Hey there, DETECTIVES! DETECTIVE WRITER here to tell you all about an absolutely horrifying and unsolved murder that has rattled Japan for many years. TRIGGER WARNING: I will be discussing the murder of children so please feel free to skip this post if you would rather not hear of it. It is the case of the Setagaya family, a family of four who was all brutally ended by an unknown killer who invaded their home and actually stayed for several hours after the murders.
On December 31st, 2000 at approximately 10:40 A.M. Japan Standard Time, in a small ward in Setagaya in Tokyo, Japan, Haruko, the mother of 41-year-old wife and mom, Yasuko Miyazawa found the bodies of the family. Yasuko, 44-year-old Mikio Miyazawa, and 8-year-old Niina had each been stabbed to death whereas 6-year-old Rei had been strangled by the killer’s bare hands. The Toyko Metropolitan Police Department had determined that the family had been killed on December 30th, 2000 at around 11:30 P.M. (JST). The intruder had unplugged the phone lines. Rei had been asleep in his bed but he had been murdered first through strangulation and when his father, Mikio, hearing the screams rushed upstairs to his son. After briefly fighting and injuring the intruder, Mikio unfortunately was then stabbed in the head with a sashimi knife. The intruder then stabbed Yasuko and Niina to death as well with both the sashimi and household knife as well. The intruder had entered the house through an open window from the second-floor bathroom, he or she then climbed up a tree and removed a window screen. This force of entry led police to believe that the intruder was about 15-35 years old at the time of the murders. Police determined the killer had spent over 2 to 10 hours inside the house after the murders using a first aid kit, taking a nap on the second-floor living room sofa, consuming ice cream, melon, barley tea, and even using the restroom but did not flush his number 2. DNA analysis indicated that perhaps the murderer was not Japanese nor living in Japan since his or her blood revealed he or she may be of mixed race with a European mother and an East Asian father. While the killer had left a few items at the scene including his bodily fluids, a sweater, shoes, etc- to this day, no one knows just who this individual was, what was the motive behind the killings, and even what happened after leaving the residence. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts.
Please let me know in the comments if you want to have more storytime, DETECTIVES. If you were able to read up to this point, thank you, and know that all victims deserve love, respect, and justice. Have a great day, night, afternoon, or evening, DETECTIVES! Stay tuned for next week’s post; until then, keep on sleuthing, DETECTIVES!
Detective Writer 