Suspects and the Unsolved Legacy

I've never wondered if the magic was real. Well this is where it was made. of the Hogwarts Express. Chill of the forbidden forest. The secret's hidden in Gringot's bank. You don't watch the films here. You feel them. Every spell, every creature, every detail. Immerse yourself in the filmmaking magic at Warner Brothers Studio Tour London. The making of Harry Potter. Tickets must be booked in advance, wbstudiotour.co.uk. In previous episodes we have explored cases in which alleged serial killers were never identified nor convicted of the horrific crimes they were believed to have committed. The same would prove true in the case of a modern day murderer thought to have been responsible for the deaths of at least seven female victims in rural Japan. killer whose disturbing and highly distinctive methods would ultimately earn him. Chilling nickname. The Wednesday Strangler. Living as we do in a technologically advanced society. It is sometimes easy to forget that many of the everyday tools and services we now take for granted did not exist until relatively recently. High definition CCTV cameras are now commonplace both inside and outside private homes. regularly providing police with crucial evidence during criminal investigations. Smart devices such as tablets, mobile phones, and digital speakers are also capable of recording vast amounts of information about the movements and behaviour of those within their range when later analysed by specialists. DNA testing once reserved almost exclusively for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Has since become widely commercialised, marketed to ordinary consumers for everything from paternity disputes to tracing distant ancestry. Much of this technology was originally developed for use in espionage, military intelligence, or the investigation of serious crimes, often contributing to the identification and capture of dangerous offenders. Whilst many of these advances were already beginning to emerge during the early twentieth century, they would not become widely accessible to the public for many decades. Prior to this, detectives investigating murders relied heavily upon witness testimony, confessions, and physical evidence recovered from suspects, their homes, or their vehicles. Investigators often found themselves attempting to piece together entire crimes from only fragments of information, rumours, or unreliable recollective by traumatised witnesses. As we have seen in cases such as the Hinterkaifek murders and the infamous Man from the Train Killings, Little progress could often be made without surviving witnesses or decisive forensic evidence. Even today, with all the benefits of modern investigative techniques, neither case has ever been conclusively solved. The same is true of cases attributed to Jack the Ripper, the Hamburg Rubble Killer. and the person responsible for the brutal slaying of the Setagaya family. All form part of a long and deeply unsettling history of unsolved killings and serial violence. In amongst these more famous cases was the story of another unidentified predator. One who stalked the towns and villages of Saga Prefecture in Japan. during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In mid April of nineteen eighty, The relatives of a 19 year old woming in the coastal town of Shiroishi contacted the local police to report her as a missing person. Ritsuko Hayakuteke had last been seen safe and well at the family home on April the twelfth. but had since failed to return there or make contact with any member of her family after that time. Initially, her relatives feared she may have committed suicide, as she had attempted to take her own life on two previous occasions. But shortly afterwards, a series of bizarre and deeply unsettling incidents began to unfold around the family home. On April the 16th, the family received a disturbing anonymous letter, written using an old form of con orthography. In the message, the writer informed them that they would never see Ritsuko alive again. adding that they hoped the family would endure considerable suffering as a result of her disappearance. Barely had they managed to process the contents of the letter. when the family home began receiving a succession of equally disturbing telephone calls. all were made by the same individual. A young sounding male with a local accent. repeatedly warned Ritsuko's relatives not to speak to either the police or the media. Regarding the case. As a result of the information passed to them. detectives launched a widespread and methodical search for the missing teenager. one which would continue over the following two months. conducted extensive inquiries throughout Shiroishi and the wider surrounding area. but no reliable sightings of Ritsuko could be confirmed. Then on the twenty fourth of June Officers investigating Suco Elementary School were informed by staff that they believed somebody may have hidden something on the grounds. During routine maintenance work around the school's swimming pools. Employee had discovered signs that one of the nearby manhole covently been tampered with. When the heavy metal gate