Japan - Miyazawa family of 4 murdered, Setagaya, Tokyo, 30 Dec 2000 #2

[Charlot123]

When I lived in a wooden building in Tokyo many years ago I could hear my neighbour downstairs snoring.

Not downstairs as in the bottom floor of a two story house, but as in the entire separate apartment below me. I could hear them snoring through the walls of an entirely separate place enough that it used to bother me.

It just doesn’t make sense.
Maybe the teen who heard the ladder thunk was just watching TV loud enough to shrug any other noises off.
And post murder, someone stomping about the place dropping drawers and dumping documents in a bathtub.

Such frustrating detail of the entire thing.

There is a problem with the sounds in old, thin-walled or flimsily built houses. Their origin may be misinterpreted.

An example: my own house when we just moved in was brand new and whenever someone was walking in the master bedroom, I’d hear footsteps sitting downstairs and diagonally from the source. Once I heard a loud thud upstairs, and ran to my dad’s room fearing that he fell off the bed. He was fine but said he heard “an explosion” in the closet. I checked - there was nothing. As we were sitting and discussing the problems of “breathing houses”, we heard voices and utensils falling downstairs. We both went downstairs - nothing again. Similar things kept on happening until: 1) we replaced the floors upstairs and reinforced the beams. 2) The developers tore down a high hill behind our line of houses. I am not a physicist but my explanation is that maybe some sounds from the neighboring houses would reflect from the hill and be perceived as coming from our own house.

What I want to say: it is not improbable that if the two houses (the Miyazawa and Irie’s one) were not soundproof, they used to interpret the sounds as coming from “the street”, or “a neighboring house”. So maybe they heard something but overinterpreted it. This is exactly what I was mentally trained to do when our house was creaky.

 

[Charlot123]

My guess would be yes, based on the fact that the TMPD invested a great workforce to work on the case, and I believe that criminal profilers would be engaged there. However, I have not seen anything from the original source TMPD available in the public domain. Only mainstream media items with some quotes of general nature. The only professional criminal profiler was Pat Brown, who actually used the info gathered by @FacelessPodcast and someone else offered her view of the profile of the killer. But my understanding is she did not work on the case as an employed profiler with access to everything TMPD has access to, although she wrote a book about it, and it's in Japanese. Here is the link.

I shall try to listen to her interpretation later. Some of them great, with others, I disagree. Maybe we shall wait till a few profilers offer their opinions.

Here is my point: imagine the perp broke in for stealing. If indeed Rei was killed first, that murder can not be explained, as the kid was sleeping and not screaming. With good luck, he’d be able to steal (money or papers) and crawl out without disturbing the family. Yet he killed Rei. Meaning he probably came to kill. Any other goal was secondary.

 

[Janitor101]

My guess would be yes, based on the fact that the TMPD invested a great workforce to work on the case, and I believe that criminal profilers would be engaged there. However, I have not seen anything from the original source TMPD available in the public domain. Only mainstream media items with some quotes of general nature. The only professional criminal profiler was Pat Brown, who actually used the info gathered by @FacelessPodcast and someone else offered her view of the profile of the killer. But my understanding is she did not work on the case as an employed profiler with access to everything TMPD has access to, although she wrote a book about it, and it's in Japanese. Here is the link.

Thank you so much! I am familiar with Pat Brown and her work. She is certainly straightforward, and if you want her opinion on a case, she isn't shy about giving it to you!

Thanks again!

 

[FacelessPodcast]

My guess would be yes, based on the fact that the TMPD invested a great workforce to work on the case, and I believe that criminal profilers would be engaged there. However, I have not seen anything from the original source TMPD available in the public domain. Only mainstream media items with some quotes of general nature. The only professional criminal profiler was Pat Brown, who actually used the info gathered by @FacelessPodcast and someone else offered her view of the profile of the killer.

