His breakfast is the same almost nearly every single morning.
There's no differences between Sunday or Wednesday.
Today happened to be a Tuesday and he's sitting in front of an all too familiar plate of the same food.
5 a.m.
It starts with, A steaming bowl of rice, each grain perfectly cooked.
There's a cup of miso soup.
The tofu pieces are just bobbing around at the top.
There's a plate of salted salmon.
The flesh is pink.
It's glistening.
It's prepared just right.
This is a quintessential breakfast in Japan.
It's warm, comforting, nourishing.
Not that it mattered anyway, since all of it was going to be on the floor very, very soon.
Kenta checks the time on the clock.
It's more of a habit than anything really.
He was never late.
I mean, this is his morning routine.
It is always the same.
He is meticulous, but he likes to check the clock just in case.
When he's done eating, he gets up to wash up and change into the same exact suit that he wears to work almost nearly five days a week.
He mentally walks through the itinerary for the day.
He has to get to work, meetings with all the teachers before the first bell rings.
Then he would stand at the front and greet all of the incoming students.
It sounds weird, but that's how school administrators they set the tone for the kids for the school day.
You walk in, you show your presence.
He always stood by the blue gates of the school and he would just like wave all the uniformed kids shuffling in.
Kenta slips on his trusty little loafers, picks up his briefcase, kisses his wife, goodbye.
With a smile.
And he takes the exact same route every single day.
He could probably do it blindfolded.
It's almost automatic.
I mean, at this point, it's muscle memory.
But today, today was going to be different.
Each step that Kenta takes, he's walking straight into literally the devil's fire.
He just doesn't even know it yet.
He takes the same route, turns the same corner, and he drops his briefcase onto the ground.
His hand flies to his mouth.
Maybe he lets out a scream.
Maybe he didn't.
Maybe it was just in his head.
Somehow his hands, they fumble and they find the phone in his pocket.
He pulls it out.
He dials 110.
Hello, what's your emergency?
I'm at the Tomagaka Junior High.
Please come hurry.
Come quickly.
They're threatening us.
I'm sorry?
Who's threatening you?
Kento is now reading the letter in his hand and he's shaking.
The letter is written fully in red ink.
It's handwritten.
It says, this is the beginning of a game, you stupid police.
Try and stop me if you can.
Murder is something that I cannot help but enjoy.
There's nothing that I want to see more than people's deaths.
Let the foul vegetables be punished with death.
Let there be bloody judgment for my many, many years of bitterness.
They say it's the beginning of a game.
What does that even mean?
The operator's trying to calm him down.
Well, maybe it's a prank, sir.
I mean, maybe perhaps one of the students left it behind.
Where did you say you found the note?
Did somebody deliver it?
Was there a messenger?
Kenta is looking straight at the messenger.
On the blue metal gates of the school, right next to the school sign that reads Tomogaoka Middle School.
And their motto, loved, ideal, school, we are best friends.
Next to that sign, sprouting from one of the jagged metal picks of the fence, is the severed head of an 11-year-old boy.
The note was shoved in his mouth.
The End.
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Anti-Recidivism Coalition.
This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team of dedicated researchers and translators.
We would also like to thank our listeners for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates of these causes.
Before we get into today's case, I do want to note that this episode contains very graphic descriptions of physical violence against minors, as well as very strong animal cruelty.
If these topics are very hard to listen to, please take care of yourself.
Go surround yourself with all the people and things that you love, and we will see you in the next one.
There is a book on this case as well well, a few books on this case one of which is technically considered banned in a lot of places in japan, but it is written by the killer.
It goes into graphic detail of the crimes that he committed and his version of why he thinks he committed those crimes.
We found a version of it online.
Our Japanese researchers worked to translate it for us so we can bring you a deep dive on this case.
Because he wrote his own book on this case and we're going to touch on the controversy surrounding that later but because he wrote his own book.
We do have a lot of detailed quotes from the killer.
So that is mainly where it's going to be from.
Now with that being said, let's get into the case.
If you want to play a game.
I think it's fair that everybody, at least, should know the rules of the game.
That's how it works.
The press broke the rules of the game that they didn't even know how to play.
The threatening letter that's found stuffed into the severed head's mouth, it came with a signature.
It read in big bold red letters, Saito Sakakibara.
And underneath it is like this mysterious looking windmill symbol, almost like a logo, like the trademark of a killer.
Think Zodiac killer type of symbol.
The press read the kanji.
So, like the Japanese characters for Saito Sakakibara, and instead of pronouncing the way that he intended, the killer intended because the kanji could mean other words, they stated to the public that the killer's name was Saito Onibara, which would be a more common surname.
Like this is a more.
Onibara is a more common name which technically the mispronunciation was due in part the killer's fault.
They never clarified how to pronounce his name.
And it's not a normal Japanese surname.
The press take the kanji, they pronounce it the way that they think would be best pronounced.
It is what you would reasonably call an honest mistake.
This sent the killer into a spiral.
He sent a letter in bright red ink.
It resembled blood.
It wasn't, but it was terrifying.
He sent a letter to the newspaper Kobe Shinbam and it reads now.
You know what?
You know that mispronouncing someone's name is the epitome of ridicule, don't you?
Recently, while I happened to be watching TV, I heard a news anchor mispronounce my name as Onibara.
I could have quietly enjoyed murder without anyone noticing if I had wanted to.
The reason I deliberately sought attention from society is that I want to at least be acknowledged as a real human being in your imaginations, as I have always been and will continue to be an invisible presence.
At the same time, I have not forgotten my duty to seek revenge against the education system that created an invisible me and the society that gave rise to this type of education.
However, simply seeking revenge would only relieve the burden that I've been carrying.
It would gain me nothing.
So I consulted with a friend who is maybe the only other invisible being like me in the world.
And he said if you want to seek revenge, that is not pitiful but valuable.
Make revenge into a game by incorporating murder, which is already your hobby, your reason for existence and your purpose.
Make it a game.
Change your hobby from murder to revenge.
That way, you can create a new world that is uniquely yours, without gaining or losing anything more or less than that.
He writes, moved by his words, I initiated this murder game.
However, even now, I don't understand why I enjoy killing.
It's something that I would consider innate, a natural instinct.
Only when I'm killing am I freed from the hatred that I harbor.
Am I able to find solace?
Only the pain of others can alleviate my own pain.
In conclusion, I believe you've roughly understood the text written on this paper, but I have an attachment to my own existence that exceeds that of ordinary people.
Therefore, I cannot tolerate my name being mispronounced or my existence being tarnished.
Observing the current movements of the police, it seems apparent to me that, despite inwardly finding it troublesome, they are deliberately disguising my name.
Are they trying to erase my existence?
I am risking my life in this game.
If caught, I will likely be hanged.
Therefore, while I won't say the police should risk their lives, they should pursue me with more anger and more determination.
Anyone who thinks I'm merely a novice newbie criminal who can only kill children is mistaken.
I possess the ability to kill the same person twice.
From now on, if you misread my name or spoil my mood, I will kill three vegetables a week.
Three vegetables?
He calls humans vegetables.
It felt like the city of Kobe in Japan was on lockdown.
I mean, there was a deranged killer on the loose.
Everyone has the potential to be a suspect, to be a victim.
The headlines were flashing on every single TV screen in the city of Kobe.
Every single newspaper that you walked past in big bold letters would just read Manhunt underway for Kobe, child killer.
Kobe city on edge as child killer remains at large.
Kobe schools on high alert as killer search intensifies.
What did the killer mean by vegetable?
People are asking in the little streets.
Is he referring to children as vegetables or just like any other human as a vegetable?
Like, what does it mean?
Does he consider humans so subhuman compared to him that he's?
They're just rotten veggies to be disposed of?
And what do you think he means when he's saying we're playing a dangerous game, a game of not getting caught?
Is that what he's referring to?
Why does he keep saying he's invisible?
I don't get it.
Why does he blame the school system?
Is it because it's like too strict, too high pressure for young children?
Does he have trauma from that?
Chief investigator Yamashita told the press that his initial reaction to the news of a severed head being found at the local middle school he said when I first got that call I couldn't believe it.
I kept saying, are you sure?
Are you sure it's not a doll?
Are you sure it's not a mannequin?
Like, how are you so positive?
He had never seen anything like this before.
And the citizens start freaking out even more.
The chief investigator said he had never seen anything like this before.
What does that mean?
After a few days, schools in Kobe had to reopen back for students.
But even then, each school, it felt like the Pentagon.
Heightened security and police presence around the perimeter.
I mean, the gates would open exactly at 8 a.m.
By that point, all the students are waiting outside by the main gate, each standing next to their heavily protective parent.
There is tension at every drop off, every pickup.
So much tension.
The gates would open.
The students would quietly, without saying a single word, shuffle inside directly to their seats.
There would be no roaming around.
There would be no getting in some light exercise around the schoolyard.
They would go directly to their seats.
The gate, which normally stays open, would be slammed shut, triple locked, and there would be a guard at stand.
Students would have emergency drill practices.
They would drop math classes to take impromptu personal safety stranger danger classes.
At 4 pm, the school gates would be unlocked once more and all the students would be rushered out to their parents, who were just anxiously waiting for them.
