Killers In Our Midst

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?

Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home in auto policies.

Try it at progressive.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary.

Not available in all states.

Story 1.

The Mysterious Setagaya Murders.

In December of 2000, an entire family was murdered inside their home address in western Tokyo.

Despite leaving numerous clues behind at the crime scene, the killer has never been identified, with the police investigation continuing to this day.

This week, we look into the harrowing case of the Setagaya murders.

Martha listens to her favorite band all the time.

In the car,

gym,

even sleeping.

so when they finally went on tour martha bundled her flight and hotel on expedia to see them live she saved so much she got a seat close enough to actually see and hear them

sort of you were made to scream from the front row we were made to quietly save you more expedia made to travel savings vary and subject to availability flight inclusive packages are at all protected Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was queer.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Staring at the crime scene photos which had been laid out on the desk of his dimly lit lit office, Takesishi Tsuchida felt consumed by an overwhelming sense of frustration.

It had been over a week since the elderly lady had discovered the bodies of her family, brutally slaughtered in their own home, and the police investigation thus far still had yet to identify a suspect for the crime.

As chief officer of the Seijo Police Station, Tsuchida had inevitably been entrusted with this high-profile case, along with orders to bring the matter to a quick resolution.

And at first glance, that had seemed a foregone conclusion, with personal belongings and forensic evidence left behind by the offender yielding vital clues, which should have irrefutably uncovered the killer's identity.

But within a short space of time, it had become apparent that the DNA which had been recovered from the crime scene did not relate to any held in the national database, effectively curtailing what should have been the most obvious and effective line of inquiry.

In the absence of this, his investigators had quite naturally fallen back on witness and surveillance evidence, only to come to the realization that there was frustratingly little to go on.

The killer had not been captured on any of the CCTV cameras which surrounded the premises, and what little witness testimony had been uncovered thus far had proven sorely lacking in any useful detail.

Gathering the photographs together and returning them to the case file, he glanced across at the sheet of A4 paper he had intended to use to map out the next stages of the investigation.

Apart from going further afield, beyond Japan's borders to inquire if the DNA evidence matched any records held in neighbouring countries, the page remained dauntingly empty.

A career investigator, Tsuchida had encountered few cases during his service which which had affected him as much as this, given the sheer brutality and horror the attending officers had documented at the scene.

And despite their best efforts to keep the specific details of the murders from escaping into the public domain, the department's reputation was already under sustained attack.

Whilst updating his superiors on the progress of the case, He had noted the concerned glances and weary sighs his remarks had elicited.

He'd also been asked to comment on several newspaper articles accusing his men of incompetency and inefficiency, citing largely historical issues within the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, which had long since been resolved.

Taking up his pen, he stared again at the empty page before him, silently determined that he would find and punish this brutal killer.

No matter what the cost or personal sacrifice, no barrier would stand in his way as he worked to identify the man who had savagely robbed four innocent family members of their lives.

It did not take long for the investigators assigned to the Setagaya killings to piece together a timeline regarding the final hours of the victims, who had spent the 30th of December like so many other families in Tokyo that day, preparing to see out the end of the year together.

During the course of their day, they had gone out shopping before before returning home and making arrangements for the following day's celebrations with relatives over the phone.

After dinner, they had then spent the evening watching television before finally retiring to bed.

The head of the household, 44-year-old Mikio Miyazawa, worked for a marketing company and had periodically logged onto his computer throughout the course of the day to check for and reply to work-related emails.

Whilst he did this, his wife, Yasko, had entertained their two children, eight-year-old Nina and her little brother Ray.

But as the four of them had later been sound asleep in their beds, at approximately 11.30 pm,

a dark figure had slowly emerged from the interior of the park which bordered the rear of their home.

This shadowy form had silently slipped from a group of trees before cautiously scaling another tree which stood in the garden of the address.

He had then reached across and removed a protective screen which covered the second floor bathroom window before hauling himself in through the now insecure opening.

Once inside, the offender had walked into the nearest bedroom where six year old Rey was asleep before strangling the boy to death with his bare hands.

This horrendous act must have caused some level of disturbance, as it immediately brought Mikyo running upstairs from the first floor, where he had been sleeping.

The struggle that took place between Mikyo and his assailant was short and brutal.

The intruder was armed with a traditional Japanese kitchen knife, which he used to repeatedly stab the father of two in the head, so hard that the end of the blade broke off, lodging itself deep inside the victim's skull.