As I think I said to you last month, @Sor Juana, Pat Brown makes a lot of statements about this case in her video. A great many of them I disagree with. This is based on what I've been outspoken about these past two years across this thread. But also based on what I have not been able to discuss here given parts of my conversations with LE were off the record. So, @Janitor101, of course feel free to watch her video and agree/disagree with her points. But with no disrespect to her experience, she is going off my podcast / wikipedia, and little else. As such, my own view is that her guesswork here carries the same weight as anyone else's.

Second point: she is not the only profiler to have looked at this case, as per my last post re: the Asahi TV. The profiler I mentioned in my previous post worked for many years in the FBI (likely why Asahi TV reached out to him in the first place and not Pat et al). This man actually spoke with the TMPD, saw the case file, visited the crime scene. As I say, I interviewed him at length. And in my previous post on this, I sum up his view.

But my understanding is she did not work on the case as an employed profiler with access to everything TMPD has access to, although she wrote a book about it, and it's in Japanese. Here is the link.

As for this book, is it actually about the Miyazawa case? I could be wrong but I thought it's simply the Japanese translation of one of her existing books. The front cover in the thumbnail carries the title The Profiler. As I say, with all respect, her views on this case are informed by my podcast and Wikipedia. I think that's as far as she went with it.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

The bang from the loft ladder would be structural noise, whereas any talking or screaming would be airborne noise. Even if the two types of sound originate from the same location (the landing outside the bathroom) it's possible they would travel and be heard very differently. Structural soundproofing would be very difficult to retrofit, but airborne soundproofing should be quite simple--at least in theory.

RSBM: Given the floor was wood, given we know Mikio and the killer fought, given there was movement up and down the ladder, given it's almost certain with how narrow the space is that walls were hit in the struggle, given Mikio doesn't float down the stairs and come to a soft, feathery landing, etc etc, I find it impossible to believe the ladder bang was the only structural noise. I don't wish to invalidate your soundproofing experiences but it is not simply screams and one bang.

I wasn't sure how Japanese houses are constructed, so I watched a few YouTube videos of wooden houses being built. If Mikio was able to strip the walls back to the wooden frame, he could have installed soundproofing wool or foam into the wall cavity. If Mikio wasn't able to strip the walls back to the bare wooden frame, he could have applied a layer of soundproofing mat to the walls. In both cases it should be invisible once the wall is refinished.

I have no idea what kind of soundproofing Mikio employed. The engineer spoke about the likely options from that time period, as I recall. From memory, I thought Mikio simply paid to have it installed but given his creative nature and involvement in theatre SFX and so on, it's quite possible he himself got involved.

I'm genuinely surprised that your sound expert thinks the soundproofing wouldn't have even blocked a cough. The physics of soundproofing doesn't change, so even in a Japanese house I'd expect *airborne* soundproofing to be quite effective. If the soundproofing didn't make much difference, would Mikio even have bothered installing it?

We can only speculate. Again, with all respect to your experience in soundproofing, I know nothing on the subject so can only defer to the concerns of the detectives on the scene and my sound engineer who was studying the walls of the exterior while looking at the video of the interior. Is it possible they have all misunderstood the nature of structural vs airborne sound? Yes, it's possible. But given the detectives did extensive experimentation with the sounds (which is how they determined what the bang was in the first place), I would suggest that their concerns are founded on something beyond a lack of understanding.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

Thank you so much! I am familiar with Pat Brown and her work. She is certainly straightforward, and if you want her opinion on a case, she isn't shy about giving it to you!

Thanks again!

Very humbly I would suggest that the two best resources for this case (in English) are this ABC article:

The killer without a face - ABC News

And FACELESS via Universal / USG:
FACELESS | USG Audio

 

[Incoherent]

Some interesting conversations going on!

Here’s an image to help with proximity and why I find it odd the ladder was heard but nothing else was. The circles are where the 3 family members were found dead:



The bathroom is right next to where Mikio, Niina, and Yasuko were all killed and the window was open.
I believe it was determined that Mikio also fell down the stairs as he was lying at the bottom of it.
There was a lot of noise going on in the same vicinity and yet only the ladder was supposedly heard.
The bathroom also partially shares a wall with next door and has a window from the other side close to it too. I wonder if anyone was in there and still couldn’t hear anything?