Parents would rush up to their child who's in uniform, snatch their hand and beeline it directly home.
No stopping by the playground, no stopping by a friend's house.
Immediately, we're going home.
If kids and that's a very big if if kids were allowed to play at playgrounds, there was like a force field of parents surrounding them, just on pins and needles.
Yuri, you come back here.
How many times did I tell you to stay in sight?
What did I?
That's enough.
We're going home.
They would grab their kids' hands, rush them past all the newspaper stands and they would read Kobe residents live in fear as killer remains unidentified.
Mm-hmm.
A man who was near the school gates before the head was found stated that he saw something very odd.
He saw someone very strange.
He said that they were behaving just very bizarrely.
He said, I think I saw the killer.
I think he was carrying one of those plastic bags under his left arm and the other one he was holding with his right hand.
I would say that he's maybe mid-30s, mid-40s.
Fresh newspapers would hit the stands all in big bold letters.
Suspicious man holding plastic bag.
But there were still two unanswered questions that would keep residents up at night, laying in bed.
And they're wondering, one, who is Seito Sakakibara?
And where is the rest of the boy's body?
And who is the boy?
Exactly.
Do they know?
They do know now.
Yeah.
Shinichiro, I'm going to call him Shin, his eye twitched and his hand reaches for his pocket.
Even just knowing that the scissors are in his pocket, it's easing a lot of his anxiety.
He started carrying weapons around with him since he was in elementary school, but now it's coming in handy.
He wrote in his journal.
I can ease my irritation and anxiety when I'm holding a survival knife or I'm spinning scissors in my hand like a pistol.
Being a middle schooler in Kobe is not a great time right now.
I mean, he's nervous.
Things rarely ever made Shin nervous.
He is the oldest son in the family.
He takes it seriously.
It is his job to be the tough guy in the family.
He thought he did pretty well.
He's got these two younger brothers and every time there's a cockroach, every time there's a bug, he would be the one to kill it for his little brothers.
But somebody left a severed head on his school gate, impaled on a metal rod.
Sheen went to that middle school in his three years of being a student.
Nothing like this had ever happened before.
And the killer is just pretty much guaranteeing to the world that it's going to happen again.
Like, what was it that they said?
It was some unique phrasing.
I'm going to destroy three vegetables per week.
Sheen's parents reassured him.
Don't worry sheen, you're gonna be fine as long as you don't bike to school anymore.
You take uh, the most traveled streets.
We're gonna walk you to class.
Don't talk to any suspicious men in their 30s or 40s and you're gonna be fine.
They're just trying to fearmonger you right now.
Sheen would be fine, right?
But he's not convinced by any of this because let's be real.
How in the world do you avoid every 30 to 40 year old strange man?
How do you not know if it's the salary man buying rice balls next to you at the convenience store?
Like, how do you know if it's not the nice looking guy walking his small dog at the park?
Sheen had taken to switching to the other side of the street whenever he passed someone who even slightly fit the description of the killer.
He's not trying to take any chances.
And there's like only one thing that would comfort him at night.
It was something that his mom had told him years ago, like when he was a kid, elementary school.
And every time Shin would be anxious about going to class or participating in any social activities, his mom would lean down, get in his face, pat his hair, smooth it, put it behind his ear and say Shinichiro, if you're ever nervous, just imagine that everyone around you is a vegetable.
Shinichiro didn't have a lot of friends to talk to in his life.
I mean, the ones he did, he took really good care of them.
He was very sweet with them, very delicate.
He was never rough around them.
He was washing one of his friend's hair in the shower, and he really liked doing that for people.
His grandma used to do that for him.
It was soothing in a way.
It's relaxing.
Shin is a middle schooler, you said?
Yeah, 14.
14.
Shin would tell his friends about the newest anime he was watching or the manga that he was writing himself.
And afterwards, he would help the friend dry off and comb through the knots in his hair.
It's like he ran his own little personal hair spa.
Now, all I have to do is comb through all the tangles.
You need to brush your hair more.
Do you brush your hair at home?
Ow, this is so painful.
Can you please be gentle?
Ow.
Shh, it's not that painful.
Besides, you look so much better now.
More fresh.
And I'm almost done.
Shinichiro smiles at his friend's soft face.
His cheeks are so plump.
His eyebrows are naturally thin.
And his skin is so thin that it's so delicate.
It almost has like this translucent quality to it.
You can see all the veins.
He always had this slight scent of peaches as well.
It was always so sweet.
He was one of the prettier kids in school.
They said that he had the face of an angel.
That's what all the teachers said.
Shin or the friend?
The friend.
Shin finishes combing up the friend's hair and he picks his friend's severed head off the bathroom counter.
And he hums while he gets a chair to lift up one of the ceiling tiles.
So in his room, the ceiling tiles, they push up and he can hide stuff in the ceiling.
He gets on the chair and gently places the head in the ceiling.
I know you don't like the dark, but I'm going to be back soon.
He's about to lower himself back into the bedroom, but he notices something on his friend.
He pokes his head back up, grabs the napkin from his pocket and wipes off some of that thick white liquid from his friend's face.
What is that?
He's a necrophiliac.
Oh.
There, there.
What a pretty little vegetable.
Shinichiro's safe space was his grandma's vegetable garden.
He would just stand in the vegetable garden staring at the unharvested carrot leaves just poking out of the soil and the tiny little plump tomatoes on the vine.
I mean, too bad she was dead.
He really missed her.
Yeah, grandma was his favorite.
Shinichiro walked into the house from the garden and he found himself in his grandma's house all the time.
Like, he went there constantly.
Quite often just going through her things, reading the little notes that she left behind, sitting on her bed, staring out the window, wondering what would she be doing if she were still alive.
Grandma was all he had.
And boom, he falls to the ground, wakes up.
There's tears dried on his face.
His skin feels tight as if his face was covered in tears that were now dried.
He had fallen to the floor of grandma's room and passed out.
He didn't know how long he was out for.
He slowly got up.
He felt something very off.
He felt exhausted.
He felt depleted.
Like every soul, every energy in his body had just exited.
And he feels something moist or wet between his legs.
He's like, oh my God, did I pee myself?
Am I bleeding?
He rushes to pull down his pants and instead he saw what he describes in the book as a white gelatinous material.
He stared at it because this was his first time seeing it.
He looked down at the 10 inch long shoulder massager that was pulsating around on the ground.
It was as thick as a mini soda can and it was moving around on the ground like a giant worm.
So he was on.
Wait, what's on?
A shoulder massager?
It's like one of those wands.
It's like those giant wands that are 10 inches and you can put it and massage your shoulder.
Yeah, and it's just on the ground pulsating still.
And Shinichiro remembers, oh, that's what happened.
He'd walked into his grandma's house to grieve her death again because that's what he does.
But instead he had his very first intimate experience by himself, whilst thinking about his dead grandma.
He remembered that he had stumbled across her favorite electric massage shoulder wand.
She had bad shoulders and he used to use it all the time to help her get the back areas that she couldn't reach, and it would ease a lot of the pain and the tension.
Just to feel closer to her.
He remembers plugging it into the outlet and then using it on his shoulders.
But for some reason, he started moving it down his arm and then down his torso, down his stomach.
And then he started feeling this pain in his lower regions.
He didn't know something could be that painful.
And then he just wanted to urinate.
But he wouldn't stop.
He said he started convulsing with the movements of the shoulder massager.
The intensity felt like it was coming from every cell inside of his body.
He bent over at the waist.
He doubled over in what he describes as pain, but also immense pleasure.
He wasn't sure.
He's like teeter-tottering on the edge of both.
He's having visions of the last time he saw her.
This is the only thing in his mind as he's having this very intense experience.
He starts seeing his grandma, right?
Her face is swollen.
Her eye sockets are sunken in like her face is just like a Halloween mask with holes for eyes.
And all these tiny little wrinkles are spreading like spider webs across her eyelids.
Her gray hair is curly and it's swirling around her head like a bunch of copper wires.
That's how he describes it.
He had reached out his hand and he touched her face.
That was what he remembers.
Once he made contact with grandma's face, he realized this.
This right here.
This is my first touch of death.
So, as he's having this experience, he is thinking about the last time he saw his grandma, which was when she died.
He thinks long and hard about his dead grandma and he finds a rhythm and he said I desperately chased the illusion of my grandmother.
Her voice, her smell, her touch, her tears, everything.
I had tears, runny nose and drool all coming down and mixing together.
His consciousness started fading in and out.
This is how he describes it.
He said that he felt happiness that he had never experienced at this level, along with intense, unescapable pain, like somebody had inserted a metal wire inside of him.
The physical journey was so intense that it quote, knocked the wind out of him and he collapsed onto the ground.
The shoulder massager landed straight on his cheek.
And when he saw the aftermath of what he did, when he woke up, he reflected and he stated I felt that what I did was a ridiculously filthy act.
While staring at her deceased picture, I experienced it with one of her favorite objects.
He said, it was that moment where for me, sex and death were firmly bonded in my mind together.
You cannot have one without the other.
And this is when he was 14?
This was when he was 11.
Wow.
Yeah.
But he said, what could he do, right?
Grandma had always been his first love.
There's only one picture of Shinichiro when he was a child.
I mean, he still is a child.
He's like 11 at this point.
