A Cold Echo

In the quiet Setagaya ward of Tokyo in 2000, a horrifying crime scene was discovered that sent the community into a state of shock and mourning.

On the evening of December 30, 2000, an intruder broke into the home of Mikio Miyazawa, 44. Mikio, employed by the international marketing firm Interbrand, was a typical middle-class Japanese family man. He shared his home with his wife Yasuko, 41, and their two young children, 8-year-old Niina and 6-year-old Rei. What happened inside that home that night sent a shockwave of fear and sadness careening across Japan.

Upon entering the home the following day, investigators found a horrific crime scene. Mikio and Yasuko, along with their daughter Niina, had been brutally stabbed to death. Their son, Rei, had died from asphyxiation. The times of death were established to be between 11:30 pm and 12:05 am. The killer had approached the house from nearby Setagaya Park and gained entry through a second-floor bathroom window by climbing a tree and removing a window screen.

The first victim was Rei. The killer used his bare hands to strangle the young boy in his bed. It is believed that Mikio interrupted this assault and was subsequently stabbed in the head with a sashimi bōchō, a long, thin knife used in preparing sashimi. The killer then used a standard Santoku kitchen knife to stab Yasuko and Niina to death. Neither of these weapons was a weapon of opportunity. The killer had them in his possession before arriving at the house. Both of the knives were found to have been purchased in the Kanagawa prefecture.

Following the murders, the killer remained in the house for at least 2 hours, possibly even staying the night, putting his total time in the residence at ten hours. Investigators into the brutal slaying found a wealth of evidence. The killer left personal belongings behind. Ten items to be exact. These included a sweater and a hip bag. The sweater had been purchased in the Kanagawa prefecture, just like the knives, but what they found inside the hip bag was perplexing. Sand. And not just any sand, but sand from the area in and around Edwards Air Force Base in the Nevada desert.

There was also a wealth of DNA evidence gathered, including the killer’s fecal matter from one of the toilets in the house. This evidence held the promise of identifying the perpetrator. However, the DNA profiles did not yield any matches in the existing DNA database, meaning the killer either had no existing criminal record or operated outside the scope of the DNA databases used. The killer also left fingerprints and footprints. At approximately 1 am he used the family computer to access the internet, leaving full impressions on the keyboard. And at one point, he removed his shoes and walked across the house barefoot. These impressions also reached a dead end as they did not reflect any records in the criminal databases.

Very little is known about the man who killed the Miyazawa family except that he was indeed male as discovered in the DNA evidence, and that in the year 2000, he was between 15 and 35, given the strength and physicality required to restrain and murder his victims. The investigation into these murders was one of the largest in Japanese history, employing nearly 250,000 investigators and uncovering a little over 12,500 pieces of evidence. 20 million yen, or $140,000 USD, is still being offered for evidence pertaining to the case.

The Japanese tv station JOEX-DTV, also known as TV Asahi, aired a documentary in 2015 about the case in which a former FBI agent and a reporter from TV Asahi presented a profile of the killer, citing that he or she likely committed these murders out of spite or resentment of the Miyazawa family, casting a pall of suspicion over Yasuko Miyazawa’s sister An Irie, a children’s author. This nearly baseless profile was done for dramatic effect but done so without consideration of the consequences. Irie claims that since the program aired her life has been destroyed, and her livelihood jeopardized.

The enduring mystery of Miyazawa family murders has created many questions, some of which will likely never be answered. What was the motive? The killer ransacked the house, destroying the family’s possession, and while he took some money, he didn’t take all of it. The killer removed his clothes to clean up after the attack, but why did he leave them behind for the police to find? Rei was strangled when the killer could have quickly dispatched him with a knife without waking Mikio. Despite the chaotic nature of the crime scene, the killer lingered, surfed the internet, possibly even took a nap. What was the provenance of the mysterious sand? Certainly, the killer could have stolen the bag, or gotten it second-hand, and this was just particulate matter left over from its journey across the Pacific.

Whatever the answers might be, the murders in Setagaya are a clear reminder of the depravity of human nature and that monsters do not merely live in the shadows of our imagination.