It’s a lot of luck for the killer… but then I feel I’ve never read about a luckier killer ever than this one.

 

[minamoon]

I have been thinking about how crazy it seems that the neighbors didn't hear a peep.

1. PROPER soundproofing older homes, especially wooden homes, is incredibly inefficient and $$$. Building an efficient soundproof system means you have to almost envelope the entire property to prevent any flanking sound transmission. A big issue is thats a minor improvement as with houses and flats have interconnecting support structures such as walls and joists that which create sound paths unless they are isolated from one another.

2. WHY soundproof? t I can imagine the petty little fights that come with noise. It seems completely possible. Maybe they mistook the assault as the family trying to get a rise out of the situation so they chose to ignore it. It's like how I have selective hearing against my husband's snoring after a few years of cohabitation. Lol

3. Hear me out! It's possible they didn't hear anything. My friend tells a story about a late night drive. His girlfriend was in the passenger seat, asleep. He explains how he hit an icy patch, and while spinning out for what felt like eternity, they impacted the side of the highway. So whats the point of me saying this? He told me he had the split-second thought not to scream because it was be embarrassing for him if his girlfriend woke up to him shrieking. Funny, but you get my point (my friend and his gf are completely fine by the way). Shock makes people act (or not act) quickly. It's my best guess that a lunatic with a knife is kinda shocking

 

[Charlot123]

I am tending to give the Iries the benefit of the doubt regarding the noises. Simply, unless you know that your relatives are being killed, you would not think of it as the first explanation for unusual noises. I know of a story when a DV situation ended in a murder. Both partners were drunk. The people in the nearby room called the police only when the quarreling couple suddenly became quiet. Yelling and screaming was the expected norm for that family. I don't know how the Miyazawas house was, but with two young kids, and if, for example, the parents were prone to arguing, all the sounds and noise could have been misinterpreted.

Then again, the issue with the sound localization. I remember a childhood test: if we cover someone's eyes and another person stands behind him, at a distance of 1 meter, and strikes two coins against one another, his hands at the level of the person's ears and strictly midline, it is very hard to tell whether the sound comes from the front or from the back. The hearing analyzer is so much simpler than the visual one, we get 90% of the information about the world from our eyes, but maybe for this very reason, our hearing is error-prone.

(In general, the normal standard for sound localization is 70% correct answers for people with normal hearing, regardless of age or gender.) Young children of 7-8 make more mistakes than kids of 9-10. I assume that a child of 13 might make more mistakes in sound localization than a young adult with good hearing. Or perhaps, people in the other half of the house simply didn't hear well? If Rei had late onset of speech, perhaps the whole family had more hearing issues than we would think of?

 

[minamoon]

I am tending to give the Iries the benefit of the doubt regarding the noises. Simply, unless you know that your relatives are being killed, you would not think of it as the first explanation for unusual noises. I know of a story when a DV situation ended in a murder. Both partners were drunk. The people in the nearby room called the police only when the quarreling couple suddenly became quiet. Yelling and screaming was the expected norm for that family. I don't know how the Miyazawas house was, but with two young kids, and if, for example, the parents were prone to arguing, all the sounds and noise could have been misinterpreted.

Then again, the issue with the sound localization. I remember a childhood test: if we cover someone's eyes and another person stands behind him, at a distance of 1 meter, and strikes two coins against one another, his hands at the level of the person's ears and strictly midline, it is very hard to tell whether the sound comes from the front or from the back. The hearing analyzer is so much simpler than the visual one, we get 90% of the information about the world from our eyes, but maybe for this very reason, our hearing is error-prone.

(In general, the normal standard for sound localization is 70% correct answers for people with normal hearing, regardless of age or gender.) Young children of 7-8 make more mistakes than kids of 9-10. I assume that a child of 13 might make more mistakes in sound localization than a young adult with good hearing. Or perhaps, people in the other half of the house simply didn't hear well? If Rei had late onset of speech, perhaps the whole family had more hearing issues than we would think of?

Another thought on sound...