was finally removed, Investigators discovered Ritsuko's badly decomposed remains, floating face up. in the shallow water below. After arrangements had been made to recover Ritsuko's body, Dectives began questioning members of staff about who might have had access to the swimming pool during the preceding two months. It was during these inquiries that several workers revealed they had previously noticed similar signs of tampering elsewhere on the school grounds. Specifically around one of the property's septic tanks. Three days after the discovery of Ritsuko's remains, the tank in question was completely drained and carefully opened by investigators. Inside, they uncovered a second set of human remains hidden beneath the surface. These remains were considerably older. having decomposed down to little more than a skeleton. More disturbingly, the body appeared to have been deliberately concealed beneath a small arrangement of rocks and stones that had been painstakingly placed inside the empty chamber. It was quickly established that the remains belonged to another former student of the school. twelve year old Tomiko Yamazaki. who had vanished five years earlier. Tamiko's mother operated a local business, and was often forced to leave her daughter alone at home while she worked. On the twenty seventh of August nineteen seventy five. Tomiko had invited a friend to the apartment to study with her during the afternoon. The pair had remained together for a short time before the other girl eventually departed. Leaving Tomiko alone inside the property. Later that same day, Tomiko's mother returned home from work to discover the apartment unsecured and completely empty. The television was still playing unattended in the living room. whilst the shoes Tomiko had reportedly been wearing earlier that day now lay discarded nearby on the floor. There was no indication of where she had gone. any obvious signs of a struggle having taken place inside the residence. Police subsequently carried out extensive inquiries throughout the surrounding area. canvassing neighbouring properties and locations Tomiko had been known to frequent. Despite these efforts, no reliable leads emerged regarding how the 12 year old had either left or been taken from the apartment. Eventually, with their inquiries exhausted and no meaningful evidence to pursue, Investigators had little choice but to list to Miko as a missing person and set the case aside. Only now. Five years later, were they finally being forced to reopen it as a murder investigation. Sleep is one of those things we rarely appreciate until we stop getting enough of it. And when your sleep starts suffering, everything else follows. Your concentration, your mood. Even your energy levels throughout the day. After long recording sessions or late nights working on scripts, I've realised just how important it is to have a mattress that genuinely helps you switch off and recover properly. That's why I've been using Brooklyn Bedding. What I like about them is that they don't feel like one of these huge faceless mattress corporations. Every mattress is designed and assembled in their own Arizona factory, using high quality materials and proper craftsmanship. No middlemen, no gimmicks. Just a company focused on making genuinely comfortable, supportive mattresses built to last. One thing I noticed almost immediately was the temperature regulation. I tend to sleep hot, especially during warmer nights, and their cooling materials genuinely make a difference. constantly waking up trying to get comfortable again, and the support itself is excellent too. You can really feel the difference when you wake up in the morning. go to Brooklynbedding.com and use my promo code BEDTIME at checkout to get 30% off site wide. This offer is not available anywhere else. That's BrooklynBedding.com promo code BEDTIME for 30% off site wide. Support the show and let them know we sent you. The bodies of the missing girls found hidden in the grounds of the Suko Elementary School were taken to Kurume University. where full forensic postmortems were carried out. Due to the advanced state of decomposition, No definitive cause of death could be confirmed, but although the prevailing theory was that the pair had been strangled. The absence of clothing in both cases also led investigators to suspect that the killings may have carried some form of sexual motives. Both of the victims had seemingly been taken from inside their homes, before being killed and then disposed of in the same manner and at the same location. As such, the detectives who had been tasked with solving the murders were were now sure they were on the hunt for a serial offender. The following year, having made little headway in their investigations into the killings, These officers were suddenly faced with a further series of identical slayings. On the seventh of october nineteen eighty one. Another woman who lived in the town of Shiroishi was reported to the authorities as a missing person. twenty seven year old Chizuko Ikigami had finished her shift at a local factory late that evening. chatting briefly to some co workers before walking off towards her