But from when he was four or five years old, like a toddler, only one singular photograph.
It's of him sitting on his grandma's lap.
He said, I only have one picture of my childhood.
I disposed of all the other pictures, but I couldn't let go of this one.
My grandmother, in a black kimono, sits on a massage chair and she places her left hand firmly on my chest and gently places my right hand to my right thigh so that I don't slip off her knee.
He treasured that photo.
To him, grandma was everything.
He said my grandmother was the only person in the world who accepted me as who I was and protected me.
When my parents scolded me, I would run to my grandmother's room.
Now, it's not like his parents scolded him frequently or that he had to hide from them.
I do want to make that clear.
Shinichiro had a rather well-adjusted family, considering everything.
He lived with his parents and his two younger brothers.
His parents, according to even Shinichiro himself and all of the corresponding evidence, were very loving parents.
I mean, they were okay parents.
I don't know if I would say that they're spectacular, but I wouldn't say that there's any red flags.
There were some questions in the Japanese media about if maybe perhaps the parents were a little bit too strict compared to others.
But Shinichiro said they were actually pretty lenient.
And all the evidence points to them being pretty lenient.
He had bad grades.
He skipped school.
They don't give me crazy tiger parents.
But growing up he remembers his dad would let him chew on his palm when his teeth started growing in as a baby.
So he'd chew on his dad's palm.
Shinichiro said that his mom's smile was one of the best things you could look at.
So he would always beg her to watch comedy movies with him.
He doesn't even like comedy movies, but he just loves seeing her smile.
She would be looking at the TV.
He would be looking at her.
But he never left the house to hang out with any of his family members.
Unless it was to go see grandma.
You don't want to come out and eat with us?
We're going to eat your favorite thing.
Like we're all going to go to your favorite restaurant.
Shinichiro wouldn't even respond.
He would only get excited when he was told, hey, we're going to grandma's.
Like why would he need to hang out with kids and go to the movies when he could take baths with his grandma?
Okay, it sounds weird now knowing what he did, but the baths were actually very innocent.
His grandma would just scrub the dead skin off of him with a rough soapy towel.
And he said, she scrubbed my face so hard each time that I would close my eyes and hope that it would be over very, very soon.
Even if his face was completely red and raw after his bath, Shinichiro would be grinning from ear to ear.
His grandma was the one who gave him strength.
He said one day when they went to the park, he had this sudden urge to impress his grandma.
He just wanted to wow her.
So he scans his little head around and he spots the tallest tree in the park.
He walks right up to it and, without even feeling an ounce of fear or hesitation, he starts scaling the tree like a little spider monkey.
He never once looked down, just climbing higher, higher, higher until he's at the very top.
He sits down on a thick, very shaky branch and he looks down at the crowd below him.
It is massive.
Like it's a park and he's at the very top.
He could see the bikers, you know, passing through the route, people walking their dogs.
The air felt breezier up here.
More windy.
And he saw his little grandma standing near the base of the tree and her hands are like grabbing at her cheeks, her forehead, her mouth and she's self-soothing herself, literally.
At first, Shinichiro was confused because why aren't you proud of me?
I just climbed the tallest tree in the park.
But he made his way down and she burst into tears.
She was so worried he would fall or that he would die.
And he tried to comfort her.
Grandma, it's okay.
Everything's okay.
I'm okay.
Shinichiro would hug her and she would just sob in his arms while he kept apologizing.
I'm sorry.
I'm never going to do that again.
I'll never scare you.
That day, it really solidified two things for Shinichiro.
One, grandma is his whole world.
Two, he was grandma's whole world.
And three, but to the rest of the world, nobody gave a flying fork about Shinichiro.
Like zero.
And that's not to say it harshly.
It's just the truth.
Like not everybody is the main character in everybody's story.
We're all our own main characters.
Shinichiro, though, wasn't even a side character.
He wasn't even a supporting actor.
He was like a nameless extra.
If life were a movie, he would be extra student.
Shinichiro was the invisible kid in class.
They call him ghost students.
So if he walks into class, nobody would notice.
Nobody would be like, oh, Shinichiro's here.
Or they wouldn't even glance his way.
It's almost like he has no presence, right?
If he skipped school because he was sick, nobody would ask him, hey, why weren't you here yesterday?
They wouldn't even notice.
He just kind of floated around and existed.
People would know, if he was gone, that they were missing a student, because they know the number of students per classroom, but nobody could place who it was.
They'd be really thinking they're like man.
I know we're missing a student, because it's normally 32 students, but now it's 31 students.
But I, for the life of me, can't figure out who is missing, right?
That was Shinichiro.
He was a no-face kid, a ghost player in the classroom.
Then the natural assumption would be that if anybody showed Shinichiro attention and admiration, he would like them back.
Just like he likes his grandma.
I mean, that's what logically makes sense, right?
There was a little boy named Jun Hasa, Shinichiro's little brother's friend.
So he's like a few years younger.
And Jun would excitedly look up at Shinichiro asking him questions about turtles.
Shinichiro knew a lot about animals and turtles were Jun's favorite.
He would get so excited when Shinichiro would respond to him.
His eyes would go wide and then they would turn into these little half moons every time he smiled.
And Jun's eyes were so captivating for Shinichiro.
They're like these almond-shaped.
The eyelids were so thin, you could almost see the veins.
They were almost always crinkled in the outer corners because Jun had a permanent smile.
They were just the cutest little eyes.
Shinichiro hated those eyes.
Every time he saw those happy little half-moon shaped eyes, he would want to retreat into his sanctuary.
He would go deep into his mind and he would try to isolate himself in his sanctuary, a place where nobody else could enter, where he could cut off the rest of the world.
In the real world, he was a slug.
He said, I'm a slug.
I have no shell to protect myself and therefore I cannot be a snail.
So I have to build a shell inside of my body to protect myself.
As soon as I'm aware of danger, I hide in my shell.
Jun's eyes were dangerous.
So he retreated into his shell, his safe space.
But something about that day on that playground, he just couldn't do it.
He just couldn't do it.
He had looked into Jun's eyes and he felt this overwhelming urge to destroy Jun.
Jun is holding Shinichiro's hand and they're going to the climbing rings together.
Wait, it doesn't make sense.
Like, why does he hate him so much?
Oh, he'll tell us soon enough.
He just hates him, though.
Despises him.
Shinichiro didn't know why he did it, but he wanted to look into his eyes while he screamed.
So Shinichiro threw Jun down on the playground ground and just started beating him up.
In the end, Jun's lip was split open.
He had a giant lump on his forehead.
Shinichiro was pulled off of him, but all he could see in front of him were still Jun's little eyes, just like taunting him.
The same eyes that now have tears streaming out of them because Jun is crying.
Shinichiro kept staring at those eyes.
He could see his mom in his peripheral vision rush into the office room, bowing at a 90 degree angle at the teachers.
We're so, so, so, so, so sorry.
We will make sure to apologize to Jun and his parents directly.
This will never happen again.
Isn't that right, Shinichiro?
This will never happen again.
Shinichiro didn't respond.
He just kept staring at those stupid little eyes and in the background he heard these little bits and pieces of whispers coming through the teacher pulling his mother to the side, shinichiro's mom trying to explain away another one of his incidents.
He was put in a different class from his close friends when he entered the sixth grade.
We changed middle school so of course maybe he feels incredibly lonely and isolated and perhaps it manifested in him taking it out on june.
Regardless, there is no excuse and we will handle it at home.
It felt like she was always cleaning up after him.
But this time, the teacher's not having it.
She lowers her voice.
Ma'am, this isn't normal behavior.
There's no reason for something like this at all.
He admitted to one of the other teachers that he enjoys killing insects.
It just, um, we're concerned.
This could easily lead to something more.
It was okay though, because Shinichiro would take care of it.
This time, he would not need his mom to clean up after him.
Shinichiro goes up to the loose tile in his bedroom ceiling, pops it open, slides it to the side.
He balances on his chair and he reaches both hands up and carefully lifts the black plastic bag out.
It's shaped like a soccer ball.
He pulls it down and starts unwrapping it at his desk.
So much better.
So much prettier without those eyes.
He got you all the eyeballs?
They say the eyes are the window to the soul.
Shinichiro was sick of looking at Jun's pure soul.
Shinichiro placed Jun's severed head down on his desk, gouged out his eyes, yet X's cut into the eyelids as well after he took out the eyeballs. shinichiro brings jun's head closer to him almost cradling it now and before jun's head could talk to him because shinichiro said he kept talking to him trying to argue with him okay complaining shinichiro would push his fingers to his lips shh i would appreciate it if you could keep the police away from me for as long as you can because this is about to be your big debut ... ... ... ... ... shinichiro is speeding down the street on his bike so fast that he almost felt like he's he's flying levitating he looked around there's nobody on the street it's almost like a zombie apocalypse hit and he's completely alone in this world which honestly would be perfect it was euphoric it was blissful he did something so uncharacteristic of him and maybe it was because he was in such a good mood but he started singing at the top of his lungs Stand by me.
The song.
When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we'll see.
No, I won't be afraid.
Oh, I won't be afraid.
Just as long as you stand by me.
It's a one-man show, a performance.
That night was a tiny bit foggy and it made Shinichiro a little bit nervous, because what if it starts raining?