You don't know what you don't know. I am sure if there were struggles audible in the home, no one would think their family is being slaughtered next door (unless there were screams etc but I believe the neighbors).

You don't expect someone you love to walk out the door and never return. That is absolute worst case. So sad. "It couldn't happen to me or my family."

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

Some interesting conversations going on!

Here’s an image to help with proximity and why I find it odd the ladder was heard but nothing else was. The circles are where the 3 family members were found dead:

View attachment 496596

The bathroom is right next to where Mikio, Niina, and Yasuko were all killed and the window was open.
I believe it was determined that Mikio also fell down the stairs as he was lying at the bottom of it.
There was a lot of noise going on in the same vicinity and yet only the ladder was supposedly heard.
The bathroom also partially shares a wall with next door and has a window from the other side close to it too. I wonder if anyone was in there and still couldn’t hear anything?

It’s a lot of luck for the killer… but then I feel I’ve never read about a luckier killer ever than this one.

The most obvious reason why the ladder might be heard, but nothing else, is that the ladder closes up into the ceiling/attic space and everything else (aside from the initial attack on Yasuko and Niina) happened down in the main house.

Something as simple as the location in the house could make all the difference. The loft ladder may have resonated in a way other sounds didn't because it was higher up in the structure.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

RSBM: Given the floor was wood, given we know Mikio and the killer fought, given there was movement up and down the ladder, given it's almost certain with how narrow the space is that walls were hit in the struggle, given Mikio doesn't float down the stairs and come to a soft, feathery landing, etc etc, I find it impossible to believe the ladder bang was the only structural noise. I don't wish to invalidate your soundproofing experiences but it is not simply screams and one bang.

I have no idea what kind of soundproofing Mikio employed. The engineer spoke about the likely options from that time period, as I recall. From memory, I thought Mikio simply paid to have it installed but given his creative nature and involvement in theatre SFX and so on, it's quite possible he himself got involved.

We can only speculate. Again, with all respect to your experience in soundproofing, I know nothing on the subject so can only defer to the concerns of the detectives on the scene and my sound engineer who was studying the walls of the exterior while looking at the video of the interior. Is it possible they have all misunderstood the nature of structural vs airborne sound? Yes, it's possible. But given the detectives did extensive experimentation with the sounds (which is how they determined what the bang was in the first place), I would suggest that their concerns are founded on something beyond a lack of understanding.

If only soundproofing were simple. Airborne soundproofing just requires some kind of barrier. The sound travels through the air, hits the barrier, stops. But structural noise? Oh boy, much more complicated. To soundproof for structural noise you pretty much have to do it when you first build the house, because it requires decoupling the various joints in the building so the sound can't pass between them.

And it's really unpredictable. You might bang on one wall and hear nothing. You might bang on another wall and it sounds like a bass drum is being played next to your head when it's really 50 yards away. The way sounds resonate and can be amplified is so difficult to guess at without being able to examine a building up close. Just the location of the loft ladder higher up in the ceiling might make it resonate next door in a way the other bumps and bangs didn't.

I don't mean to suggest the TMPD don't understand the situation. Rather, *something* made the detectives conclude the sound came from the loft ladder, and not from banging into walls or falling down the stairs. For them to conclude that, I have to assume that during their experiments the loft ladder *was* more audible.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

I don't mean to suggest the TMPD don't understand the situation. Rather, *something* made the detectives conclude the sound came from the loft ladder, and not from banging into walls or falling down the stairs. For them to conclude that, I have to assume that during their experiments the loft ladder *was* more audible.

RSBM: As I understand it, their experiments were extensive. This included playing around with the ladder. But I think it also included weights down the stairs, simulated struggles, so on. As I say, I feel there is a reason why they found the notion of total silence between 10:38pm - 11pm troubling -- whether or not Mikio, Yasuko, and Niina where all stabbed to death without making a peep. I find such a scenario difficult to imagine but even if we accept they were silent, I think the movements could not have been. Had the experiments yielded one single noise from the ladder, surely they would have been satisfied with the notion of silence. They were not.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

Some interesting conversations going on!

