<figure id="attachment_467833" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-467833" style="width: 2580px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="9a4f3ec4"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/05/81bb46b6788b527b65f2c0ee855b2395.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-467833" class="wp-caption-text">The backyard of O&#8217;s room where his head was buried. He had planted komatsuna and other vegetables in this vegetable garden (from the May 24, &#8217;96 issue).</figcaption></figure>
<h3><span class="strongInContent"> Arrested for assaulting a 5-year-old girl</span></h3>
<p> What did &#8220;FRIDAY&#8221; report 10, 20, or 30 years ago? In &#8220;Playback Friday,&#8221; we revisit topics that were popular at the time. In this issue, we take a look at the May 24, 1996 issue, which was published 30 years ago, in which <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;O,&#8221; from falsely accused to suspect, showed his &#8220;true face&#8221; at a barbecue party next to a garden where a woman&#8217;s head was unearthed</span> (names are kept anonymous).</p>
<p> O (59 at the time) was arrested on April 26, 1996 for kidnapping and assaulting a 5-year-old girl in Adachi Ward, Tokyo, on charges including kidnapping for indecent purposes and attempted murder. He was once reported in the media as the perpetrator of the &#8220;Metropolitan Area Serial Murder of Women. He was arrested in the same year as the perpetrator of the &#8220;Matsudo Office Lady Murder&#8221; that took place in July 1974, one of a series of incidents. Although he was once sentenced to life imprisonment, he was acquitted at a second trial in April 1991 and was hailed as a &#8220;hero of false accusations.</p>
<p> However, even before his arrest in the case of the girl, the police had been pursuing him as a material witness in a certain case (the descriptions in parentheses are quoted from past articles, and the titles are those of the time).</p>
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<p> The case was the discovery of a woman&#8217;s headless body in a parking lot in Adachi Ward in January 1996. The body, wrapped in a futon, had not only been burned and decapitated, but also had had its pubic area cut off. The police had suspected him from the beginning because they had information that <span class="strongInContent">the woman with whom O had been living had not been seen recently,</span> but they had no conclusive evidence.</p>
<p> However, when the DNA of O, who had been arrested for kidnapping and assaulting a young girl, matched the DNA found on the futon that had wrapped the body, they decided to search the house. As a result, decisive evidence was discovered.</p>
<p> [ <span class="strongInContent">Suddenly, one police dog barked violently and began raking the soil in the vegetable garden in the backyard of the room. The investigators moved the dog away and carefully dug up the soil with a shovel. Eventually, they put the &#8220;stuff&#8221; they had dug up into a translucent bag, packed it in a cardboard box, and took it away, around 3:00 p.m. on May 1. The next day, a police tent was set up at the site and it was reported that &#8220;a human head and a saw were found.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I helped him sow eggplant seeds in his vegetable garden two weeks ago, and he panicked and stopped me, saying, &#8216;Amateurs shouldn&#8217;t dig without permission. That&#8217;s right. It would have been a disaster if the head had come out,&#8221; said a neighbor who was close to him.</span></p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The &quot;real face&quot; he showed at a barbecue party"></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">A woman who frequented the room</span></h3>
<p> O, who became a &#8220;falsely accused hero,&#8221; lived in this metropolitan housing after his release. However, he was imprisoned for two years for theft, and after his release in 1995, he worked for a cleaning company nearby. The article at the time reported the following about his lifestyle.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> When I attended the annual barbecue party at the apartment complex in early August for the first time last year,&#8221; the article said, &#8220;I found that the residents around me were laughing in a friendly atmosphere,</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> While the other residents around him were chatting and laughing peacefully, Mr. O was drinking beer by himself. Only during karaoke, he went out of his way to sing about three songs in a pleasant manner.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Mr. O&#8217;s &#8220;female relations&#8221; seemed to be relatively flamboyant.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He would see a flyer in the mailbox and call up a woman for sex, apparently for 40,000 yen a time, two or three times a month, and he once asked me if I would call her for him. He had been single for a long time and must have been lonely.</span></p>
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<p> The identity of the woman found burned to death and whether the burned body and the head found were the same person were not clear at the time this article was published. However, from notes and other information found in O&#8217;s room, it was believed that a woman (41 at the time) from Ibaraki Prefecture, his hometown, might be the victim, and there were reports that the police had already visited the woman&#8217;s parents&#8217; home.</p>