home. It was a journey that she didn't complete. prompting the police to search for her with renewed vigour, given the haunting events of the previous year. Two weeks later, Chizuko's body was found lying out in a vacant car park in Nakabaru. The town situated twenty four miles to the northeast of Shiroishi. This time. having only been missing for a comparatively short period. cause of Chizuko's death was easily established. She had been strangled. dimensions of the bruising left upon her throat, leading investigators to believe the murderer had utilized a length of power cord. Several months later, yet another horrific killing took place. the circumstances of which caused investigators to firmly connect it to the earlier murders. On the seventeenth of february nineteen eighty two. An 11 year old schoolgirl named Kumi Nishiyama disappeared whilst walking home from school to her family residence in the town of Kitashigeasu. Disturbingly, the location where she was believed to have been abducted lay only a short distance from the vacant car park in Nakabaru, where the body of Chizuko Ikigama had previously been discovered. Once again, police launched a widespread search effort, fearing that the unidentified killer had struck for a fourth time. Their fears would soon be realized when Kumi's strangled body was discovered the following morning. As with the earlier victims, her clothing had been removed, and her remains concealed within a Mandarin plantation situated close to the grounds of a local junior school. The similarities between the cases were now becoming impossible for investigators to ignore. Further disturbing parallels emerged on the very same day Kumi's body was discovered. police received a postcard which appeared to suggest that the girl had initially been abducted as part of a ransom attempt, only to later be killed after putting up a struggle. Another pupil attending Coomey's school also received a strange telephone call from an unidentified individual who attempting to impersonate the dead girl, before abruptly hanging up. This drew immediate comparisons to the bizarre calls made to the family of Ritsuko Hykataka two years earlier. It was at this stage that detectives conducted a comprehensive review of the killings in an attempt to identify any further similarities linking the crimes together. During this process, investigators noticed another deeply unsettling pattern. Three of the four cases. the victims had disappeared on the very same day of the week. The discovery would ultimately lead detectives and journalists alike to begin referring to the unidentified murderer by a grim new nickname. The Wednesday Strangler. The killings appeared to cease as abruptly as they had begun. Leaving the authorities with little choice but to wait in apprehension for the next attack. That uneasy silence would continue for another five years, before the activities of the Wednesday strangler violently returned to public attention. On the evening of the twenty fifth of january nineteen eighty seven. A 37 year old woman named Tatsuyo Yoshino was eating dinner with her family at their home in Kitamachi. a town situated south of Shiroishi. Part way through the meal. The house telephone rang. prompting Tatsuyo to excuse herself on the table and answer the call. A short conversation then took place between her and the unidentified caller. During the exchange, her family noticed that she appeared increasingly frustrated by whatever was being said to her. Eventually, she abruptly hung up the phone before informing her relatives that she needed to go out for a short while. Tatsuyo told her mother that one of her friends urgently required a lift somewhere. However, investigators would later discover that she had instead informed her son that that she was meeting somebody for dinner that evening. When Tatsuyo failed to return home either that night or the following morning. police launched an eerily familiar search of the surrounding area for the missing woman. The car was located relatively quickly, abandoned in the car park of a local bowling alley. But there was no obvious indication as to where Tatsuyo herself might have gone. Investigators also discovered another troubling detail during their inquiries. Tatsuyo had worked at the very same factory that had once employed Jizuko Ikigami. The third known victim connected to the killings. Then, two days later The authorities received a panic telephone call from a couple who had been driving through the nearby Kashima Forest. During their journey, they had stopped at an isolated Buddhist shrine situated upon an escarpment deep within the woods. But whilst leaning forward to offer up a prayer at the shrine's altar, The pair had been horrified to notice what appeared to be a human body lying below them. bottom of the incline. Officers were immediately dispatched to the scene. cordoning off the surrounding roads and the temple grounds before using ropes to descend the steep rock face beneath the shrine. Within moments of reaching the bottom. Investigators made a horrifying. Lying amongst the undergrowth were not one. But three separate sets of human remains. all belonged