Playback ’05] “The Murder of a Tochigi Elementary School Girl”: The unexpected end to a heinous case that seemed to have been solved quickly.

What did “FRIDAY” report 10, 20, or 30 years ago? In “Playback Friday,” we revisit the topics that were hot at the time. In this issue, we will look back 20 years ago at the December 23, 2005 issue of “FRIDAY”, which reported that the “man in the white wagon” was in southern Tochigi Prefecture, and that the “ pedophile murderer ” was in this area!　The ” pedophile murderer” was hunted down to this point,” and “The murder of a Tochigi 1st grade girl” from the follow-up report of the December 30 issue.

At around 2:50 p.m. on December 1, 2005, A (then 7), an elementary school student in Imaichi City (now Nikko City), Tochigi Prefecture, who had left school with three of her classmates, disappeared suddenly after leaving her classmates at a three-way intersection several hundred meters from the school. When he was found in a mountain forest in Hitachi-Omiya City, Ibaraki Prefecture, some 60 kilometers away on the afternoon of the following day, he was already in a state of disarray.

At the time of the incident, the police received reports of various suspicious persons and vehicles, and it was thought that the perpetrators would be apprehended immediately. …… (Descriptions in parentheses are taken from past articles; ages are current at the time).

A white one-box car” emerged on the investigation line.

A’s body was found completely naked, with 10 sharp stab wounds on his chest, and his hands and feet bound with adhesive tape. There were few items found at the scene that could be linked to the murderer. However, the prefectural police were picking up suspicious vehicles by analyzing surveillance cameras along the road from Imaichi to Hitachi-Omiya, and it was thought that the culprit had been narrowed down to a certain extent.

The first suspicious person reported was a middle-aged man with shaggy hair and silver-rimmed glasses who was reportedly talking to an elementary school girl near the crime scene. Later, a newspaper reported that a video camera at the Osawa Interchange on the Nikko-Utsunomiya Road, near the scene of the kidnapping, showed a white van with a girl identified as A and a man in it. Since the license plate number was also presumed to be on the video, it was thought that an arrest might be imminent, but “investigators strongly denied that the white van was the vehicle used for the crime,” according to a commercial TV reporter. Hopes for an early resolution of the case were dimmed.

There was also information about a black sedan. According to a woman who witnessed the incident, when she approached A and her friend in the parking lot in November, they told her they were meeting “a brother with beautiful eyes who always comes in a black car. In addition, there was one car that floated up on the line of investigation.

He said, “From the sightings, the police were able to identify one car. It was a white one-box car, and the car’s features led them to its owner, a single man in his mid-30s. The man is said to live with his parents in the vicinity of Imaichi City,” said a reporter from a national newspaper.

This white one-box car had been seen in the vicinity of the site where A-chan went missing for several days prior to the incident. A similar white car was also seen near the scene on the same day. Furthermore, in the early morning of December 2, when the body was found, a white one-box car was seen driving unusually slowly near the site where the body was found.

The police are questioning the man voluntarily, but he denies the crime. The police have asked the man about his whereabouts, but he denies committing the crime. He says he was in the vicinity of the crime scene on business, but not on the day of the incident.

The man’s work takes him all over the prefecture by car, and he is familiar with road conditions, so the police are interested in investigating him,” said a reporter for a national newspaper.

It seemed like it was only a matter of time before the ruthless murderer who took the life of baby A was caught. ……

Killer claims “I didn’t kill him”.

The investigation was difficult. Immediately after the incident, many reports of suspicious persons were received, but in the end none of them were conclusive. The “white one-box car” mentioned in the article in this magazine did not seem to have anything to do with the case. The investigation was stalled largely because of the lack of items found at the scene. There was also a mistake in that the DNA found on the body that was thought to belong to the murderer was actually that of an investigator at the scene of the crime.

In June ’14, the police arrested an unemployed man, X (then 32), who had been arrested on suspicion of violating the Trademark Law by selling copies of famous brands, as the murderer in the case. During the investigation, he had hinted at the murder of baby A. During the interrogation, X was arrested and charged with the murder of baby A.

X confessed to the murder during the interrogation, but at the trial that began in February 2004, he changed his stance and pleaded not guilty , saying that he did not kill A. At the trial, the court found the confession credible. The credibility of his confession was disputed at the trial.

In fact, X’s name had already come up in the investigation as early as 2006. The reason was that X owned a suspicious “white sedan” that was reported in eyewitness information, and that he had once attended the same elementary school as A. However, there was no conclusive evidence, and he was merely one of the “suspicious persons” in the investigation. However, in ’13, X’s father-in-law provided the police with information that “X was living a reclusive life” and “seemed to be collecting knives, ” which brought X back to the forefront of the investigation.

The police began a reconnaissance investigation of X. At the same time, he and his mother, who ran an antique business, were arrested on suspicion of violating the Trademark Law. The defense pointed out that this was an illegal interrogation based on a separate arrest. They argued that his confession was not voluntary because he was held in custody for 123 days, an unreasonably long period of time before he confessed. None of the evidence presented by the prosecution was conclusive, and there were inconsistencies between X’s confession and the condition of A’s body.

However, the court found the confession credible and sentenced X to life imprisonment as requested. The defense appealed, but the decision was not overturned by the high court or the Supreme Court. In March 2010, the sentence became final.

Even after his sentence was finalized, there were still many voices pointing out that X was falsely convicted. Supporters and family members are working to request a retrial.

If X was falsely convicted, where and what is the murderer doing?