Here’s an image to help with proximity and why I find it odd the ladder was heard but nothing else was. The circles are where the 3 family members were found dead:

View attachment 496596

The bathroom is right next to where Mikio, Niina, and Yasuko were all killed and the window was open.
I believe it was determined that Mikio also fell down the stairs as he was lying at the bottom of it.

Yes it was. He struggled long enough to be stabbed around 10-15 times, the fatal blow being to his heart, then he was pushed down the stairs where he ends up in a foetal position.

There was a lot of noise going on in the same vicinity and yet only the ladder was supposedly heard.
The bathroom also partially shares a wall with next door and has a window from the other side close to it too. I wonder if anyone was in there and still couldn’t hear anything?

To answer this, it would help to know where the family was next door. I can only imagine their response was: "in bed and asleep". I think I'm right in saying that the room that stands next to this photographed space is the Irie living room.

It’s a lot of luck for the killer… but then I feel I’ve never read about a luckier killer ever than this one.

Hard agree. He needed so many elements to go his way to still be out there 24 years later. That he still is astounds me.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

I have been thinking about how crazy it seems that the neighbors didn't hear a peep.

1. PROPER soundproofing older homes, especially wooden homes, is incredibly inefficient and $$$. Building an efficient soundproof system means you have to almost envelope the entire property to prevent any flanking sound transmission. A big issue is thats a minor improvement as with houses and flats have interconnecting support structures such as walls and joists that which create sound paths unless they are isolated from one another.

The point from my sound engineer was that these houses were particularly awful for soundproofing in the first place and Mikio would've had limited options for creating something effective between the two houses. He said: "You would hear someone coughing next door, let alone them screaming or shouting."

2. WHY soundproof? t I can imagine the petty little fights that come with noise. It seems completely possible. Maybe they mistook the assault as the family trying to get a rise out of the situation so they chose to ignore it. It's like how I have selective hearing against my husband's snoring after a few years of cohabitation. Lol

Clearly, there were some disagreements between the two families. An has expressed her regret in "allowing Mikio" to install the soundproofing in later years. It's possible that he didn't want An and his mother and law et al to have to hear his family. Or it's possible he didn't want to have to listen to them. Maybe both. As things stand, we'll never know. Setsuko was open in all her answers but she's going on 95 and wouldn't be easily drawn on Yasuko's side of the family. That felt pointed to me and I didn't want to push her in the way that I pushed the Chief hard, so on.

3. Hear me out! It's possible they didn't hear anything. My friend tells a story about a late night drive. His girlfriend was in the passenger seat, asleep. He explains how he hit an icy patch, and while spinning out for what felt like eternity, they impacted the side of the highway. So whats the point of me saying this? He told me he had the split-second thought not to scream because it was be embarrassing for him if his girlfriend woke up to him shrieking. Funny, but you get my point (my friend and his gf are completely fine by the way). Shock makes people act (or not act) quickly. It's my best guess that a lunatic with a knife is kinda shocking

It is entirely possible they heard nothing. And I cast no aspersions. My only point is that, after extensive experiments on sound, I think the detectives being dissatisfied with that is based on something not nothing.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

Another thought on sound...

You don't know what you don't know. I am sure if there were struggles audible in the home, no one would think their family is being slaughtered next door (unless there were screams etc but I believe the neighbors).

You don't expect someone you love to walk out the door and never return. That is absolute worst case. So sad. "It couldn't happen to me or my family."

If the struggles were audible -- exactly. So, on first blush, I know the Chief found it hard to understand how nothing but the bang could be heard. The experiments almost certainly tell us that he was testing the notion. Whatever the outcome of those experiments, we can only guess. Of course, we can say that people have unreliable hearing or that sound works in funny ways. That's true, also. But seeing as the Chief / detectives remained dissatisfied with that explanation, I would suggest that's for a reason.

Had the reply been: "we heard shouts / screams, we thought it was just another argument", my feeling is that would have satisfied him more. JMO.

 

[Incoherent]

The most obvious reason why the ladder might be heard, but nothing else, is that the ladder closes up into the ceiling/attic space and everything else (aside from the initial attack on Yasuko and Niina) happened down in the main house.