to women who had previously been reported missing. and who investigators now believed had fallen victim to the unknown killer. The first of the bodies was identified as that of Tatsuyo Yoshino. who, like several of the earlier victims, had been stripped of her clothing before being strangled to death with some form of rope or heavy electrical cabling. Lying a short distance away was a second naked body. This one in a far more advanced state of decomposition. suggesting it had been exposed to the elements for a considerably longer period of time. Investigators would later identify the remains as belonging to fifty year old housewife Kiyomi Nakajima. another local resident who had lived in the nearby town of Kitagata. On the afternoon of the 7th of December 1986, Kiyomi had informed her husband, Tadao, that she needed to visit a local shop. to collect a few items for the household. She was last seen alive by a passerby, apparently standing beside the road and engaged in conversation with a cyclist somewhere along the route she would normally have taken towards the nearby stores. Much like in the earlier disappearances of Ritsuko Hyakutake and Kumichiama. Bizarre telephone contact soon followed in the aftermath of Kiyomi's disappearance. The first call came directly to the family home, whilst Hadow waited anxiously for news alongside a police officer who had been assigned to remain there with him. Both men listen carefully, as an unidentified caller described as a young male with a local accent. claimed to be a friend of the family, but refused to identify himself further. The mysterious caller then calmly informed the pair that Kyomi had already been killed. and that her body had been hidden somewhere within a nearby mountain pass. They subsequently searched the location in question, but found nothing of significance, leading investigators to initially dismiss the call as some form of cruel prank. But afterwards, a further series of silent telephone calls began arriving not only at Tadow's home address. but also at the local post office where he worked. The third body discovered at the shrine, lying roughly a metre away from the others, was in a far more advanced state of decomposition, due to prolonged exposure to the elements and extensive animal predation. Investigators would later establish that the remains belonged to forty eight year old Sumiko Fajuze. Another local woman who had long since been reported missing. Sumiko had worked at a restaurant in the nearby town of Takeo. and was last seen alive eighteen months earlier on the evening of the eighth of july nineteen eighty seven. On that night, she had finished her shift before agreeing to go for a drink with one of her co-workers. Afterwards she had set off alone to walk back to her home. A wider search of the surrounding forest later uncovered numerous items and personal possessions belonging to all three victims. These items had seemingly been discarded across the area in a careless and haphazard fashion. Presumably by whoever had concealed the bod. With the residents of Saga Prefecture demanding answers and growing increasingly fearful, Immense pressure was placed upon the authorities to finally identify and capture the person responsible for the killings. There was therefore a significant sense of relief ten months after the recovery of the final three bodies when investigators announced that they had identified a suspect. Police revealed that a twenty-six year old local man was believed to be the Wednesday strangler. And had already been formally questioned by detectives working the case. The suspect, Terohiko Matsue, was at that time serving a prison sentence in Kagoshima on unrelated charges, having previously been convicted of several other offences. Prosecutors allege that Matsue had been engaged in an extramarital affair with Tatsuyo Yoshino. and was likely the individual who had telephoned her home on the night she disappeared. Investigators also noted that he had been a regular customer at the restaurant where Sumiko Fajuze worked and lived only a short distance from the Nakajima family residence. According to police, Matsue possessed a notoriously violent temper. and had likely committed the murders whilst under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Investigators subsequently produced a written confession which they claimed Matsue had completed voluntarily, admitting responsibility for the final three killings. However, during his first court appearance, Matsue immediately denied being the killer. He alleged that detectives had fabricated the confession and physically forced him into signing the document. After hearing his testimony, the judge overseeing the case halted the prosecution entirely. leading to what appear to be a decade of near total inactivity surrounding the investigation. During that period, Matsue completed his prison sentence and was released. only to later return to custody after committing a further burglary offence. Then, in 2002, investigators once again visited Matsue in prison and formally charged him with the murders of the final three victims. Police announced that newly analyzed DNA evidence