<p> Although it was unclear whether this woman was the victim or not, this magazine covered an eyewitness account of a woman who frequently went in and out of O&#8217;s room.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> She was a petite person of about 40 to 50 years old, slightly dark-skinned, and had a permed haircut with gray hair. She always wore a light pink apron and sandals, so I thought she was someone who would eventually get married.&#8221; (An acquaintance of O&#8217;s who lived in the next building)</span></p>
<p> The head found and the woman from Ibaraki Prefecture. It was highly likely that these would eventually be connected by a single thread to the burnt corpse.</p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Was he really &quot;not guilty&quot; in past cases?"></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">He confessed to the crime.</span></h3>
<p> O confessed to the murder of a woman who lived with him.</p>
<p> Around January 5, 1996, they argued over their dissatisfaction with her attitude toward life, and she killed him by hitting him on the head with a baseball bat in his room. On the following day, January 6, he carried her body in a rear car to a parking lot in Adachi Ward, burned it with garbage, cut off the head, took it home, and buried it in his vegetable garden. He revealed the reason for cutting off the head as follows.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;I wanted to return the bones to my parents&#8217; house. I burned the body, but it was not reduced to bones, so I took it home to make a memorial service and return the skull to my parents&#8217; house when I had the chance.</span></p>
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<p> On the other hand, regarding the Matsudo case, in which he was acquitted, he <span class="strongInContent">said, &#8220;I never did it.</span></p>
<p> The &#8220;Metropolitan Area Serial Murder of Women,&#8221; which caused a furore in 1974 over whether O was the culprit, was a series of assaults and murders of women that occurred from 1968 to 1974 in Adachi Ward, Katsushika Ward, and the cities of Homecoming, Matsudo, and Soka. The similarity of the methods used by the perpetrators, such as the fact that most of the victims were in their 20s, many of the perpetrators had type O blood, and many of the victims were burned to death, led many to believe at the time that the same perpetrator was responsible, but it is doubtful that this was really the case. In fact, a different perpetrator was arrested in the Katsushika case.</p>
<p> At the time, O had previous convictions for theft, fraud, breaking and entering, and assault, and had served a total of 13 years in prison. He also had a history of breaking into an apartment in Tokyo and attempting to assault a woman, had the same blood type as a serial killer, and was knowledgeable about the geography of Adachi Ward and Matsudo City. When O was arrested for the Matsudo incident, it was falsely reported that a &#8220;serial killer&#8221; had been arrested.</p>
<p> Again, O appealed to human rights groups, <span class="strongInContent">saying that he had never killed anyone</span>, and a support group was formed. Since the case lacked physical evidence, the defense adopted a strategy of undermining the credibility of the confession. As a result, the second trial resulted in a not-guilty verdict because of the coerced confession by the investigative authorities.</p>
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<p> In March 1998, O was sentenced to life imprisonment for the &#8220;attempted kidnapping and murder of a young girl&#8221; and the &#8220;headless murder in Adachi-ku, Tokyo,&#8221; on the grounds that &#8220;the crime was bizarre, gruesome, and gruesome, and the motive had nothing to do with the crime.</p>
<p> The case of Matsudo was also left in great doubt for posterity. &#8230;&#8230;</p>
<figure id="attachment_467835" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-467835" style="width: 2905px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="3d129d2a"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/05/15f2f1e19ef34e16a706c5cbfa4105f4.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-467835" class="wp-caption-text"> A barbecue party held in August 1995 in the building where O lived. The party was held right next to the &#8220;crime scene&#8221; (from the May 24, 1996 issue).</figcaption></figure>


 Hiroaki Fujiuchi (1st photo)

 In this issue of Playback, we take a look back at what we reported 10, 20, and 30 years ago. This time, we look back at the "Adachi Headless Murder" of 1996. The man arrested was a man who was acquitted of a murder case that once attracted the attention of the whole country.

Playback &#8217;96] A human head was found in a backyard&#8230; The &#8220;true face&#8221; of the fallen &#8220;false accusation hero&#8221; was shown to his neighbors.

Playback ’96] A human head was found in a backyard… The “true face” of the fallen “false accusation hero” was shown to his neighbors.

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