That would really put a damper on things.
He had very precious cargo with him that cannot get wet.
The cargo in question was wrapped in a black plastic bag and had it placed in the basket in front of his bike.
Every time he hit the smallest of bumps on the road, he would glance down to make sure that the bag remained undisturbed.
In the midst of singing the chorus, to Stand By Me at the top of his lungs.
He arrives at his destination.
He looks down at the bike basket and says no one has ever paid any attention to the ugly, insignificant scum that I was.
But this very creature that I am is about to turn the world upside down.
He parks his bike and pulls June's severed head out of the black plastic bag from the bike basket.
Originally, he had planned to bury June's head somewhere.
That seemed like the right answer.
But it just wasn't him, you know?
That wasn't Saito Sakakibara.
He needed something more impactful.
Something striking.
But now seeing the side of Jun's head impaled by the metal school gates, I mean he knew deep inside this is what he had intended.
This is what he needed to do.
He had tried multiple different locations, though.
You know, the metal spike closest to the school sign, straight in the middle, the one on the other side.
Each time, he would leave blood on the metal spikes.
And after much deliberation, he decided to place Jun's head straight, smack dab in the middle of the fence.
Wait, so he placed the head at a couple of locations?
And just left blood and brain matter on the metal spikes.
Because he would impale the head onto the metal spikes.
You know how the fences come up into a spike?
So he tried multiple different spikes.
So he kept putting on and off, on and off, and on and off.
On and off, and on and off.
To see which one, I guess, looked the best.
Yeah.
Wow.
He decides right in the middle would be best.
He then reaches into his pocket, grabs the note out, puts it on Jun's tongue in his mouth and takes a few steps back and he just soaks in the sight.
In that moment, it felt like the world was silent.
The ground, the head, the gate, the fence, the school building.
Behind the gate, the moonlight illuminating Jun's soul, his mind.
I mean, it was beautiful.
No, beautiful is too weak of a word.
It was more enchanting.
Well, that's closer to what he's looking for, but it's not exactly the word that he wants.
Shinichiro said.
In that moment, all the elements fell into harmony without any sense of incompatibility, as if they had been in that place since long ago.
It was like a painting, a scene in a movie.
Shinichiro stood there reaching his sexual destination multiple times without any physical stimulation.
No way.
And the word that he was thinking about was absolutely orgasmic.
Jun's family would receive their first letter from their child's killer.
This would start a very long, very painful journey where every year they would wait until the letter came in the mail.
The killer would tell them in great depth and gory detail about their son's murder.
He would take them on a journey.
And painful as it was, I mean, they felt like they have to read it.
How do you not read it?
Reading it for any little clue of why he would do this to their precious son.
But he just never gave them answers that they were seeking.
Or at least he never gave it for free.
He would have to make them wait for it.
He would have to make them earn it.
He told them it started with Sasuke.
He did this all because of his dog.
Sasuke was an old dog.
And you know what happens when dogs are old?
They don't like to eat like they used to.
So Sasuke was not eating like he used to.
And Sasuke was actually grandma's dog.
But now that grandma was dead, Sasuke was in Shinichiro and his mom's care.
Shinichiro's mom hated that Sasuke was not eating.
And so he would always leave half of his kibble empty, like just on his bowl.
He would never finish it.
And she would mutter to herself, What a waste, Sasuke.
You can't do that.
She would bring the half-full dog bowl into the kitchen.
And it's not like she could put the dog food back into the container.
It would be a risk for contaminating all the fresh food.
But also throwing it away doesn't feel economical either.
So she would put it onto a paper plate and put it outside for the stray cats.
It became such a habit that even after Sasuke's passing they still had a giant container of fresh dog food left over, and Shinichiro's mom would portion it out, leave it outside for the stray cats.
It was kind of cute, right?
Sweet.
Shinichiro thought, that is absolutely revolting.
Sasuke might be dead, but his food is sacred.
It belongs to Sasuke and Sasuke alone.
Just because he's no longer here doesn't mean his food is suddenly public property of the stray cats.
Besides, what did the stray cats ever do for him?
Nothing.
They didn't sit by his side and keep him company during his final days.
They didn't offer him companionship or comfort.
They just lurked around the corner, waiting for their chance to consume all of his food, waiting for him to die so that they could feast over his kibble like it was their birthright.
It was enough to make Shinichiro's blood boil.
So he killed it.
He killed a cat.
He was nine and the cat was asking for it.
Yeah, the stray cat had its face buried into the plate outside, filled with Sasuke's food.
And Shinichiro was in motion.
In that moment, there was no room for hesitation or second guessing.
Do you know that feeling of when you look through a telescope?
Everything else is black and you only see the one thing at the other end, the sole object of your attention.
It was like that for Shinichiro.
It's just him and the cat and nothing else.
And he was going to kill the fucking cat.
That's the anger he felt.
Why do you think it's always the cats?
Like what is driving them to... I heard that cats fight back a lot more than dogs.
And that is perfect for them.
Yes.
And I heard the Tell me how I got on this, because I was also curious why we hear a lot more of cat abuse versus dog abuse from killers.
Cats.
From what I can tell and this is not like a scientific or a statistic, but I heard they have a very specific scream when they die.
Whereas dogs sound like dogs.
I heard that cats have a more reminiscent of humans or children when they yelp.
It's like the higher pitch tone, versus dogs are more like the whimpers In a fluid, swift motion.
Shinichiro drops his school bag on the ground.
He walks over to the half-broken concrete brick that's just laying on the ground.
It's still about 20 pounds of concrete.
He picks it up.
Instinctively, he starts crouching and slowly walking towards the little cat near the food bowl.
He holds his breath and he swings the concrete brick up with both hands, throws it as hard as he can at the cat and he misses.
But not entirely.
The cat is injured on its left side, but it's trying to limp away.
Not that it was ever a fair fight.
But now Shinichiro is slowly walking up to the cat, whose face planted into a ditch in the little garden.
And the cat is bleeding profusely, but it still has the fight to stand up.
Yeah, it rounds its back and it starts hissing at Shinichiro.
Or maybe it's one last plea, I don't know.
It was an American short-haired tabby with silver fur and thin black stripes running up and down its little starved body.
It had these beautiful emerald eyes staring straight into Shinichiro's soul.
And he just thought to himself, what a beautiful cat.
Shinichiro reached out towards the cat again and as soon as he was within range, the cat shot out its paw and scratched Shinichiro's hand.
It left these dark red claw marks on the back of his right hand and blood started seeping out of it, and Shinichiro is just looking at his wound.
He doesn't even react.
He just looks.
He said it was like a water balloon popping.
Shinichiro said that he heard something from the cat that sounded almost human, like a child screaming at a playground.
It sounded like that.
Shinichiro had sliced the cat's pretty emerald eyes and he threw the box cutter to the side.
He takes both hands and starts strangling the cat.
He stated that he could feel the heartbeat underneath his palms and it was getting slower and slower and he never broke eye contact.
Then he takes one hand off the neck and uses the other hand to start searching the ground for something.
He's looking for something, anything, to make this a little bit more fun.
His fingers touch a branch on the ground.
He picks it up and he shoves it into the cat's throat, grabs the box cutter again and stabs the cat and starts twisting.
Shinichiro stood over the tiny animal that he had destroyed so beautifully is how he describes it.
And instead of seeing himself as pathetic for harming something that doesn't even have the power to fight back, Shinichiro felt throbbing in his ears, in his head and in between his legs.
He grabs the concrete brick, places it on his little head, and starts stomping.
He said he heard a lot of cracking, and then the cat stopped moving.
He said and unfortunately I have to paraphrase this because it's a lot it was as if my heart had split into two, and half of my heart was now pumping in between my legs.
I felt as if everything was swollen to the point that it could easily be popped.
He stated that he started jerking back and forth and he said with each stomp he remembered how intense things were getting and he felt like the pressure had to go somewhere.
So he starts feeling this intense burning sensation down there.
It was unlike anything he had ever felt before and he reaches his destination.
The physical sensation was overwhelming.
He said he bent over and squatted down on the ground to catch his breath.
And when he was done, he feels a very strange sense of satisfaction.
He said death up until this point, it was something that hurt him.
You know, his grandma died.
That was rough.
Sasuke the dog died.
That was rough.
But now, now he's no longer on the grieving end of death.
He was the controller of death.
He's the creator of death.
He killed something.
There is no greater ecstasy than to tame death.
But this still doesn't answer the most important question for Jun's parents.
Why their son?
They used to be so friendly.
They would go see turtles together.
Why him?
Why Jun?
But additionally, if this is how he started, then what was Shinichiro like when he got to Jun?
If this is what he did to cats, what did he do to their poor son?
The problem with all of this, though, is that Shinichiro was not being truthful.
At least it wasn't the full story.
He said it started with cats, but that's not factual.
That's a lie.
It actually started with slugs.
Have you ever salted a slug before?
Some people have described it as disintegrating a slug alive, but a more accurate description would be turning a slug inside out through its skin.
Slugs have semi-permeable skin that allows water to pass through this skin.
And when you salt a slug, water starts rapidly leaving the slug's body and the slug's cells start dying from dehydration, literally shriveling up slowly.