Before he died, Mikyo had successfully managed to inflict some minor injuries on his attacker, but he simply could not survive the strength and brutality of the onslaught he had faced.

As his lifeless body fell backwards down the stairs into a heap, the killer then followed it down to the first floor landing, where he repeatedly hacked and slashed at it with the broken knife.

After concluding this senseless desecration, he then turned and walked back up to the second floor.

Here, he attacked Yasuko and her daughter, inflicting injuries far more savage than those he had inflicted upon the male members of the household, before finally ending their lives using a Sanko knife from the Miyazawa kitchen.

His goal now seemingly complete, the murderer unplugged the phone line, but then elected not to make good his escape.

Instead, For the next few hours, he chose to remain inside the house, carrying out a series of seemingly mundane tasks.

Ignoring the bloodied and battered bodies of his four victims, he had located the family's first aid kit and then treated his injuries.

But he made no effort to clean up the blood he had lost or to hide or conceal the dressings he had used.

He simply left them lying on the floor in plain sight for the authorities to find.

Having cleaned and bandaged his minor cuts, the killer then moved into the family's kitchen, where he made himself a pot of barley tea.

To go with his drink, he removed and ate some melon slices from the fridge, before going on to consume four ice creams from the freezer.

After this, it seems the attacker went for a nap on one of the living room sofas for an hour or two.

He then awoke and logged onto Mikkio's computer for a time, before using one of the toilets and making no effort to flush away the waste he had left behind, and then finally exited the address in the early hours on New Year's Eve.

The police were quick to discover that the family's killer had left the broken murder weapon at the scene, which bore traces of both his blood and that of his victims.

He had also inexplicably left a small bag lying on the floor, which contained highlighter pens and a small quantity of sand.

All of these items were duly recovered and sent for forensic analysis in the hope of identifying the killer.

And whilst along with clothing fibres which were also discovered, they did provide vital clues as to the identity of the murderer, it quickly became clear that the hunt for him would not be an easy one.

The killer's DNA and fingerprints were both identified and analysed.

but did not match anything held within any of Japan's national databases.

What could be ascertained from the analysis is that he was male and of mixed heritage, with one parent likely to have come from southern Europe or the Mediterranean region.

His blood was identified as Type A, and from the nature of the wounds he had caused to his victims, he was believed to be right-handed, of a slim build, and measuring roughly 170cm tall.

Analysis of the force used to commit the murders produced an age range of between 15 and 35 years old, but beyond that, nothing more of a conclusive nature could be confirmed.

Analysis of the fecal matter, which had so carelessly been left behind in the toilet at the crime scene, indicated that at some point during the day, before he had committed the murders, the murderer had consumed a simple meal of string beans and sesame seeds.

It would later be confirmed that both the kitchen knife used to commit the murders and the clothing that the killer had worn had been purchased somewhere in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture, situated over an hour's drive away.

In time, the police were able to confirm that only 130 units of the sweater worn by the murderer had been made and sold, but frustratingly, their inquiries would only lead them to 12 consumers who had purchased these garments.

However, Perhaps the most surprising and intriguing clue as to the attacker's identity would come from detailed analysis of the sand which had been found inside the discarded bag.

Scientists were able to narrow the source of this particulate down to the Nevada Desert in California, more specifically, the area situated around the Edwards Air Force Base.

Since the time of the murders, There have been a number of different hypotheses put forward regarding who could be responsible for the senseless killing of this young and seemingly unassuming family.

These vary somewhat in terms of their viability and credibility, and sadly, the nature of the evidence recovered by the police investigation appears so limited that no single suggestion seems to be any more realistic than the rest.

Perhaps the most prevailing hypothesis suggests that the family fell victim to a stalker or sexual predator.

The apparent discrepancy in the level of injury caused to the female members when compared to that of their male counterparts counterparts has led some psychologists to suggest that the killer likely possessed a pathological hatred of women.

Others have suggested that the extreme violence that was used against the family as a whole is more indicative of a crime of passion.

Potentially, this was a man who was completely obsessed with Yasko Miyazawa, or conceivably an associate of the family who believed they had been wronged or dishonoured by them at some point in the past.

But investigations into known sexual predators and crimes which have occurred since the slayings, as well as inquiries with friends and extended family of the victims, have not produced anything to escalate either of these theories beyond mere speculation.

