<figure id="attachment_425510" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-425510" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="507c39d7"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/05/00fd3d024b7c8707675ad9a17d0f47a3.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-425510" class="wp-caption-text">Investigators searching for the body of Mr. X. Mr. X was buried on the property owned by C&#8217;s relatives (from the May 15 and 22, &#8217;15 issues).</figcaption></figure>
<p> What did &#8220;FRIDAY&#8221; report 10, 20, or 30 years ago? In &#8220;Playback Friday,&#8221; we revisit the topics that were hot at the time. This time, we will introduce the <span class="strongInContent">article &#8220;The Demonic Nature of Funabashi&#8217;s 18-Year-Old Empress and Three Men Who Buried and Killed Her: The Bottomless Devil&#8217;s Path&#8221;</span> that appeared in the May 15 and 22, 2003 issues, 10 years ago.</p>
<p> On April 21, 2003, the Funabashi Higashi Police Station in Chiba Prefecture received a report of <span class="strongInContent">a girl who could not be contacted and who had been buried.</span> By the 24th, all four members of the crime group, including the boy and the girl, were arrested, and according to their statements, the body of Ms. X (then 18 years old) was found buried in a field in Shibayama-machi, Chiba Prefecture. The crime was a brutal one, in which Mr. X was buried alive. (All ages and titles are current at the time.)</p>
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<h3><span class="strongInContent"> Abduction and murder of a high school classmate</span></h3>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;Saw him.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I&#8217;ve got him.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I saw him coming out of a barbecue and caught him.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> On April 19, 2003, a Sunday night near 10:30 p.m., Aoko (18) sent the following message to a friend on &#8220;LINE.</span></p>
<p> It was five days later, on April 24, that X&#8217;s (18) body was found in a hole about one meter deep dug in a field. By the same day, four other people had been arrested on suspicion of confinement: B (16), a young rebar worker; C (20), an unemployed acquaintance of Ako&#8217;s; and D (20), an unemployed workmate of Ako&#8217;s. Of the four, C was arrested on the 23rd. Among them, C turned himself in on the 23rd and made a statement about the murder of Ms. X. This led to a rapid progress in the investigation.</p>
<p> Mr. X was taken away on the night of the 19th. Aiko, who knew Ms. X as she was walking downtown in Chiba City, approached her and put her in a car driven by B. Then, they waited for her a few hundred meters away. They then locked her up in a rented car with C and D, who were waiting a few hundred meters away. During the two to three hours she was in the car, Ms. X was apparently assaulted by the four men, and her face was beaten so badly that it swelled up.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;Ako was clearly excited and seemed to have been encouraging C and the others at the scene, saying, &#8216;Let&#8217;s do it, let&#8217;s do it! and she was encouraging C and the others at the scene. X&#8217;s body was found lying on her back in a sitting position. His head was wrapped with several layers of adhesive tape, and his mouth was stuffed with a cloth-like substance. His wrists had been pre-purchased and were bound with cable ties. The autopsy determined that there was a high probability of death by asphyxiation, and together with D&#8217;s statement and others, Ms. X was apparently buried alive.&#8221; (National newspaper reporter)</span></p>
<p> All three men had never met Ms. X, except for Child A. What was it that made them so horrifyingly deadly? What could have driven them to commit such a gruesome act?</p>
<p> Mr. X and Ako were classmates at a prefectural high school in Funabashi. They had both dropped out of high school and were living away from home, staying at friends&#8217; houses. Then they became involved with the nightlife.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Ako&#39;s hatred for him swelled."></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">The &#8220;real faces&#8221; of the perpetrators</span></h3>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;X-chan often went to a host club near Chiba Station. Ako also liked to play host, and there were times when the two of them would pick the same host. (An employee who worked at the same store as Ms. X)</span></p>
<p> At the time of the incident, Ms. X was working at multiple sex stores, but still did not have enough money to go to the host club, so she borrowed 50,000 yen from Child A as well.</p>
<p> In addition, Ms. X had entered a brothel on a trial basis and then quit. He borrowed a graduation album from a number of classmates to use in place of a photo ID, but did not return it. Ako&#8217;s growing hatred for Mr. X, whom she had lost touch with when she tried to contact him, apparently prompted her to commit the crime. They were C, D, and a boy, B, who joined them in the middle of the crime. What kind of people were they?</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;C-kun was famous not only in Narita, the local area, but also among young delinquents. He had tattoos all the way down to his wrists, and he was so outlandish that he would even pick a fight with the yakuza. But he was smart and didn&#8217;t do much on his own. That&#8217;s why I was surprised when I heard he got into trouble,&#8221; said a local acquaintance.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> D was like a younger brother to C. He had been working as a craftsman at the same construction company for about a year, and they had lived together in the dormitory.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> After graduating from junior high school, he got a job as a baggage handler at Narita Airport through his school. Last August, Mr. C invited me to leave home and join his dormitory. Around the beginning of this year, one of my seniors at work called me and said, &#8216;D, you&#8217;re working very hard. Everyone likes you.&#8217; I got a call from him. &#8230;&#8230;&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> B was a member of a semi-gang group consisting of people from motorcycle gangs and who ran music-related events, and it was reported in some quarters that he and Ako were &#8220;in a dating relationship. Why did they agree to meet with Ako?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Aiko had a younger boyfriend, but it seems that she and B were also in a &#8220;friendship&#8221; kind of relationship. Aiko often went to a club in Chiba City, where they were seen smoking marijuana and flirting with each other. D joined the group after being approached by C.&#8221; (reporter)</span></p>