They start producing more mucus thick, slimy mucus, more mucus, more mucus, to try and create a barrier between them and the salt, but that just further dehydrates them and exhausts them, and now the slug is at a point of no return.
They start convulsing, they enter a state of paralysis and then eventually the slug dies.
The process is slow and painful and sometimes it takes upwards of several minutes, sometimes even an hour, depending on the amount of salt.
Shinichiro thought it was very interesting.
It was probably second in terms of excitement.
Putting slugs under a hot lamp was his first.
Did you know that slugs cannot regulate their own body temperatures?
I didn't know, but Shinichiro knew, and that's what made them so fun to play with.
He would experiment by putting them under a very, very hot lamp and let them sit there.
He would sit eye level just watching them squirm.
And as the heat increases, the slug's mucus starts drying out, making it difficult for the slug to move.
It causes its skin to start drying and cracking And, just like the salt, the slug will try to create more mucus and it's only going to dehydrate and kill them in the end.
Their internal organs start shutting down one by one due to dehydration.
And eventually the slug is going to perish from dehydration and heat stress.
And it's going to be a slow, painful death.
But it's not enough.
He would move on to frogs.
Honestly, it happened by chance.
While catching slugs.
He caught a frog and decided he liked the way that the frog fought and struggled back.
He would pin them by their long legs and dissect them while they were alive, and he realized something interesting.
In those moments, frogs' insides are very similar to humans, more so than slugs.
When he wasn't feeling so medically and scientifically inclined, he would catch as many frogs as possible.
He would line them up in a row on the pavement, pin them to the ground so that they can't move or escape.
He would get on his bike and he would stare at the row of brightly green colored frogs and he would ring his little bike bell for good measure and he would run them over.
Then he graduated to pigeons and then he graduated to cats.
Shinichiro would say.
But when I advanced to middle school, I already become bored of killing cats and gradually found myself fantasizing about how it would feel to murder human beings like myself.
You know, decapitating pigeons and cats.
He said, all it takes is a single knife.
I want something bigger.
He said, I wanted to conduct the sacred experiment to test the fragility of human beings.
Shinichiro is sitting in his bed.
He's tucked under his blanket, almost entirely covered by these giant mountains of stuffed animals.
He calls it his fortress.
Shinichiro didn't get the best grades in school, but that doesn't mean he's not studious, okay?
He just likes to study different things.
He would look at his stuffed animals.
Play close attention now, everybody.
The stuffed animals would be lined up.
Dogs, ducks, crocodiles.
They were his little classmates, and he was giving a presentation, a lesson.
Serial killers.
Shinichiro spent every waking moment he had reading and studying the world's most twisted serial killers.
In a way, every single serial killer has their strengths and weaknesses.
Shinichiro basically had these spreadsheets where it would detail each serial killer's upbringing, trauma motives MOs, disposal methods captures trial, and none of them were perfect.
Clearly, right?
They were all either caught dead or they stopped killing for whatever reason.
But logically speaking...
Wouldn't it make the most sense if he were to take all the smartest, most twisted parts of each killer and make a brand new serial killer?
Not only would they be the most notorious serial killer ever known, but they would also be invincible almost impossible to catch.
Shinichiro was gonna Frankenstein the perfect serial killer, inspired by his three favorites.
The Zodiac Killer was one of the better ones on his list, or so he thought, because he was never caught, right.
He terrorized an entire town, the nation of America really and he would send letters to local newspapers, taunting them with cryptic ciphers that he had claimed had hidden his identity.
If they could just crack the code, you'll know who I am.
He would taunt the police, laugh at them for not being able to catch him.
That was the inspiration behind Shinichiro Seito Sakakibara's name and the windmill symbol under his letter.
So it was inspired by... The Zodiac Killer.
Wow.
So the best parts of the Zodiac Killer?
Done.
Noted.
He even had the little windmill symbol that was reminiscent of the Zodiac sign, but also combined a swastika.
So there's that.
Yeah.
Ed Kemper had a thing for severed heads.
He would often decapitate his victims and perform necrophilic acts on their severed heads.
And perhaps not too unsimilar to Shinichiro, Ed Kemper had a very strange relationship with his mother.
He decapitated his own mother and engaged in necrophilia acts with her head.
He also removed her voice box and put it into the garbage disposal in the sink.
Do you remember that?
Yeah.
It did not grind.
It just shot back up because it was so tough in texture.
But he claimed he did it because his mom was always complaining about him.
Ed Kemper decapitated heads.
He had an interesting relationship with his maternal figures, you know?
Written down on his little to-dos.
Letter, severed heads.
But there was one last favorite of his, though.
Andre Chikatilo.
Do you remember him?
The Red Ripper?
He would often mutilate his victims' bodies and engage in various acts of necrophilia and cannibalism.
In some cases, he reportedly drank the blood of his victims because he believed that, consuming his victims' blood, he would absorb their life force or their essence.
Now that, that was interesting.
Shinichiro stood over Jun's limp body and he said My blood is dirty, so I thought drinking a pure child's blood would cleanse the dirty blood.
Shinichiro brings the blood up to his mouth and takes a big gulp.
It tastes like licking metal.
That's how he describes it.
Shinichiro turns to leave, but he hears Jun's voice.
How dare you kill me?
This was so painful.
He turns around.
Well, it's your fault for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jun's head kept complaining and complaining in an attempt to accommodate him.
Shinichiro thought, Okay, fine.
You're upset that your soul is still trapped inside your dead body.
Why don't I do this?
He takes out his knife and gouges out his eyeballs.
He thought the eyeballs are the windows to the soul.
So if they're taken out, then your soul is gone.
Then he makes these long cuts from the mouth to his ears like the Joker on June's face.
But it wasn't enough.
The head still kept talking to him.
And he's like, okay, you know, maybe it's because the mind controls the body.
So if I can separate the two, maybe the head will stop complaining.
So he separated.
He decapitated June's head using a handsaw.
Decapitating a human is a lot harder than he thought.
He had to really put his whole body into it.
It was taking much longer than it would with cats or pigeons.
But that could also be because he would periodically stop to pleasure himself.
He also wanted to take Jun's tongue as a souvenir, to keep to remember this special occasion by.
But Jun was in rigor mortis and his jaw was too rigid to force open.
But it's fine because he had done it, right?
That's all that mattered to Shinichiro.
He had done it.
He had killed again.
This was not his first.
Oh...
Almost exactly a month after Jun's decapitated head was discovered, police pounded on Shinichiro's family door and they arrested 14-year-old Shinichiro.
They came when Shinichiro was asleep in bed, and even when he found out that the cops were here for him, he took his time.
He was moving extra slow, just sluggishly grabbing a pair of jeans, putting them on one by one like he's lazy.
He starts slowly making his way down the stairs.
The two officers are waiting for him.
We just have a few questions we need to ask you.
Would you mind coming with us for a bit?
He just nods and he follows them directly to the police station and into the interrogation room.
Please take a seat over there, Shinichiro.
The officers slam a thick file onto the desk.
You know about Jun's case, right?
I saw it on TV.
People are saying that they saw him walking with you.
Jun's a friend of my brother's.
He comes around sometimes, but I've never played with him alone before.
The person must have been wrong.
I'm sorry, but to be honest, I'm actually quite relieved.
I think about if this had been my brother instead of Jun that had been killed.
You're a rare breed, aren't you?
You're lying.
We know that, Shinichiro.
But we wouldn't even be able to tell from your face you're so good at it.
No wonder people are fooled by you.
I don't know what you guys are talking about, officers.
There was a case back in March where a girl was stabbed with a knife.
That was you, wasn't it?
I showed her your picture and she said she was sure that you're the one that stabbed her.
Shinichiro stays quiet.
On the same day, a girl was beaten to death with a hammer.
Do you remember her?
The girls.
Of course he remembered the girls.
How could he forget the girls?
He did try to kill those girls.
He was only successful at killing one though.
In Shinichiro's journal, it read, I was at the park and I saw a girl who was playing alone.
I went up to her and I asked, is there anywhere I can wash my hands around here?
She responded there's a hand wash station at the school and said that she could help lead him there.
As we were walking, I debated whether I should use the knife or the hammer I brought with me.
I eventually settled on the hammer and resolved to test out the knife the next time.
After walking a little bit, I told her, I want to say thank you, so please turn around.
Then, the moment she turned around, I pulled out the hammer and the girl screamed.
I raised the hammer near my head and then I brought it down on the girl's head as hard as I could.
I heard a dull thud sound.
Then I hit her two or three more times, but I was so excited I don't even remember how many times fully.
Afterwards, I went back to my bike and I rode away.
He left 10-year-old Ayaka Yamashita in the park.
Her head and face were left bloody and swollen.
When found, she would be raced to the hospital.
She would remain there for a week until she passed from her injuries.
But that diary entry would continue.
As I was biking away, a small boy caught my eye.
I started following him, but he went inside the apartment complex and disappeared.
So I was disappointed.
I kept biking down the street until I spotted a girl who's walking alone.
I parked my bike a short distance behind her and I cut through the park so that I ended up walking toward her as she walked toward me.
And we were about to pass each other.
But this time I pulled the knife out from behind my back pocket and the knife entered her stomach.
It felt like Play-Doh.
He sliced into her stomach with a five-inch knife.
