(RSBM)
My guess is that it's a combination of being driven by rage and the lack of space in the areas in which they were stabbed. Mikio on the stairs, Niina and Yasuko in that cramped landing with a ladder in the middle. Of course, it could be any of the above, too. My feeling is just between rage and the actions we're certain he took, there are the fewest leaps.
We could argue for Niina, or just as easily for Rei, or Yasuko. There again, Mikio seems the most likely to have 'provoked' a killer in some way, however minimally. To my mind, it doesn't sound necessarily like Niina was the target. For one thing, it's not even sure that many of the blows she suffered didn't deflect off Yasuko as they were laying together in those final moments. My view is that they're all are equally likely candidates for being the killer's true 'objective.' But the net result is that they all died. Absent any clear evidence that one family member was chosen and the rest were collateral, my gut feeling is that the outcome was the objective. He was there for all of them.
RSBM: Yes, I imagine the killer here will have an equally stupid reason for doing what he did. Though, of course, stupid to me -- in his own mind, his loathing probably felt very real. My guess here is that the Miyazawas were surrogates for his own rage, that they essentially 'did nothing wrong'. This is assuming the killer would even be able to articulate it. Many serial killers will spout some kind of divine mission from God or whatever BS to narrativise their acts, when in reality they simply felt a mix of deep sexual inferiority / hatred of women etc.
Totally agree. And to be clear re: the POI. I find the information stacked up pretty convincing on its own merit. But it's also simply the case that there is no other convincing POI on any level so far. Even the theoreticals absent a person feel thin in comparison. But the second something more solid or credible comes along, I'm happy to drop this guy. My opinion changes as the evidence does, as it must!
I would say Niina was likely screaming. She was already stabbed up in the loft, and then was taken down the stairs by Yasuko before the killer finished them both off. Yasuko was also attempting to tend to her wounds.
No takers yet. One platform mentioned getting my POIs prints before they'd commission it. Which, given that I live thousands of miles away on the other side of the Atlantic is not just a hop and a skip.
Nic, I'm quite confident one of us here would be able to get the prints via their garbage, mild recon, etc. While we understand and respect your inability to name your POI, I'm sure there are work arounds. For starters, it seems your POI may be in California. But, even elsewhere is doable. Maybe you could try and source us via location based, and then discuss logistics privately? I'm a firm believer that nothing is impossible, and there's a solution to every problem.
One of the juveniles I once worked with who tried to murder several classmates did it because they were "too cocky" and needed to show him more "respect."... and the disrespect was like, being happy they beat him in a sports game. Which seems unreasonable and it was, but things fell a lot more into place when you learned details of the kid's home life--where commanding respect was everything, and yet he (the kid) was given absolutely none by the person he craved respect from. That person kicked him around; why shouldn't he kick the kids being rude to him around? It was that kind of twisted logic. (I'm also being deliberately vague about what happened, but you get the general idea.) Teenagers finding a proxy for their own unhappiness and projecting it in a violent escalation definitely happens.
Adding onto this, if the POI were to actually be him how much does everyone think he is still aware of what he did 24 years later? I wonder to what extent he still thinks about it and is aware he could be caught if someone were onto him knowing that if his prints were lifted it would be all over for him.
2chan was a textboard that did not support image posting. There were xenophobic threads, which is often a feature of anonymous forums, but everything was in text. The structure of the board resembled a guest book with a limited text field. I don't believe there was a search function available in that flow of messages. Here is a fragment of it:
I am leaning towards No.2. I have considered various scenarios as to how and why such a massacre occurred - not just a mass murder like a college shooting, but an almost ritualistic bloodbath. My current feeling is that it wasn't a random thrill kill, nor was it to resolve skateboarding frictions, a robbery, a romantic obsession, or a business-related motivation. Instead, it was something more basic, sicker and senseless. I now believe the killer targeted Yasuko and her family and had a prior conflict with her. It might not have been a significant conflict; perhaps it was something minor that he perceived as life-threatening due to his inadequate perception. I don't think the killer was manipulative (or intelligent enough for that.) Instead, I believe he had developmental issues and significant anger control problems. JMO.
Welcome @penelopeb! Thanks for listening to the podcast, very much appreciated
Unknown, sadly.
Also unknown but if you go back to the start of the thread (part 1) or early articles from the time, you'll see images of the investigation unfolding. I don't recall seeing sniffer dogs.
There was no blood at the door but the issue was that there was a lot of blood on the stairs between ground level and the first floor of the house. Given that he spent most of his time upstairs, it's still not understood how he exited without leaving any blood at the door. The bathroom window had zero prints or fibres. The door had no blood on it. For some reason, Rei's balcony is never mentioned. It gave out on the car roof. This is my best guess.
No blood on the computer so far as I know. My guess is that the computer use was simply to pass the time and he aborted once he realised either 1) it was boring or not fruitful or 2) too tricky given the injury. I don't know about prints on the door handle but I would imagine if they were on the front door, it would lead to that being a clearer candidate for exit.
Unknown.
Classes would have been in the schools on-base. It's like a small city, some 12,000 people at any one time with shops etc. I am certain classmates and friends would have noted the injury, even if graduated, he couldn't have stayed in his room 24/7. But as I've said previously in the thread, how much the news of these murders actually made it on to base is unclear. See my earlier threads about the only English-language newspaper in Japan back in 2000 and its relatively sparse coverage of the case. This precludes Japanese-speakers on base, of course. But it's clear that the killer could have had those injuries yet still not raised any suspicions amongst peers on base in a way that I think would have been FAR more difficult as a Japanese student in, say, Setagaya. The police certainly combed schools in the area.
I'm actually not sure about kids working in Tokyo but from my conversations / interviews, this would not have been super common. Did they have the permissions to work in Japan as the familial dependents of a US military member? I'm not sure that they would. Yokota is essentially American soil. Once they stepped off that, I'm assuming some kind of diplomatic freedom to walk around in Japan but I wouldn't imagine this would extend to the right to employment (assuming many of these kids would have the capacity or inclination for it). But certainly, trips to Tokyo by these kids happened all the time.
Thanks again!
If I had to guess, he'll always wonder if there's some risk to him, maybe he thinks about it at night in bed. But distantly. I don't think he's losing a lot of sleep. I think he probably feels he's in the clear.
I hope he does start losing some sleep with the recent push for the change in law here. I wonder if he is even aware.
Could not agree more. I believe, it's not illegal to obtain someone's prints and send them to TMPD for matching. If there is a match they will be very grateful, I am sure.
There are diagrams that show his fingerprints were found there. Perhaps his technique to stem the blood from the cut on his hand worked well, so his was not found. And perhaps any blood from the family on him had dried by that point since the murders were speculated to have happened a few hours before the computer was recorded as being used. Or maybe he had ditched his clothes already. You’d think there would be some traces though.