Something as simple as the location in the house could make all the difference. The loft ladder may have resonated in a way other sounds didn't because it was higher up in the structure.

The thunk of the ladder is audible, but Mikio being stabbed to death and pushed down the stairs isn’t? An 8 year old being dragged across a loft and down that exact ladder after being stabbed, and then being pummelled and murdered along with her mother isn’t audible at all? No screams or crying? Next to an open window?

By no means do I want to accuse the Irie’s of being liars, but it is pretty astonishing and I understand the disbelief and dissatisfaction coming from LE and others alike.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

The thunk of the ladder is audible, but Mikio being stabbed to death and pushed down the stairs isn’t? An 8 year old being dragged across a loft and down that exact ladder after being stabbed, and then being pummelled and murdered along with her mother isn’t audible at all? No screams or crying? Next to an open window?

By no means do I want to accuse the Irie’s of being liars, but it is pretty astonishing and I understand the disbelief and dissatisfaction coming from LE and others alike.

I think that last point is really key. In no way do I suggest there isn't a good reason for their story. Only that it didn't make sense to the Chief on Day 1 and, from our conversations, made less sense after the sound experiments.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

The thunk of the ladder is audible, but Mikio being stabbed to death and pushed down the stairs isn’t? An 8 year old being dragged across a loft and down that exact ladder after being stabbed, and then being pummelled and murdered along with her mother isn’t audible at all? No screams or crying? Next to an open window?

By no means do I want to accuse the Irie’s of being liars, but it is pretty astonishing and I understand the disbelief and dissatisfaction coming from LE and others alike.

The stairs are on the opposite side of the house, so I think it's possible nothing was heard from the struggle on them. Was Niina dragged across the loft and down the ladder? I thought it was believed Yasuko and Niina came down the ladder voluntarily when they thought the killer had gone? Maybe I've misunderstood that detail; hopefully @FacelessPodcast can clarify that.

Do we even know the bathroom window was open at the time of the murders? If the killer entered by the window, it would be open. But if he left by the window, or opened it to leave a false trail, it might not have been open until *after* the family were dead.

Presumably we don't even know exactly when during the attack the loft ladder was heard slamming shut. Did Yasuko shut it in an attempt to keep the killer out of the loft? Did the killer slam it shut because it was getting in the way? Were the family alive or already dead when that sound was heard? If the bang of the ladder was early in the attack, you might expect people who had been woken by it to hear what happened afterwards. But if it was slammed shut *after* the attack, anyone woken by it would hear nothing because by that time the family were already dead.

I don't know if I believe the Iries story. All of my posts have been playing Devil's Advocate, trying to think of reasons why they might not have heard anything.

The Iries claim they were woken by a single loud thud and heard nothing else. It's unlikely the attack was totally silent, but at the same time it seems like that single thud *must* have been the loudest of the noises. Otherwise it makes no sense for the TMPD to single out the loft ladder as the cause of it. If there were other loud noises during the TMPD's experiments, how did they conclude the Iries had heard the loft ladder and not something else?

Maybe the Iries really did simply sleep through everything, as difficult as that might be to believe.

 

[Incoherent]

The stairs are on the opposite side of the house, so I think it's possible nothing was heard from the struggle on them. Was Niina dragged across the loft and down the ladder? I thought it was believed Yasuko and Niina came down the ladder voluntarily when they thought the killer had gone? Maybe I've misunderstood that detail; hopefully @FacelessPodcast can clarify that.

The stairs are directly next to loft ladder. You can see them in my image. How is it Mikio crashing down them cannot be heard but the ladder directly next to them can be?
All we have is the report from the Irie’s who, according to reports, didn’t hear it.

“Dragged” is more my own wording to be honest. But Yasuko and Niina were stabbed in the bed in the loft before making their way down the ladder. I’m not sure what else to describe a stabbed and bleeding 8 year old moving across the loft floor and down a ladder with her mother other than “dragged”. Highly doubt Niina was walking by herself at this point, more so her mother using her strength to try and get her out of there.