The average abdominal depth for an adult woman is six to nine inches on average.
I imagine it'd be a lot less for a 10-year-old.
After I stabbed her, I returned to where I had parked my bike and I started on the route back to my house.
When I got home, I heard a lot of ambulances and patrol car silence.
It was really loud.
I was super tired, so I fell asleep and I didn't wake up until nighttime.
Ten days later, another diary entry was written.
Ayaka, the girl he attacked with a hammer, had passed away in the hospital, and the news of her death was making the rounds in Kobe.
He wrote.
When I went downstairs this morning after waking up, my mother told me poor thing, apparently the girl who got hit by the head by a random person passing by.
I read the newspaper and she's dead.
He said, I found out the cause of death was caved in skull caused by blunt force trauma to the head.
The girl I hit with the hammer had died but the girl I stabbed at the stomach had survived.
I began to be confused.
Are humans difficult or easy to destroy?
The authorities were able to gather evidence that Shinichiro had attacked three little girls and killed one with a hammer.
So he had attacked other ones with hammers as well.
So he's saying that the girl that died was just smashed on the head.
Yeah.
And she died versus the girl that was stabbed survived.
He's confused.
Now he feels like, okay, how come someone got stabbed and lived and then the other one died?
Yeah.
I don't know what to do.
And he's like, are humans fragile?
Are they not fragile?
Are they resilient?
He's very confused.
Hmm.
The investigators would later ask Shinichiro, what feelings did you have toward the girl that you killed?
I don't have any sort of feelings.
The experiment that I concluded.
I was just thinking about how I could bring about death with my own hands.
In my mind, I think there was a lot of disgust in myself of thinking that way.
Looking back now, I believe that the feeling was the last trace of my conscious and rationality that remained.
But Shinichiro would not be going down without a fight.
A very short, brief, underwhelming fight.
He looked at the officers and he said, I'm exhausted already.
Do you guys have any physical evidence or something that points to my guilt?
He just confessed.
Yeah.
And the detective snaps.
Don't you dare underestimate the police, you brat.
There's no way we could have dragged you here without any evidence.
Shinichiro looks up at them bored.
And the investigator said that they had never seen an expression so filled with so much hate and evil but so nonchalant at the same time.
It's like not even like he's trying to be all like looking at them crazy.
It's just evil.
And it's so calm and casual.
The detective slams his hands down on the table to emphasize how serious he is.
And he shouts, we've got hard evidence against you.
All the essays you wrote in school, I had an analysis done by a handwriting expert.
And the results show that the handwriting and the statement that you sent to the Kobe Shinbam and left on the severed head are identical to your school essays.
The outcome of this case is already determined, so hurry up and confess to the murder of Jun.
He throws Shinichiro's letters to the press.
He throws Shinichiro's letters on the floor.
And the handwriting was identical to his essays.
Shinichiro sat there contemplating for a moment before looking up deadpan.
And he just stated, I did it.
After confessing to all the crimes, he was returned to a cell and he said They kept me in a cell for the night.
When I got under the duvet, the tears wouldn't stop.
My body was tense, my teeth were tied up and my tears ran down my temples like sloppy drops of water from a broken faucet.
The only salvation for me was the death penalty, a life-threatening game without a reset button.
If you lose, you'll be hanged.
I will suffer the same fate as June, whose fate i have taken, and i will die.
For me, that was the only ending.
Fear spreads all over my body like a drop of detergent falling on a greasy dish.
He talks like that, he writes like that.
Yeah, at the time, i was a thousand times more afraid to live than to die.
Why, We don't know.
He's like very... Okay, so his book, he's very much... I don't know if he's trying to be.
That's a huge debate.
So the way he writes it's almost as if he's contemplating his actions and debating whether or not His actions were born from genetics, whether they were nurtured, how he became this way.
He doesn't want to be this way.
He still claims.
So all of his thoughts are very convoluted and very prosy.
I don't buy it.
Yeah.
I think that he's just doing it to be annoying.
Yeah.
He just wanted to know, though, are humans easy to destroy or not?
But not everybody believed the police had the right killer.
The school principal, along with a famous attorney who works extensively with wrongful convictions, had their doubts.
I mean, they were very vocal about it.
They stated the confession felt bizarre.
Perhaps he was forced.
Their first argument was it just seemed implausible that a 14-year-old could commit such crimes.
There were a few additional discrepancies.
The police believed initially strongly that the killer was left-handed.
But Shinichiro is right-handed.
Shinichiro had very bad grades, but the writing in his previous letters were pretty eloquent and needed at least some extent of a well-versed vocabulary.
Which I don't know how much of that I can agree with since I don't read Japanese.
However, he did write two English words in his little note to the press.
Like an American serial killer, he wanted a name for himself.
So he sent a letter to the press calling himself Shu Kill.
He wanted to write school killer, but he wrote shoe kill.
And then he got really upset so he sent another one updating it to shoe killer, but he didn't update it to school killer.
How do you spell shoe?
S-H-O-O-L.
Shoe kill.
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
So there's that.
But I mean at the time I guess it was a very prevalent not a popular opinion, but a prevalent conversation that even Shinichiro's parents believed in his innocence.
They went to go see him in the juvenile facility three weeks after his arrest.
They hadn't been able to see him since the day that he was taken from their family home.
Shinichiro's mom did not believe that her son did this.
So both of his parents sat down in front of him in the visitor area and he screamed I told you not to come.
How many times do I have to tell you that?
Why are you here?
He's glaring at his parents.
He barely looked at them at the time of his arrest.
Even when the police showed up to their house and took him away, he would refuse to turn around and look at his parents.
And now he's glaring at them.
His parents are taken aback, like they had never seen their child look like this.
Who is this person?
Shinichiro's mom kept pushing on.
She just wanted to hear the truth that Shinichiro was innocent.
The police don't have anyone to go down for the murder.
It's high profile, so they picked him.
And on top of that, he was pressured by the police to confess.
Just tell me.
Shinichiro's mom begged him.
She said, if he just uttered the magic four words, mom, it's not me, she would have defended him.
She would have fought till the very end.
She would have spent the rest of her life fighting for his innocence.
I want to hear it from your own mouth, Shinichiro.
Did you kill Jun?
Was it really you who killed Jun?
Is there any possibility this is a false confession?
Shinichiro looked at his parents for the first time since his arrest and he stated there is no doubt about it.
I did it.
How do you falsely confess to a crime that you absolutely did commit?
Shinichiro told his mom how he lured Jun to Tank Mountain.
I told him there were cool blue turtles on the mountain that I spotted on the other side.
I could take him there.
I said, do you want me to take you to see it?
He led Jun up the mountain.
There were steps leading up all the way, and once they walked all the way to the top, they reached the giant water tank.
That's what Tank Mountain's named after.
Come over this way, Jun.
I saw it over here.
On the mountain, there's also a shed.
It's like a lightly wooded area, but it only made the turtle search that much more exciting.
Jun's so excited.
Shinichiro takes his hand and helps him walk through the branches and the little leaves that have fallen.
And when they get to the base of the shelter, Jun turns around to ask Shinichiro, where's the turtle?
But Shinichiro throws both arms back and puts Jun in a headlock.
He starts squeezing with all the strength that he has.
Jun lets out a scream in pain and he starts swinging his arms around.
Shinichiro is realizing this is much harder than killing a cat.
So he changes his tactic.
Shinichiro knocks Jun forward, stumbles over him and continues to strangle him.
How is he not dying?
Shinichiro scrambles so that he can sit on Jun's waist and he pulls Jun's arms back and he holds them with one arm and he starts pushing his head into the ground, his face into the soil.
It's not working and he's going to run out of energy soon.
Shinichiro can feel it.
So he flips Jun over, sits on his stomach and starts strangling him with both his hands.
He thinks back about how much fun it was with the cat to have additional supplies.
So he reaches one hand out to the ground and starts touching anything, looking for something.
He touches a cold, hard stone.
He tries to pick it up, but it's embedded into the soil and his nails are digging into the dirt, but the stone is not budging.
You've got to be kidding me.
What the hell am I going to do now?
Shinichiro looks down to see that Jun's sneakers have fallen off.
So with his right hand on Jun's neck, his left hand starts undoing the sneaker shoelaces.
He finally springs it free, wraps it around Jun's neck and starts pulling it tighter and tighter and tighter.
And with his feet, he starts kicking Jun in the face out of frustration because why won't he die?
Then eventually he slumps forward and he is no longer living.
He would actually leave Jun there for that night and come back the next day to gouge out his eyes, drink his blood and decapitate him and just take his head.
But it still wasn't enough.
Shinichiro said It had taken such a long time to kill him, so I had much more satisfaction from being able to see it through.
Does she still not believe that her son did it?
Why June?
Why would you kill your little brother's friend?
Because the more beautiful June was, the more pure June was, the more I felt I was being shown my ugliness and filth.
The exact opposite.
As if I was looking into a mirror every time I looked into his cute little eyes.
Compared to him, my existence is so ugly.
I wanted to kill, kill the disgusting reflection of myself in his innocent little eyes.
I don't know.
He's like trying to be... Yeah, I think he's just a sexual sadist.
