<figure id="attachment_424791" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-424791" style="width: 2631px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="fcd61595"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/05/96480009bd3e73f695d1523ec72aec73.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-424791" class="wp-caption-text">K sent in on May 14, &#8217;95 (from the June 2, &#8217;95 issue)</figcaption></figure>
<p> What did &#8220;FRIDAY&#8221; report 10, 20, and 30 years ago? In &#8220;Playback Friday,&#8221; we revisit the topics that were hot at the time. This time, we introduce a story from the June 2, 1995 issue that appeared 30 years ago <span class="strongInContent">: &#8220;Short Circuit&#8221; of a cold-blooded man who killed five women between the ages of 9 and 45 and dumped them in a mountain in Osaka</span>.</p>
<p> The man was arrested in April &#8217;95 on suspicion of theft and re-arrested for murder four days before Asahara&#8217;s arrest. He was a serial killer of rare distinction who would have been the subject of contentious coverage by the wide variety of news programs if it had not been for the Aum Shinrikyo scandal. All ages and titles are current as of that time).</p>
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<h3><span class="strongInContent"> A &#8220;letter of challenge&#8221; sent to the police 10 years ago was the deciding factor.</span></h3>
<p> In April 1995, K, 54, a resident of Nishinari-ku, Osaka City, was arrested on suspicion of theft for stealing clothes from a warehouse. However, during interrogation, K confessed to the murder 10 years earlier. He also blurted out that he had murdered four other women.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The first victim was A, who was 19 years old at the time. On April 16, 1985, while a student at a prefectural facility for the mentally handicapped in Tondabayashi City, Osaka Prefecture, he disappeared on his way home from the dry-cleaning store where he worked. On June 17 of the same year, she was found dismembered in a bamboo grove in the town of Hiroyo, Nara Prefecture.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I was really shocked,&#8221; he said. She could write by herself and ride the bus by herself. She had just started working outside the home as part of her reintegration into society. She even wrote in her essay that she was happy to be working outside the home. &#8230;&#8230;</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Three months later, the Takada Police Station of the Nara Prefectural Police received a letter of challenge. The letter contained details that only the murderer could have known, such as the name of the sushi restaurant where he had taken Ms. A just before the murder and which part of her body he had cut off. However, the police were unable to find any clues as to who sent the letter, and the case remained in a state of limbo.</span></p>
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<p> According to K&#8217;s statement, on June 16, 1995, he <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;approached her in downtown Naniwa-ku, Osaka City&#8221; and</span> took her to his house, but <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;when she tried to give him pocket money, they had a dispute over the amount, and he lost his temper and killed</span> her. <span class="strongInContent">When</span> he tried to give her some money, she <span class="strongInContent">lost her temper over</span> the amount <span class="strongInContent">and killed him.</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The victim was only 9 years old at the time of the incident."></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">The body was dismembered and the chest and other parts of the body were gutted.</span></h3>
<p> The second victim was Ms. B, who was only 9 years old at the time of the incident. She was taken by passenger car from her home in Sumiyoshi Ward, Osaka City, on January 22, 1987, and found dead in a mountain in Toyono-cho, Osaka Prefecture, on May 4 of the same year <span class="strongInContent">.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Ms. B&#8217;s father, 40, bit his lip.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He said, &#8220;I have been suffering for eight years since my daughter&#8217;s death. She would have been 17 if she had lived. I try to forget about it, but when I see high school students in my neighborhood, I can&#8217;t help remembering. If he is the culprit, I hope he gets the maximum punishment.&#8221;</span></p>
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<p> Two of the three remaining victims were found dismembered in April of &#8217;94, one after the other in a cypress grove in Minoh City, Osaka Prefecture. They were Mr. C, a 45-year-old snack store employee who had disappeared in July of 1993, and Mr. D, a 38-year-old restaurant employee who disappeared in March of &#8217;94. The reason for the murders was <span class="strongInContent">that &#8220;they were pressured to lend me money&#8221;</span> (K&#8217;s statement).</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> K is a habitual thief who moved into his current residence around the end of last year, and his neighbors were suspicious of him, wondering what he was doing there.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He was the kind of guy who didn&#8217;t answer when I tried to talk to him, and he had a stout body, so he was kind of scary,&#8221; said a neighborhood resident.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The man who was put in jail immediately sent a letter to the landlord of his apartment,</span><br>
