of course this person doesn't this woman. Let's say so, let's just assume for the sake of fund it's a woman just says, hey, you know, I'm gonna do a little I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna really care to their assumptions and leave some guys some clues that was a guy here. And so I'm gonna leave all these men's clothes and stuff. I'm gonna go take a crap and not flush it because women flush the toilet. Dudes

don't always women always do. So I'm gonna pull this dude stunt and take a dump and leave it sitting there, just like a dude. But then there's other things that make me wonder. I mean, the mother or the mother. The wife was stabbed and and the daughter. They were especially the wife apparently were stabbed a lot more brutalized than anybody else. What's indicates to me maybe a little

psycho jealousy going on there the clean up. Now, the average guy, if he finds he's running out of bandages and still bleeding, the average guy is not necessarily going to think to go get out the sanitary napkins. But a woman would. And and best of all, this person

would have the motive. Even it does not appear to have been investigated, because it appears that it was assumed from the get go that was a guy that culturally that may be a cultural reason, and that's it could be a failing on the Japanese police, not just a cultural Well but I was going to say, is that you know there there has been criticism of the Japanese police because they have an amazing investigative team and an amazing forensic team, but they have no experience because this

kind of thing almost never happens, which is which is terrible because on the flip side, in the States, you know, there's a bunch of places where our investigative capacity blow, our forensic capacity blow. But we see stuff like this all the time, and so we're really good at figuring out where it came from. So it's kind of it's a it's a back and forth. But I mean, well, I mean we could keep going. I mean, I'm in

with Joe. Probably was a jealous girlfriend or farmer girlfriends something or husband have been jealous husband, mother in law or maybe a mother in law or something. That's Devin. Jevin has just been dealing with a future mother in law. So that's why she's going in law, all right. I don't think that, But I also don't think the mother in law are the people in the next to the next door would have taken a dump and left it in the toilet. No, I agree, but I definitely agree

with you. I could have been probably a woman probably was. So if you have agreed, Sorry, sorry I got thrown off by the high fiving. Okay. So if you have theories of your own, that's totally understandable. This case really brings it out. Well, you can share those with us. You can do that in a number of different ways. You can go on social media and you could share it on our Facebook page or Facebook group. A lot of people a lot of discussion we when we're talking

about social media. We also have our Twitter account Thinking Sideways and there's also the Reddit accounts, so there's Reddit on there. So any of those places you can talk about it. You want to talk with us directly about this, well you're more than welcome to do that. You can eat email us, email us, yeah, email us. You can

do that at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Questions, comments, concerns, all is welcome, uh, you know to It's a little while to get back to you, but we'll get back to you. You can listen to episodes well just about everywhere at this point. We're on all the major avenues like iTunes and Stitcher and Google Play and in all those places, so you can download or you can stream. If you're able to do so, please take the time to leave a comment and a rating. It helps other

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