I think that he genuinely wants to have a more, I don't want to say eloquent because it's not eloquent, but more of a deeper reasoning for these things that put him in a light of this complex character when in reality, he's just a sexual sadist.
Shinichiro said that he had two very strong opposing feelings when it came to Jun.
He wanted to hug him, but he also had the overwhelming desire to ruin him.
Why would he leave the severed head at his own school though?
He said it was because he needed revenge for the school system for what they did.
He felt like the school system made him a shell of his being.
So side note, this was a huge topic for Japanese netizens when this case was unfolding.
Japanese schools are notorious for being incredibly competitive, where every exam is a mark on your future.
Literally every exam counts.
Your grades can determine your next tax bracket, who you marry, what kind of life you live, probably even your lifespan.
And it all starts in middle school.
So perhaps it was revenge for that, or he claimed that it was a distraction.
He felt like the police would, first of all, not assume that the killer was a middle schooler and, second of all, not assume that the killer was dumb or ballsy enough to leave the severed head at their own middle school.
But netizens actually believe a third reason.
He left it at his own school because that's the school that Jun went to and he wanted to soak in everybody's reactions.
The fear, the terror, the sadness, the grief, the emotional responses, the visceral physical reactions from something like this.
It would not have been as intense just reading it on the papers from a different school that didn't know the kid.
Like he's not trying to get away with it.
He's not trying to lay low.
He's trying to get more fear out of people.
He just wanted to be a monster.
I think you're right.
He said, mom, listen carefully.
I'm sick, you see.
It's not your fault that I've become like this.
It's nobody's fault.
So I don't want you to blame yourself.
What kind of sickness, Shinichiro?
There's nothing wrong with you.
You were a kind, timid, good child.
What happened?
My feelings for you haven't changed even now.
Why?
Why didn't you consult me?
If you had any troubles, I would have done anything to help you.
Why didn't you tell me?
Mom, sometimes it's better not to know.
Shinichiro would later state that he hated how his family kept forgiving him for what he did.
He felt very frustrated by it.
He would say, My pride and joy in life.
My lifeline.
Shinichiro's mom didn't know what to say.
I mean, who is this person?
This doesn't feel like her son.
Did she even know who her son really is?
The press was calling him a monster, so maybe they're right.
But also to the press, she was just the woman who birthed a monster. to the public shinichiro's name was not leaked for a while at first he just went by boy a and legally that's still what he goes by in japan there are very strict laws regulating the publicization of names of minors who have committed crimes shinichiro was 14 he was a minor technically the law was set up to protect him his identity was so withheld from the public but for some reason he was kind of upset he had like a lot of feelings about it i don't think he wanted his name released But he did say the day I was arrested, I ceased to be myself.
It was the day that every mundane moment of my daily life suddenly became to take on an inexplicable symbolism.
I was no longer a living, breathing being.
I had become boy, a lifeless symbol.
It represented juvenile delinquency for many people and for others.
It symbolized a frightening monster dwelling in a separate world devoid of any trace of human emotion.
I don't know what he's complaining about, because not only was his identity protected from the public, he was also given a six year and 10 month sentence in prison.
Six years.
Because he's a... Minor.
Minor, yeah.
If he had been an adult, he would have gotten life.
And in response to all of that, media outlets leaked his name.
Or at least what most people are pretty certain is his name, which is Shinichiro.
And they leaked a singular picture of him.
Now, since it's not officially released, there's no way of knowing without a shadow of doubt how accurate the name is.
But it has not been refuted.
Most people believe this is his real identity.
The handling of the case, though legally speaking, sparked public outrage, which I would say this case contributed heavily to the Juvenile Act of 2000 in Japan, which lowered the criminal responsibility age from 16 to 14.
When did this happen?
Oh, 90s.
Yeah.
Now, it still doesn't answer the question of why.
When little baby chicks are born, they go through a process of imprinting, which is when a little baby bird is born.
A lot of them will imprint and form a strong, unbreakable social bond with the first moving object they encounter after hatching.
It's actually kind of dangerous when humans get involved in the hatching process.
It's technically called filial imprinting, and it's a huge part of the bird's development.
The way that it works is, within the first few hours a chick will see the first moving object and grow intensely attached to it.
And once a chick is imprinted on an object or a being, it becomes very difficult to alter that bond.
Even if the imprinted object is not the chick's biological parent.
The chick will then start following and learning from the imprinted object.
It's supposed to ensure that the chick forms a strong bond with the caregiver, which increases the chances of survival.
Shinichiro believes that's what happened to him.
That when he first experienced his intimate encounter thinking about his dead grandma...
He thought, well, she's dead.
I keep associating dead and these intimate relations together.
He said, my dark sexual impulse, which had just broken through the egg, was spreading its arms in front of me.
In this way, I unknowingly became a man who could not be sexually aroused unless I was around death.
It's interesting because there is no reason why Shinichiro did what he did.
Not saying that there would be an acceptable or excusable reason, but he was never abused growing up.
He did not come from a strong authoritarian household where there was sexual abuse.
I mean, there was really nothing in his childhood that could even remotely point to something like this happening.
When Shinichiro reflected on why he did what he did in his grandma's room and how he reached a pleasurable state while thinking about his dead grandma, he said he thought about defiling his grandma's death and memories.
He subconsciously wanted to replace the sadness.
The last memories of his grandma were so sad because she died and he wanted to replace it with something more enjoyable.
So now that he thought of his grandma and the last memory of his grandma, it would not be her death.
It would be the 10 inch long shoulder massager that he used.
Shinichiro thinks about her last words to him, which are ironic.
Grandma said on her deathbed, listen, Shinichiro, when you grow up, become a defender of justice.
Help the weak and defeat the strong.
I'll be back soon.
He wrote, if my grandma had been alive for years, would I have not had this incident?
Or would I have done this the same, even if she were alive?
If I had the incident while my grandmother was alive, at least, it's a relief that she had passed before I did all of this.
No matter what I do though, I think my grandmother loved me with all her heart.
And I can't bear the death of her love.
I do have a food for thought question for all of you.
Do you think a prisoner being reformed means that they are reformed when they stop committing the crimes and reoffending?
Or are they reformed when their personalities no longer want to commit those crimes?
So is it when they stop doing the act or when they stop wanting to do the act?
Wanting to do the act.
In prison, Shinichiro was sent to a reform program where he underwent rigorous psychological treatment along with therapy.
And just to mention, sometimes the treatments are very interesting.
Have you heard of aversion therapy?
So offenders are exposed to stimuli that is related to their offending behavior, like things that turn them on from their crimes, something that triggers thoughts of excitement.
And then the therapist will inject really foul odors into their mask, like a gas mask.
So they're kind of trying to Pavlov sex offenders, where they're trying to rewire their brain to associate the crime that they've committed that you did for pleasure with a foul smell which will hopefully rewire your brain into having negative emotions every time you think about your crime, in hopes that you'll never reoffend.
That's crazy.
There's also masturbatory reconditioning, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Offenders are forced to, not forced, asked nicely, consensually to have intimate relations with themselves while looking at images that are appropriate.
It's hard to guarantee that they're not going into their imagination, but they're like.
We'll put the images and try to rewire it so that you keep associating that kind of pleasure with these types of acts.
Wow.
Yeah.
We don't know if these are the exact therapies that Shinichiro went through, but it's likely because it's stated that he received rigorous treatment for several years and these are considered more on the rigorous side.
March of 2003, he went before a three-member parole panel and they decided to parole him.
To help aid in his rehabilitation, the parole board decided that they were also going to provide him a place to live and instructions for daily life.
They confidently told the public that we came to conclude that the psychiatric care and the correctional education at reformatories have obtained good results.
The scary part is, they announced his release to the public.
In Japan, that is not normal.
That is not normal, especially if their identities are not made public, legally speaking.
It is not normal.
The fact that they're announcing it to the public.
Japanese netizens felt like it was a hidden warning.
A message of be careful, be on the lookout, because he's out, he's free and he's living amongst you.
June's dad, the victim's father, said after he was released the most important issue is whether he really is rehabilitated.
I believe the man will face various difficulties after returning to society, and I think that is an ordeal he deserves.
The crimes he committed cannot be redeemed, even if it takes his whole life.
I hope that he will not forget that and he will live his life bearing a heavy cross on his back.
Shinichiro's old attorney stated He's grown up a lot in a short period of time and I'm not worried about him.
But the public was worried.
What would he do if he got out?
Were they just to believe that he would stop thinking about killing and he would never kill again?
Or he would suddenly have so much self-control that even if he wanted to, he wouldn't?
Some people have speculated that he's out now killing cats, but many disagree.
He was bored of killing cats.
Remember?
He wanted to move on.
And that was when he was in middle school.
If there is something you're bored of in middle school, something so under stimulating that you stopped doing it at 12, could you go back to it now as a 30 year old?
Probably not.
And also, how is that okay if he's just out here killing cats?
Yeah.
You know?
Now, every year after his release, Shinichiro wrote to the victims' families.
Jun's father said reading his letters demanded tremendous effort.
It was emotionally and physically draining.
But he wanted to do anything to get a bit more insight on why Shinichiro did what he did.
The letters started off very short and it grew longer and longer and more detailed and graphic.
And by Shinichiro's 10th letter Jun's dad had actually started to feel hopeful that someone could reform.
