Featured Image Credit: Tokyo Metro Police
Topics: True crime
Gregory Robinson
The mysterious ‘Goldilocks’ killings of a Japanese family remains unsolved 22 years later.
Known as the Setagaya family murder after the Tokyo neighbourhood where it happened, the victims are a married couple and their young children.
At some point after 11 p.m. on 30 December 2000, the Miyazawa family were brutally stabbed murdered by an intruder in their home.
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Mikio Miyazawa, 44, who worked for a British marketing company and his wife, Yasuko, a 41-year-old tutor along with their eight-year-old daughter, Niina, were stabbed and their six-year-old son, Rei, was strangled.
Part of the sashimi knife the killer used was found in Mikio’s head. The killer then decided to use one of the knives from the kitchen to murder Yasuko and Niina.
Yasuko’s mother made the gruesome discovery of their bodies on the morning of New Year’s Eve. She lived next door and travelled the short distance to their house when she was unable to reach her daughter.
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The case became known as the ‘Goldilocks murder’ because of the suspect’s unusual behaviour and evidence he left behind after killing the family.
Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department believes the murderer raided the family’s kitchen and ate four small containers of ice cream and drank bottles of barley tea.
In the English fairy tale about a girl who enters the home of three bears uninvited, she eats their porridge and lounges around the home while they’re away.
The killer used the family’s computer, defecated in their toilet without flushing and ransacked their belongings
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Tokyo Police also left behind articles of clothing including: a grey bucket hat, a unique white and purple baseball shirt that was drenched in at least one victim’s blood, a plaid scarf, a jacket, black gloves, two black handkerchief and a grey and black fanny pack.
He also left behind his faces, fingerprints, shoe prints and blood from when he treated his own wounds using a first aid kit and sanitary napkins in the home.
Detectives established that the killer wore size 11 white running shoes at the crime scene based on a footprint found there, Japan Times reports.
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The killer is believed to be five feet six inches tall, with Type A blood, right-handed and had a slender build at the time. He was between 15 and 35 years old and was likely not a Japanese citizen.
The reason for the latter is because his DNA suggests he has Asian ancestry from his father with a marker more common in Korean and Chinese people and European DNA from his mother, This Week in Asia reports.
His shoes were not sold in Japan, his fingerprints were not a match on any Japanese driver’s licenses, passports or other government documents.
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Investigators and true crime fans online have tried to establish a possible motive with no luck.
Some of the suggestions include money/robbery to retaliation after Mikio’s allegedly complained about the noise made by skateboarders near his house.
A reward of 20 million yen (£126,085.17) – the largest in Japanese history for information leading to the arrest of a suspect.
Japan abolished its statute of limitations for murder in 2010, meaning the killer can be prosecuted when he is found.