The Horrific Japanese Serial Murders of Cannibal Tsutomu Miyazaki

Strangled the life from her tiny body

Mari Konno, 4 left her home in the Iruma Village apartments around 3:30pm on August 22, 1998.  "Wouldn't you like to go somewhere where it's cool?" asked a man walking by grabbing Mari by the hand as she skipped along besides him to his Nissan Langley. The man who abducted Mari was Tsutomu Miyazaki, a 26-year-old painters assistant.

As the two drove closer to the Musashino Bridge on National Highway No. 16 in western Tokyo Miyazaki veered right towards Itsukaichi. On an isolated dirt road near the Shintama power station Mari and Tsutomu Miyazaki exited the car and walked down a local hiking trail. Mari Konno started to sniffle and cry as Miyazaki put his hands around her neck and squeezed the life out of her tiny body. Only when Mari Konno was dead did he undress her and fondled her and taking her clothes he exited the forest. This was the first murder according to Tsutomu Mikyazaki.

Police arrest Tsutomu Mikyazaki, The Otaku Murderer

Mikyazaki murdered 4 small girls before police finally arrested him. Upon searching his aparment they discovered over 6,000 videotapes of child porn, slasher films, and Hentai (Japannesee cartoon porn) stacked to the ceiling.

However the oddities of this serial murderer were just beginning to draw the public's attention.

Born the monster

Tsutomu Miyazaki was prematurely born to Katsumi and Rieko Miyazaki in Itsukaichi, Tokyo on August 21, 1962 weighing only 4.8 pounds. A rare birth defect caused Miyazaki's joints to be fused together, deforming his hands and not allowing him to bend his wrists upwards. This deformaty severly hurt any chance for him to live a normal life and after being bullied constantly, Miyazaki became ostrascised from his classmates and even his own family. Growing up in constant isolation the boy began to lose his thoughts in comic books, a nice distraction from the constant bullying.

Sadly, deformed hands were not the only phsyical problem he faced. A former classmate of Miyazaki once stated, "His penis is no thicker than a pencil and no longer than a toothpick." To make matters much worse, doctors found that the boy had an abnormal hyper sex drive, but no woman wanted him.

Despite his bad luck, Tsutomu was a clever child who excelled at his studies. However, his dream to major in English and become a teacher were thwarted when he failed to receive a university recommendation. Tsutomu had let his grades slip his final two years and ended up ranked 40th in a class of 56; he blamed his handicap for his failures.

Miyazaki became a photo technician and went to work at a printing plant owned by a family friend, an easy connection since his father owned a newspaper operation, the Akikawa Shimbun, at the time. Miyazaki moved back into his family home where he was again tormented by his younger sisters Setsuko and Haruko. Around this time the constant thought of suicide played out in Miyazaki's mind and after his capture he told the press, "If I tried to talk to my parents about my problems, they'd just brush me off. I've even thougth about suicide."

The pervert

Being ostrasiced his peers, both male and female, Miyazaki had to resort to other alternatives to gain human connection. He began visiting local tennis courts, focusing his camcorder at the girls underwear so he could watch them later while masturbating. Tsutomu became obsessed with pornography, but quickly tired of the adult niches and eventually found his real passion in kiddie porn. Japannese obscenity laws prohibits much of it's pornogrphy and he onced compalined that, "They black out the most important part."

"I felt alone and whenver I saw a little girl playing on her own, it was almost like seeing myself."

Grandfather

Many serial killers start (or increase) their crimes when they are presented with life stressors and Miyazaki is no different. His trigger seems to have been the death of his grandfather, the only one who treated Miyazaki with any respect and did not seem repulsed by his prescense. The death of his grandfather was sudden and happened in May 1998 and Miyazaki was so delusioned about his passing that he at some of the cremated bones and ashes. Some theiroes and Japanesse lore suggest that he wanted to reincarnate his grandfather and the only way was consuming some of his body after death.

"There are devils about"

Several days after Mari Konno disappears her mother receives an annomous postcard in the mail that reads, "There are devils about." This note was from Tsutomu.

Police spent weeks searching for the girl, which they immediately deemed an abduction and homiicde. Over 50,000 missing posters which included Mari's photo were passed out to local residents and shops. Police even drove around local neighborhoods with a loud speaker warning families to not let their children wander the streets unaccompanied.

The families of all four victims would subsequentially recieve random phone calls from Miyazaki. He would remain silent and breathing into the phone for several minutes before hanging up.

Masami Yoshizawa

On the afternoon of October 3, 1988, 7-year-ol Masami Yoshizawa was walking home from her first grade class when she was abducted. Miyazaki roused her into his car and drove along the thills above Komine Pass before strangling the child to death. Once the life was squeezed out he stripped her and raped her corpse. He was less than 100 meters away from the bones of Mari Konno. Miyazaki rushed off after the body of the girl. convulsed spontaneously.