You know, and the letters felt deeply personal and intimate, not in a good way, but in that raw emotionally terrifying, invasive way.
But maybe that's what the victim's families needed to move on.
Turns out Shinichiro was just using them as guinea pigs.
He wanted to turn those letters basically into a book.
Not the exact letters, not in letter format, but all the details that he was writing in the letters.
He was like, ooh, I should just release a book.
Two books were released from Shinichiro's side.
One written by Shinichiro's mom, which detailed all of her journey of not knowing that this is what her son would do and how she was so taken aback.
And one written by Shinichiro himself, which our Japanese researcher found online and read.
It reads more like a sick diary than anything.
So let's break down both books, starting with his mom.
I'm so sorry.
Have we talked about how he was caught?
The handwriting.
They just started doing analysis.
Oh.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it?
Honestly, they thought the handwriting looked pretty juvenile.
The way that he was talking was like a juvenile villain.
So they were like, actually, I don't think we're looking for someone in their 30s or 40s.
So we should just look at kids.
In the school?
They started with all the schools in the area, including that school.
And they just did a bunch of handwriting analysis and they found it was him.
That's crazy.
Yeah, it was like very anticlimactic.
Just, oh, the writing matches.
Okay.
Okay oh, and then he confessed yeah, and then they realized he also stabbed some other people.
Yeah, and then okay, so they found the handwriting was a match, they found his picture, and then they realized a few months ago there had been a girl that died from a hammer attack and a girl that was stabbed.
So they went to the girl that was stabbed, who was still alive, and they asked her does this look like the guy that stabbed you?
And she was like yes.
So they're like okay great, we've got our killer.
Yeah, he's not that bright either.
No, it was not like this masterminded Zodiac killer chase.
It's genuinely just it was rather simple.
Yeah.
Now some netizens argued that Shinichiro's mom was staring down a series of red flags, but chose to look the other way.
They wondered was it for her own sake that she didn't want to face the red flags, or was it for his sake?
I guess we'll never know, but a lot of netizens blame his mom.
They argue that she heard the whispers, that her son had been killing stray cats, but she did nothing about it.
That she was confronted with the fact that he lashed out at Jun in the playground and beat him, but she made up excuses for it.
That a psychiatrist straight up warned her almost point blank that her child was mentally unstable.
But even then she still refused to face the music.
Yeah.
It's like you're not even thinking.
Yeah, like she's like, let me protect myself.
Yeah.
A lot of netizens have trouble digesting or believing that she didn't see some of this coming.
Now I don't think any netizen thinks that she saw the extent of this coming, but like it seems like something bad was ought to happen.
And they argue that she could have done something.
They just don't think that she was completely blindsided by this.
There were red flags staring straight down at her.
And she did nothing to really prevent any sort of impending disaster, regardless of the severity.
That's what a lot of the netizens are saying.
Then, in 2015, Shinichiro released his own book titled Zeka Boy A.
In the first few weeks, the book sold over 100000 copies.
It's estimated that he made tens of thousands of dollars from book sales.
Is this the one that... We found online, yeah.
What is it called?
Zeka by Boye.
It's only in Japanese.
What does that mean, Zeka?
Oh, I'm about to tell you.
So many bookstores, they started banning it.
And a lot of netizens took problem with the title of the book.
Zeka is kind of... So it's kanji.
Like it's like hancha.
Han character, it's like Chinese character symbols.
So it's, they don't read phonetically like English.
The symbols mean something and they can have different meanings.
Like one symbol can mean something else.
So the first character, initially what people thought was stop.
And then the second one was song.
So it's almost as if he's implying that the song stopped because he committed his crime.
However, after reading the book, many people believe the first character is actually more aligned with the other meaning for that character, which is exceptional.
Oh my god, this is crazy.
Okay, so you're talking about the character is 绝歌?
Yes.
Oh, is it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, I can see the two... Both sides?
Dual meaning, yes.
绝 can mean like it's extinct, it's gone.
Or 绝 is like so exceptionally well.
Yeah.
So two meanings really depends on how you People think it's the second one, after reading it like exceptional song.
Like this was his exceptional song that he created.
Wow. which would take on an entirely different meaning.
So after reading the book, even Shinichiro's former lawyer, who wanted him to be rehabilitated, would say oh, I guess it's impossible, isn't it?
He will never return to being a human being.
He will remain a demon forever.
At the end of the book, Shinichiro writes if the teenage me from the past were to ask me now, as an adult why shouldn't one kill people?
Why should you not commit murder?
I could only respond as follows.
I don't know why it's wrong, but absolutely, absolutely do not do it.
If you do it, you'll suffer much more than you can imagine.
With no philosophical twist, just these simple words.
I doubt I could convince my teenage self.
Yet this is the only answer I found after struggling for 11 years since leaving the juvenile detention center.
Like he still wants to kill.
Yeah.
So leaving us to conclude, more than 25 years after his crimes, at the age of 32, Shinichiro wrote this book, and he still doesn't know why murder is wrong.
He just knows he doesn't want to do it because he doesn't like juvenile detention centers.
So he is still out right now?
He's out.
He's in his, like, 40s?
Yeah, we don't know who he is.
He changed his name, so it's no longer Shinichiro.
Whoa.
As a way to drive publicity for his book, he opened up a website.
It's a long, long website name, and it's been taken down, so it doesn't really matter.
But it was something along the lines of like transparency and pain of existence that I cannot standbiz.
The website is bizarre.
It's basically it has like an about author page where he writes that he's 5 feet 4 inches, weighs about 122 pounds.
He is blood type A, INFJ.
Yeah.
Yeah.
INFJ is, I believe, an advocate, which this is crazy, but if you're into MBTI, breakdowns.
But they're known for their deep thoughtfulness and imagination.
They're typically very idealistic and principled and find a lot of joy-seeking purpose in life.
Their strengths are wanting to know the deeper truths into people's motivations, feelings and needs, and They tend to have super principled moral compasses that are very strong.
They're passionate and want to chase their dreams, but do not believe in succeeding at other people's expenses.
They want to use their strengths for the greater good.
Nothing is what describes him.
Like zero.
There wasn't really nothing that crazy on the website, but he did post pictures.
I'm going to try to pull them up for you.
I think that the photos will be up on the Spotify video.
Pictures of what?
I'm going to describe them to you in depth.
Whoa, what is that?
Wait, are these are photos?
Yeah, so he posted these photos onto the website of himself, or at least were led to believe that these are of himself.
It's a shirtless photo of himself where he's blacked out his face, just his body.
And I guess he's trying to be artistic on the website.
In one photo, he photoshops himself nude laying down and from the side angle.
So we can't see his privates.
And in between his legs coming straight for his face is this giant red slug.
But it looks like it's been skinned.
The slug is probably about the same size as him, if not maybe like three quarters of the same size as him.
It looks angry and it's unclear if the slug is his private part, if it's a part of him or if it's an entirely different entity that he's not friendly with.
It's like a monster, technically.
It looks like an alien.
And in another one, he photoshopped his naked torso onto a black scorpion.
There's just one that's a heart-shaped block, resin block.
It looks real, like a photograph, not a photoshopped picture.
And inside are just slugs.
It's like he got a mold, put in a bunch of slugs, poured in some resin.
Giant slugs.
So he still seems to have an obsession with slugs.
The website is filled with drawings of slugs, slugs crying in the rain, two-headed giant slugs, which is kind of terrifying to think about.
Since the killings, you know, he hasn't really changed all that much.
Yeah, the website contains no apology and no show of remorse, but his parents have chosen to stand by his side, even when he doesn't stand by them.
After shinichiro's release and his mom making a statement, she said our son is now doing his best to have courage to plunge into the world of anxieties and uncertainties.
I believe there will be a long and tough road ahead for us and our son, but if possible, i hope the public will watch over us quietly.
But Shinichiro was not as dedicated to his parents.
According to his father, Shinichiro disappeared out of their lives and off the radar.
The last netizens heard of him was that he was spotted and rumored to have been working as a welder.
He was married with a young child.
And in 2018 is the last time anyone had any reports of even spotting him outside.
Like no rumors of what city he's even in.
That's terrifying.
Yeah.
Why?
He should be watched after, no?
Yeah.
But he's out there somewhere ayaka yamashita, the girl that was bludgeoned to death with a hammer.
Her parents were interviewed and they have a sign over their front door that reads the power to live.
The family still keep a pair of her sneakers near the front door, and at her school there's a sign that says a message from ayaka i'll always be by your side, even if you can't see me.
Meanwhile, june's parents have a living room coffee table that they can no longer use because june had left a puzzle there that he started and never finished, And it's reported that the families also don't know where he is.
The victim's families.
So the anxiety of that is, I'm sure, great.
And that is the story of the Kobe child killer in Japan.
What are your thoughts on this case?
I mean, it's just so... And I do wish that we did have more on the victims.
This was a rare case where the victims' identities were released.
However, when it comes to Asian cases typically with Japanese, even Korean cases we don't get as much of the victim childhood as you would see in Western cases.
So that is why primarily the focus has been on him.
But what are your thoughts?
Do you think that someone could have seen this coming?
Do you think that this could have been prevented somehow?
Let me know in the comments and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode.
Bye.