<p> Ako, like a dominatrix, gathered the members by herself and planned to take away Ms. X. Finally, on the night of April 19, the members of the group were arrested and taken away. Finally, on the night of April 19, she found Mr. X on a downtown street and abducted him.</p>
<p> The Chiba Prefectural Police were investigating to re-arrest the four for the murder.</p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The gruesome crime that came to light"></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">Don&#8217;t kill me. I don&#8217;t want to die.&#8221;</span></h3>
<p> On May 13, 2003, the four were arrested again for the robbery and murder of Mr. X. On June 4, C and D were indicted for robbery and murder, arrest and confinement, and other charges. Ako, who was a minor, was sent to the family court and charged with robbery-murder and arrest and confinement; B was also sent to the family court and was not charged with robbery-murder for lack of conspiracy; A, C, and D were sentenced to life imprisonment, and all were sentenced by June &#8217;19.</p>
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<p> The trial revealed the bloodless acts of the four men against Ms. X. In the car in which they were confined, Mr. X was beaten and had cigarettes lit on him, and was told by D that &#8221; <span class="strongInContent">you are going to die</span> &#8221; and sentenced to &#8220;death.</p>
<p> C and D took Mr. X to the place where the hole was, <span class="strongInContent">told him to &#8220;just bury him for a while,&#8221;</span> and C returned to the car with Ako and B. D then took Mr. X to a field where D had dug a hole in the ground the day before.</p>
<p> When D began to pour dirt on Mr. X in the hole, Mr. X <span class="strongInContent">said, &#8220;Don&#8217;t kill me. I don&#8217;t want to die,&#8221;</span> she cried and begged for her life. However, D, fearing that her voice would be heard by others, impatiently buried Ms. X until her face and body were completely obscured.</p>
<p> When the three returned to the scene and learned that they had already buried Mr. X alive, C said, <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;You buried him already?</span> You <span class="strongInContent">&#8216;re an ogre,&#8221;</span> he said with a mirthless laugh.</p>
<p> At the trial, Ako claimed that she had no intention to kill Mr. X. She testified that she <span class="strongInContent">had not been told about</span> the murder plan <span class="strongInContent">and that she thought she was going to go to the place where the (lent) graduation album was located</span>. However, after the crime, she happily blew the whistle on the fact that she had buried Mr. X alive to those around her, and her argument was not accepted.</p>
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<p> Nonfiction writer Ken Kataoka, who exchanged letters with Ako while she was in prison, introduced her words in &#8220;Nikkan Gendai DIGITAL&#8221; of September 27, 1949, when she was 27 years old.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I was dating people I didn&#8217;t care about, pretending to be friends with them only on the superficial level. (omission) Because I had only been able to build such tiny relationships and because I was weak, I could have prevented the incident if I wanted to, but I didn&#8217;t. I regret that it&#8217;s over now, but it&#8217;s not. There is nothing I can do now to regret or lament the fact that it is over.&#8221;</span></p>
<p> Perhaps the murderous act was a foolish act due to his &#8220;childish&#8221; nature. But even if you repent for your sins as an adult, as she says, there is nothing you can do about it.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The &quot;devil&#39;s deed&quot; ... the members of the criminal group"></div>
<figure id="attachment_425781" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-425781" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="2cf66e6c"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/05/68f88a4685e9d64be57673b590696f35.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-425781" class="wp-caption-text">A (right) used to be plain, but became popular as a gal (from the May 15 and 22, &#8217;15 issues).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_425783" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-425783" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="e124c037"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/05/d412f13e008b8417a8b628bd26ea1223.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-425783" class="wp-caption-text"> C a few years before the incident; at the time of the incident, she had more tattoos (from the May 15 and 22, &#8217;15 issues).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_425782" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-425782" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="d7eb3683"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/05/88f4a62f25dd1b94756855ce68770ffa.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-425782" class="wp-caption-text"> D, who was the same age as C but was treated like a henchman; he was the one who actually buried Mr. X alive (from the May 15 and 22, 2003 issues).</figcaption></figure>


 Takero Yui (1st photo)

 In this issue of Playback, we look back at what we reported 10, 20, and 30 years ago. This time, we take up the "Funabashi 18-year-old girl murder case" that took place in April 2003. Why did the girl bury her former classmate alive?

Playback ’15] The 18-Year-Old Murderer of Funabashi 18-Year-Old Girl Who Begged for Her Life and Was Buried Alive…

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