Erika Namba was the next victim to die by this killers deformed hands. She was lured into the Nissan, forced to undressed, and forced to pose for several photographs in the backseat. By 7pm Namba was dead, strangled to death in the backseat. Miyazaki wrapped Namba's body in a bed sheet and put her corpse in the trunk of his car before driving off. However, was almost caught when his car tire became stuck in a gutter instantly halting the moving car. Paniking, he popped the truck, retrieved the body and dumped it in the nearby forest only to return to the presense of 2 good samartians willing to help him get his car unstuck.

Bones in the mail

The body of Erika Namba was found within several days after her abduction, 50km from her home, her hands and feet bound with nylon cord. Shin'ichi Namba, recieved a postcard in the mail with cutout characters spelling out the words "Erika. Cold. Cough. Throat. Rest. Death."

Furthermore, on February 6, Shigeo Konno, Mari's father discovered a box on his doorstep taht contained ahes, dirt, fragments of bones (his daughters), 10 baby teeth, photos of underwear, photos of sandals, and a sheet of paper reading, "Mari. Bones. Creamated. Investigate. Prove." As police will later find out, Tsutomu has been returning to the rotting corpse of the child for several months almost as a place of solace. The box did not contain the hands or feet of Mari Konno.

On February 11 a letter entitled "Crime Confession" was sent to Mari's mother that read, "I put the cardboard box with Mari's remains in it in front of her home," it began. "I did everything. From the start of the Mari incident to the finish. I saw the police press conference where they said the remains were not Mari's. On camera, her mother said the report gave her new hope that Mari might still be alive. I knew then that I had to write this confession so Mari's mother would not continue to hope in vain. I say again: the remains are Mari's."

The letter and postcards were typed from a phototypesetter, the photos were taken with a Mamiya 6x7 camera, and the box was doubled walled similar to ones used to ship camera lenses, all of these were linking back to Miyazaki as he worked at a printing company as a photographer at the time.

At Mari's funeral the father told news reporters that, "When she gets to heaven, she won't be able to walk or eat, please return the rest of her remains."

Another letter arrived to the family which read, "Before I knew it, the child's corpse had gone rigid. I wanted to cross her hands over her breast but they wouldn't budge. Pretty soon, the body gets red spots all over it .  Big red spots. Like the Hinomaru flag. Or like you'd covered her whole body with red hanko_seals. After a while, the body is covered with stretch marks. It was so rigid before, but now it feels like its full of water. And it smells. How it smells. Like nothing you've ever smelled in this whole wide world."

The final victim

On June 6 Miyazaki leaves for the tennis courts, but they were all closed. He was now restless and needed satisfaction and found an oppurtunity with Ayako Nomoto, 5-years-old playing alone. Pulling out his camera he approached the child offering to take beautiful pictures of her. After a few shots he led her away to his sedan so he could take more candid photos of Ayako bouncing around in the backseat. The young girl finally noticed the deformity of Miyazaki's hands and recoiled in horror. This angered him enough to put his hands around her neck. He would later tell reporters that, "She kicked and kicked, but went limp in four or five minutes." After assuring that Ayako was dead he bound her hands and feet and put her in the trunk of his car.

With the tiny body in his trunk Tsutomu stops in the nearby town of Koenji to rent a camera before carrying the girl to his two-room bungalow. He strips the corpse, wiped off her body with a towel, spread her legs and using tapes Ayako's vagina open. The photos he took turned him on and he proceeded to masturbate on his victim's corpse.

Two days after her murder, the smell of the girl's corpse became unbareably inside his apartment. Using a saw he began dismembering the body starting with Ayako's head. Tsutomu removed the girl's hands and feet (to avoid identification), at some of the victims flesh, and tossed the torso near a public toilet located by Miyazawa-ko. The girl's skull was tossed down a ravine in front of his home.

A citizen brings down The Little Girl Murderer

On Sunday, July 23, 1989 two sisters were playing in Hachioji when Tsutomu led one of them to a nearby river. Fortunately the other sister did not heed his request not to move quickly running home to get her father. The father returns to see his daughter naked, her legs spread open and Tsutomu taking close up photos of her vagina. Tsutomu escaped the father although he was struck badly, however he left his car there and once returning hours later was apprehended by police.

On September 6, the bones of Mari Konno's hands and feet were discovered where he left them. Finally her father's plea for her daughter's killer to return her hands and feet so she can walk and eat in heaven were fulfilled.

Ultimatley Tsutomu Miyazaki was deemed sane enough to know right from wrong and receieve the death penalty which was carried out on June 17, 2008. Miyazaki also confessed to killing animals, which just added to his sadistic personality stating, "I've killed cats, threw on in the river and did another in with boiling water." Miyazaki claimed that his victims meant no more to him than "characters from his comic-book life."