<figure id="attachment_464959" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-464959" style="width: 1088px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="b750a087"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/77c4191add493dd38816f2073f2183ea.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-464959" class="wp-caption-text">The apartment building where the crime took place. Nine days after a third-grade boy fell to his death, a woman was almost thrown down by a man (from the April 21, &#8217;06 issue).</figcaption></figure>
<h3><span class="strongInContent"> They targeted only women, children, and other vulnerable people.</span></h3>
<p> What was &#8220;FRIDAY&#8221; reporting 10, 20, or 30 years ago? In &#8220;Playback Friday,&#8221; we revisit the topics that were hot at the time. In this issue, we take a look at the April 21, 2004 issue, which was published 20 years ago, and <span class="strongInContent">discuss &#8220;Why did a father who cared for his children turn into a demon?</span></p>
<p> On April 1, 2006, Kanagawa Prefectural Police arrested unemployed Koichi Sugiura (pseudonym, 41 at the time) on suspicion of attempted murder and breaking and entering, for allegedly attempting to throw a female cleaning worker, 68, off the 15th floor of a 15-story apartment building in Tama-ku, Kawasaki City on March 29.</p>
<p> Nine days earlier, at around 0:50 a.m. on March 20, a third grader, A (9), who lived in this condominium, had fallen to his death from the same 15th floor. As there were no fingerprints of A on the railing, the police were investigating the case as a case of being thrown down, and Sugiura, who saw the security camera footage released in the incident on the 29th, turned himself in to the Tama Police Station. Sugiura also admitted to having murdered Mr. A. (Descriptions in parentheses are quotations from past articles, and titles are those of the time).</p>
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<p> Sugiura entered the apartment around 9:00 in the morning of the 29th. When he reached the 15th floor, he knocked her down, picked her up, and tried to throw her down, but she resisted and fled. The video released to the public shows Sugiura fleeing the scene.</p>
<p> In response to police questioning, Sugiura said <span class="strongInContent">, &#8220;I thought I would die if I dropped her from the highest point.</span> He had never met Mr. <span class="strongInContent">A</span> or the female janitor.</p>
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<p> The crime could have been a random serial murder case, targeting only vulnerable people such as women and children. What kind of person was this man who committed such a heinous act? When this magazine interviewed the people around him, a surprising &#8220;true face&#8221; emerged.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He was a very affable and energetic person, jumping rope in a T-shirt and walking with his wife,&#8221; said a housewife in the neighborhood.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He also wrote a column for the e-mail magazine of the curtain retailer where he worked as a manager until last year. She wrote of her enthusiasm for her work, &#8220;I am happiest when I see the moment of joy on a customer&#8217;s face when I am selling curtains. In the newsletter, he also wrote that he was concerned about his daughter&#8217;s body after her accident and that he &#8220;loves to play with children&#8221; when he sees them visiting the store.</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Her demeanor had clearly changed."></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">He suddenly said he was quitting.&#8221;</span></h3>
<p> However, around 2003, Sugiura had a string of bad luck. There was a fire at his wife&#8217;s parents&#8217; house, his father became bedridden due to a stroke, and his eldest daughter was hospitalized in a car accident. The fact that he had taken out a 35 million yen mortgage on his house during this period may have also had an impact. Perhaps because of the accumulated emotional burdens, Sugiura&#8217;s condition clearly changed around 2004. In an article written at the time, the president of his former employer testified as follows.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> 《&#8221;He consulted me that he couldn&#8217;t sleep and decided to go to the hospital.&#8221; Around 2004, I started having trouble with my work. I would come to the office every morning, but when the female staff came to work, they would immediately go off somewhere. They just wander around, pretending to be making sales rounds. In the daily reports, they would sometimes write false sales records or even the scheduled date of payment from suppliers. When the company began to see this as a problem, he suddenly announced last August that he was quitting.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The president tried several times to console him, but Sugiura&#8217;s will remained firm, and on August 20, 2005, he wrote, &#8220;Dear President XX, thank you for your hard work. Thank you for all the help you have given me during this short period of time. And he did so without consulting his wife.</span></p>
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<p> Two months after resigning in September, Sugiura was hospitalized for depression, and although he was discharged from the hospital on March 8, he committed the murder less than two weeks later. At the time, this magazine interviewed the hospital, but they made no comment.</p>
<p> Sugiura&#8217;s words and actions during the interrogation were firm, and the prefectural police determined that he had the capacity to take responsibility. At this stage, there was no plan to conduct a psychiatric evaluation. However, there was still something puzzling about Sugiura&#8217;s behavior. The article at the time pointed out the following</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> 《&#8221;Sugiura sent himself an e-mail of resignation at his own request, but made a contradictory statement that he had been &#8220;restructured (by the company). Also, while his repeated visits to the apartment building to look for the attacker and his avoidance of the superintendent&#8217;s office when he fled suggest a premeditated plan, he repeatedly committed the crime in the same apartment building despite the strong fear of being noticed by the residents. The motive for the crime is still unclear,&#8221; said a reporter from the Social Affairs Department.</span></p>
<p> What was the reason why a father who loves his daughter turned into a &#8220;devil&#8221; who threw down a helpless elementary school student?</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The verdict is..."></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">Can he be held criminally responsible?</span></h3>
<p> Subsequent investigations revealed that Sugiura had attempted to commit suicide by jumping to his death at the apartment building where the incident took place. In October 2005, the month after he left the company, he went to the 15th floor of the condominium and tried to jump off, but <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;when I looked down from the passageway, I got scared and stopped,&#8221; he</span> stated.</p>
<p> It was also revealed that shortly after the attempted murder on March 29, he had also tried to throw down a fourth-grade boy in a 13-story apartment building in Asao Ward, Kawasaki City, and was re-arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and other charges.</p>
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<p> Sugiura&#8217;s trial on the charges of murder and other crimes was held at the Yokohama District Court from July 21, 2006. In his opening statement, the prosecution described the motive for the crime as follows.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He thought that he could kill them without getting his hands dirty with blood if he dropped them from a high-rise apartment building.</span></p>
<p> According to the indictment, Sugiura made Yuki remove his school bag from the elevator as he came down the 15th floor corridor of the apartment building where the crime took place by lying to him <span class="strongInContent">that there was a cockroach in his school bag</span>, and then he put his hands on his shoulders and threw him 40 meters down into a planted area.</p>
<p> Sugiura admitted the crime <span class="strongInContent">, saying, &#8220;There&#8217;s no doubt about it,&#8221;</span> but the trial court disputed Sugiura&#8217;s culpability.</p>
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<p> At the sentencing hearing on March 6, 2009, Sugiura was sentenced <span class="strongInContent">to &#8220;life imprisonment.</span></p>
<p> The judge stated that Sugiura <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;</span><span class="strongInContent">committed the crimes in order to destroy a family that seemed happy compared to his own circumstances, and that he felt a desire to relive the sense of accomplishment he had felt at the time of the</span> crimes. It is <span class="strongInContent">clear that each of the crimes was a crime that caused great anxiety in society, and the criminal responsibility is extremely grave,&#8221;</span> he pointed out.</p>
<p> He also rejected the defense&#8217;s argument regarding the results of the psychiatric evaluation conducted during the trial, stating, <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;It must be said that the defendant&#8217;s personality and the circumstances in which he was driven financially and at home had a considerable influence on the crimes, and that the influence of his illness was not so great.</span></p>
<p> After the verdict was handed down, Sugiura was admonished by the presiding judge <span class="strongInContent">to lead his future life while praying for the repose of his soul</span>, to which he <span class="strongInContent">replied &#8220;Yes&#8221;</span> in a voice that seemed to fade away.</p>
<p> The defense appealed, but Sugiura withdrew his appeal on April 21, and his sentence became final. He then filed a request to restore his right to appeal and appealed, but the high court turned this down.</p>