<span class="strongInContent"> The contents of the letter said, &#8216;Since you are living in a detention center and not living there, we want our security deposit back. What on earth is he thinking?</span></p>
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<p> K&#8217;s motives for committing the crimes were extremely shortsighted. However, since he killed only women, except for Ms. B, who was a child, and dismembered all of them with a sharp knife, and even gouged out their chests, it was suspected that he was committing the crimes out of a bizarre hobby.</p>
<p> At this point, the body of the victim, Ms. E, who K confessed that he had <span class="strongInContent">killed a woman he met in Osaka and dumped her in the Kobe area,</span> had not yet been found. In addition, since there is a six-year gap between the murder of Ms. B and Ms. C, some people were concerned that Ms. K might have committed other murders in the short span of time. There were also concerns that the victims might have committed the murders in the intervening years.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" He pleaded not guilty at the trial."></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">At the trial, the court reversed its decision and said, &#8220;It was an acquaintance of mine who killed her.</span></h3>
<p> According to K&#8217;s statement, it was a housewife, E, who was found dead in a wooded area in Nishi Ward, Kobe City on May 29, 1995, K met E around late May 1985 at a bar where she worked in Nishinari Ward, and invited her to her apartment. When he warned her about her drinking, she rebelled against him, and he lost his temper and killed her. In other words, Mr. E was the first victim.</p>
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<p> K was born in Ehime Prefecture. He was born the son of an innkeeper, married in his hometown, and worked as a wholesaler of disposable chopsticks to inns. He made a living by selling stolen goods to women in the restaurant business. According to an acquaintance, <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;He was usually mild-mannered, but when he drank alcohol, he would lose his temper. When</span> he <span class="strongInContent">got angry, he had a habit of choking himself</span>.</p>
<p> When he was arrested for theft, K was first suspected in the case of Mr. C and Ms. D. There was testimony that he was acquainted with them. On the other hand, he was also suspected in the case of Mr. A because he was familiar with the geography of the area around the sushi restaurant where Mr. A was said to have gone with the culprit in the case 10 years ago, and the mileage of the rental car K rented at the time of the incident was the exact distance to the site where Mr. A&#8217;s body was dumped. When the fingerprints on the &#8220;challenge&#8221; were matched, they were found to be a match.</p>
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<p> At the trial, K turned around and claimed that it <span class="strongInContent">was an acquaintance who killed her and that he only helped dump the body,</span> but his argument was not accepted and he was sentenced to death. He was sentenced to death on March 25, 2004 at the Osaka Detention Center.</p>
<p> As to why he did not dismember only Mr. B&#8217;s body among the victims, K stated that he did not cut it up because it was small and put it in a cardboard box for transportation. K&#8217;s case was overshadowed by the Aum Shinrikyo media coverage, and there were almost no further reports after his re-arrest. However, the crime of murdering five women with a simple motive, and even playing with their bodies, was one of the most heinous crimes ever committed in the history of crime.</p>
<figure id="attachment_424792" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-424792" style="width: 4526px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="c9234fd0"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/05/5f83d7e0169d5ea2495e82299c6fe6e5.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-424792" class="wp-caption-text"> The scene where Ms. A&#8217;s body was found. In 1995, 10 years after the incident, the area had been turned into a park.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_424793" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-424793" style="width: 1784px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="06805107"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/05/154c0fe99f5aa532483083d53e1d7284.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-424793" class="wp-caption-text"> The forest in Minoh City, Osaka Prefecture, where the dismembered bodies of Ms. C and Ms. D were found one after the other. Photographed when the bodies were found in April 1994 (from the June 2, &#8217;95 issue).</figcaption></figure>


 Hiroshi Shibachi

 In this issue of Playback, we look back at what we reported 10, 20, and 30 years ago. This time, we take a look at the "Osaka Serial Murder Case," a heinous crime that was not widely reported in the shadow of the Aum Shinrikyo Aum Shinrikyo uprising in May 1995.

Playback ’95] “The Osaka Serial Dismemberment Murder Case,” a Rare Violent Crime Hiding in the Shadows of the Aum Commotion

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