A 90-year-old elderly woman was beaten to death with a crowbar.

The prosecution sought a heavy sentence of 25 years in prison.

On August 29, the Tachikawa Branch of the Tokyo District Court heard the trial of Kazunari Nakanishi, 21, a former university student accused of robbery and manslaughter. In January last year, he allegedly killed a 90-year-old elderly woman, Mrs. A, who lived in Komae City, Tokyo, and robbed her of four items (worth approximately 590,000 yen), including a luxury wristwatch.

This is a case of so-called “black market robbery. Nakanishi conspired with Rikuto Nagata (22, charged with robbery and manslaughter, etc.) and others to break into Ms. A’s house. They allegedly tied her hands with a cable and beat her to death with a crowbar. Nakanishi understood that the crime was planned to be violent, but he claimed that he was not guilty of manslaughter because he was not the one who beat Ms. A.” (a judicial reporter for a national newspaper)

FRIDAY Digital” reported in detail on the Komae robbery case involving Nakanishi and Nagata in an article distributed last January 25. We would like to recount the horror of the “black market robbery” and its horrifying tactics (some corrections have been made).

The “10 Million Yen Robbery

The “black market robbery” has been spreading across the country.

A group of four to eight men broke into a house, assaulted the residents, and robbed them of their cash. As of last January, there have been at least 30 similar incidents throughout Japan.

In a series of incidents, 90-year-old Mr. A was murdered and found dead on January 19, 2011. After receiving a tip from the Chiba Prefectural Police, where robberies frequently occur, a police officer from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department visited Ms. A’s home in Komae City, Tokyo, and found her body. Both of her wrists were tied with a bandage and she was lying in the hallway on the first basement floor, bleeding from the face.

Mr. A lived with his son, his wife, and two grandchildren, but the family had been out since the morning of the murder. The cause of Mr. A’s death was multiple traumas caused by the assault all over his body,” said a reporter from a national newspaper.

It seems that the perpetrators shared information from the instructor on social networking services. Messages related to the Komae City crime were found on the smartphone of a perpetrator seized during another robbery in Tokyo. The message was sent using a communication application called “Telegram,” which is highly confidential and has a function to erase information after a certain period of time.

The person who gave the instructions is believed to be a gangster or a semi-gangster. At the trial of a criminal who had already been arrested, it was revealed that he had recruited members through “YAKIBYTE. The perpetrator did not even know the name of the instructor.

The perpetrators received instructions such as, “10 million yen reward for robbery,” “100 million yen in the safe,” etc., and committed the crimes with unknown members they met at the crime scene. It is believed that the instructor decided the place and time of the robbery based on a “black book” containing the addresses, telephone numbers, and family situations of elderly people who had large sums of cash.

The person who is likely to be a key player in the investigation is the person who broke into a house in Nakano Ward, Tokyo, on December 5, 2010, beat a man in his 40s, took about 30 million yen in cash, and fled. The defendant was Nagata (introduced at the beginning of this report), a resident of Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, with an unknown occupation, who was arrested on suspicion of robbery and stated, “I beat him to a pulp. Information related to the Komae City incident was also found on a smartphone seized from the rental car in which Nagata was riding.

Nagata, who is believed to be involved in multiple incidents, seems to have joined the criminal group through a “dark job. He was born in Kyoto City but moved to Kanazawa City in his teens. He was working for various construction companies, but he was addicted to gambling and had financial difficulties. According to a resident who lived in the same apartment, he was a boating enthusiast and said, “I was beaten by 500,000 yen today. When he was feeling rich, he would show three luxury watches and ask, “Where can I get cash for them? He also asked me, “Where can I get cash for them?

On the other hand, he also showed signs of fear, saying, “If you see a suspicious car, let me know. If it was the police, there would be people inside (the car),” he said. When the residents asked him if he was doing something wrong, he slurred his words, saying, ‘No, just a little ……. He may have been repeating the crime and was afraid of being arrested.

The defendant Nakanishi, mentioned at the beginning of this article, is scheduled to be sentenced on September 6.