“The killer stayed in the house for hours, eating their [the Setagaya family’s] food, logging into the family computer and sleeping on their couch. It’s so creepy because rarely does a killer stick around for hours after they commit their crime making themselves at home.”
Both the Japanese and the global public have taken notice of the senseless murder of a family of four in the Setagaya area of Tokyo in 2000, with many articles and podcast episodes devoted to this tragedy. The Miyazawa family, who resided in the Tokyo suburb of Setagaya at the turn of the century, appeared to be a fairly average middle-class family. However, following a peaceful New Year's Eve celebration, their deaths were found by nearby relatives, raising a tragic mystery that has persisted to this day.
In 1991, the Miyazaki family moved to Kamisoshigaya Street, which at the time had approximately 200 residential buildings distributed around it. The family of four, which included the father Miyazawa Mikio (44), an office worker, his wife Yasuko (41), a home tutor, his daughter Niina (9) and son Rei (6), resided in a small, cramped home. Like their neighbours, both families had already sold a portion of their land to the city and had plans to leave Kamisoshigaya in the future. Yasuko, however, was hesitant. Given that her youngest child, Rei, had a developmental disability, she was concerned about her kids adjusting to a new environment.
They were never able to move in the end. The peaceful existence of the Miyazawa family abruptly ended on the evening of December 30.
Yasuko's father-in-law recalls that on that particular day, December 25th, 2000, less than a week before the killings, his excitement over Christmas was overshadowed by repeated sightings of an automobile he didn't recognize parked in front of the duplex.
On December 27, according to eyewitnesses, one person walked around the property inspecting the building while pretending to be a bystander. It's unclear if the pedestrian and the parked automobile were random coincidences or the result of days of planning.
Two days later, on the 29th, numerous witnesses reported seeing a man near Seijogakuenmae Station, a short distance from the Miyazawa residence. The sashimi knife used as the initial weapon was bought that day with cash at a nearby grocery store, according to the authorities. The next day, there were reports of a man with a similar appearance at Sengawa Station, which was even nearer to the duplex where the murders were committed.
The family went shopping that evening, on the 30th. Although they apparently made a safe return, neighbours indicate that the automobile was absent from their driveway for a couple of hours. The call not coming through the following morning seemed all the more strange to Yasuko because she had just spoken on the phone to her mother who lived next door. From about 9:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Niina joined the family in the adjacent apartment to watch television. Everything appeared to be going normal, but the last time anyone saw any of the four family members alive was when Niina left.
The Miyazawa family's final known action is the reading of an accessible email at about 10:38 that evening. It was Mikio reading a password-protected email from his employer, thus he was probably the one who opened it.
A witness heard what sounded like an argument inside the Miyazawa house that evening at around ten o'clock while walking along the park trail behind the home. They couldn't recall any particularly ear-shattering shouts or loud physical noises, but they claimed it simply sounded like a couple arguing.
A neighbour of Yasuko's family would notice a loud banging sound coming from the Miyazawa side of the building around an hour and a half later. They didn't know the precise time, but they were able to estimate it later using the current television programming schedule, at around 11:30.
This happened at the same time that a witness or possibly a neighbour reported seeing a man rushing along the sidewalk near the family's home.
Around ten in the morning the following day, Yasuko's mother, the wife, arrived next door after noticing calls to the next unit abruptly failed to connect. Despite living close by, the two frequently spoke on the phone. She found her son-in-law Mikio lying at the bottom of the staircase close to the front entrance when she opened the door, though. Her daughter, son-in-law, grandson, and granddaughter were all already dead, much to her horror.
Mikio was stabbed to death at the bottom of the stairway leading to the second storey, having been stabbed numerous times. In the second story, Yasuko and her daughter, Niina, had been cruelly stabbed hundreds of times, greatly exceeding the level of suffering that Mikio's body had endured. Rei, the six-year-old son, was still in bed but had been strangled to death, which led detectives to believe that he was the first victim.
Inexplicably, the offender clearly and conspicuously lingered in the Miyazawa home for a while: he consumed several single-serve ice cream cups along with melon and some tea, he rested and left stains on the living room couch, and he even left a large serving of faeces in the family toilet without even bothering to flush. What is certain is that the perpetrator was there at Miyazawa's home at about one in the morning. He used Mikio's computer to access the Internet at 1:18 in the morning. His later whereabouts are unknown to us.
Because the computer connected to the Internet a second time around 10 am, the public was led to assume for years that the criminal escaped in the morning.
Even with all of the evidence at the site, the brutal murder has not been solved after more than 20 years, and the precise motives are still unknown. Many theorists have attempted to assign potential motives. For instance, the government was slowly repurchasing the entire area in order to turn it into more parkland. Although they were supposed to leave in March, the Miyazawas were among the last to depart. Although relating in such a way seems extreme, it is possible that Mikio got into an argument with the skaters and bikers. Even premeditated murders occasionally occur at random. We might never understand why.