recovered from the seats of Tatsuyu Yoshino's vehicle now form the basis of their case against him. Any hopes the victims' families held of finally receiving closure. were shattered during Matsui's two thousand and five trial. The judge presiding over the proceedings was openly critical of the police investigation. Stating that it appeared to have been hastily assembled as the statute of limitations approached expiry. Matsui again insisted that his confession had been extracted under duress, and admitted that he had previously been inside Yoshino's car, severely weakening the significance of the DNA evidence. In the end, Matsue was acquitted, awarded compensation equivalent to roughly thirty thousand pounds for and allowed to walk free from court. The verdict left investigators with nothing to show for the decades they had spent attempting to build a case. Against their only serious suspect. A number of leads emerged during the investigation into the Wednesday Strangler, helping detectives build a partial profile of the offender. Though none ultimately resulted in an arrest. Amongst these were repeated sightings of an unidentified male driving around the area in a white Toyota during the period in which the first four killings occurred. Multiple witnesses reported seeing the man pulling over at the roadside to speak with schoolgirls as they walked to and from classes. Despite one witness managing to provide police with part of the vehicle's registration number. Investigators were never able to identify either the car or the man believed to have been driving it. There were also suggestions that the person responsible for abducting Tomiko Yamazaki may have been known to her personally. Detectives believed this could explain how the killer had managed to gain access to the apartment without immediately alarming the twelve-year-old. One witness reportedly provided investigators with the name of a possible suspect, but refused to make a formal statement, fearing that doing so would expose her own extramarital affair to her husband. As with many investigations involving alleged serial killers, one of the most intriguing questions surrounding the case concerns why the murders appear to suddenly cease after years of activity. The most straightforward explanation is that the killer was either imprisoned for an unrelated offense or die before being able to commit any further crimes. It is also possible that if Matsue truly was responsible The fact that investigators came so close to securing a conviction against him may have frightened him enough to abandon his activities altogether. Others, however, believe the pattern of offending suggests there may actually have been multiple perpetrators involved, with later offenders potentially imitating the methods used in the earlier murders. Supporters of this theory point to the significant differences between the first four victims and the final three. The earlier victims were either schoolgirls or comparatively young women. Oldest being only twenty seven years old. By contrast, the final three victims were all middle aged women. the youngest amongst them being thirlies of their own. Given the lengthy period over which the killings took place, it is also possible that the repeated Wednesday disappearan were simply coincidental. But while strangulation and sexual motives are not uncommon features in homicide cases, the repeated harassment of victims' families through letters and telephone calls most certainly is. It also seems highly likely that investigators withheld key details from the public throughout the inquiry. Information which would not have been known to potential copycat offenders. For that reason. Many believe the bizarre contact with victims' relatives points more convincingly towards the behavior of a single offender, rather than multiple unrelated killers. When examining cases such as the Setagaya family murders and the North Kanto kidnappings, It becomes clear that brutal and deeply disturbing acts of violence have long existed beneath the surface of Japanese society. Whilst the country maintains a comparatively low homicide rate, less than one murder per hundred thousand people compared with figures several times higher in nations such as America and Canada Japanese cases possess details that make them uniquely unsettling. Poisonings, dismemberment, prolonged stalking, and carefully planned abductions all appear with disturbing regularity throughout the nation's criminal history. In many instances, the offenders responsible seem driven not by sudden rage or opportunity, but by longstanding obsession and compulsion. sometimes continuing their crimes across years or even decades without detection. One can only hope that advances in forensic science and surveillance technology will continue to reduce the likelihood of such predators operating unseen in the future. And perhaps one day, those same investigative tools may finally provide the answers that so frustratingly eluded detectives in the case of the Wednesday strangler. Until then, the identity of the killer responsible for terrorizing Saga Prefecture remains unknown. And may well remain that way. Forever.