<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The &quot;horrified face&quot; of the man who threw a child down from the 15th floor."></div>
<figure id="attachment_464961" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-464961" style="width: 3719px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="1303081d"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/8573fa2ab8616736bb7015d87edd22f9.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-464961" class="wp-caption-text">Sugiura (pseudonym) was sent to the police on April 2, 2006. When he returned to the Tama Police Station in heavy rain, his eyes were vacant (from the April 21, &#8217;06 issue).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_464962" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-464962" style="width: 1246px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="d3424d4f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/6fa4a24432947ac32f9327045d4bda57.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-464962" class="wp-caption-text"> A female janitor was attacked by a security camera on the day of the attack. The police published it on their website (from the April 21, 2006 issue).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_464963" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-464963" style="width: 1290px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="ae04632f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/04/13b6b6193ba19af0b231fc3bee9bfdc6.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-464963" class="wp-caption-text"> The same security camera footage. The image is so grainy that it is difficult to distinguish her from the attacker, but Sugiura (pseudonym) turned herself in because she thought she could not escape (from the April 21, &#8217;06 issue).</figcaption></figure>


 Takahiro Kagawa (1st), Mihiro Kikuchi (2nd)

 In this issue of Playback, we look back at what this magazine reported 10, 20, and 30 years ago. In March 2006, a man threw a third-grade boy to the ground in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. The man who committed the crime was once a caring father with a good job. ......

Playback &#8217;06] A father who threw a third-grade boy down from the 15th floor&#8230; The reason why &#8220;a father who cares for his children&#8221; has changed.

Playback ’06] A father who threw a third-grade boy down from the 15th floor… The reason why “a father who cares for his children” has changed.

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