If the Miyazawa family were perhaps guilty of some past misdemeanour, then it has yet to be uncovered.

Looking outside of the family and its history, Another popular theory is that the killer may have been a migrant or drifter.

The location, like many other houses in Japan, was located a short walk from a transportation hub, causing some to believe that the killer was travelling around the country via its extensive rail network.

This chilling hypothesis is worryingly similar to that of the man from the train, which we have previously covered.

It is believed by some that a man named Paul Mueller was responsible for a series of killings in the southwestern United States at the close of the 1800s, including the infamous Villiscax murders.

He would allegedly travel by train through isolated rural areas in search of casual labour, before breaking into family homes and killing the occupants using their own tools.

Since the 1980s, Japan has seen an influx of immigration from neighbouring Asian countries.

In addition, The country has also developed an issue surrounding drifters.

The 1990s were a time of serious financial instability in Japan, with many workers becoming unemployed or experiencing severe losses.

Some of these people have never fully recovered from this and have elected never to re-engage with the society that they feel so badly failed them.

Rather than someone associated with the Miyazawa family, is it possible that their targeting was instead completely random?

That their house was picked because it was the first one that the killer had encountered as he had left the adjoining park, or that he had seen them out shopping and decided to follow them home on an impulse.

A similar theory involves the presence of the sand recovered from the bag left at the scene, which potentially links him to Edwards Air Force Base.

This has led some commentators to assert that the murderer was one of the 50,000 US military personnel stationed in Japan at the time.

Sadly, American servicemen and contractors have regularly been involved in high-profile crimes in the country, prompting national outrage and a demand for their removal.

Were this to be the case, this theory would also comfortably explain the mixed DNA profile recovered from the killer.

But perhaps the most reaching theories about the murders pertain to the open space situated behind the family home.

There have been suggestions that the Mirzaws had been offered up to 100 million yen to move, so that the authorities could demolish their house along with others in order to expand the park.

There is also a rumor that in the weeks leading up to his death, Mikkyo had been involved in some form of altercation with the gang at the local skateboard park.

Some believe that this may have led to either a biker or street gang murdering him and his family as a result of his disrespect.

At the time of writing, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police are still believed to have a task force of 35 officers assigned to solving the mystery of the Miyazawa family murders.

The investigation has secured over 12,500 different evidential exhibits, and there have been in excess of 15,000 tip-offs from members of the public to an information line set up by the police.

After spending eight long years heading up the case, Takishi Tsuchida was eventually forced to retire, but has continued to pursue the matter independently from the ongoing police investigation.

And after 20 years of the police conducting an annual service of remembrance at the crime scene, it has recently been announced that the building will now be torn down due to the structural damage that has naturally occurred through neglect and lack of maintenance.

Although the Miyazawa family home will soon be lost, Sufficient detail and evidence from inside it has been suitably preserved, in the hope that the man responsible for the crimes which took place there will one day be identified and brought to justice.

Our hearts go out to the relatives of the Miazau family.

May their loved ones rest in peace.

Tires matter.

They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road.

Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack.

Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy.

Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, convenient installation options, and the best selection of BF Goodrich tires.

Go to tire rack.com to see their BF Goodrich test results, tire ratings, and reviews, and be sure to check out all the special offers.

TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.

What up, y'all?

It's Joe Button here to talk about prize picks.

PrizePicks is the best place to win real money while watching football.

You can get up to 100 times your money.

PrizePicks will give you $50 instantly when you play your first $5 lineup.

You don't even need to win to receive the $50 bonus.

It's guaranteed.

Just download the PrizePicks app and use code Spotify.

That's code Spotify on PrizePicks to get $50 instantly when you play a $5 lineup.

PrizePicks, run your game.

Must be present in certain states.

Visit PrizePicks.com for restrictions and details.

Story 2: Minamoora's Bloody Mile

On the southern coast of New South Wales, there lies a stretch of beach which over the years has become the scene of many horrifying murders and mystifying deaths.

Purported to be one of the most cursed areas to be found anywhere in the Antipodes, there are also legends of ghostly figures and other strange phenomena.

Join us as we explore Minamura's Bloody Mile.

When the first European settlers arrived in the Illawarra region of Australia's eastern coastline, they were beguiled by what they saw.

Lying between the country's mountainous Great Dividing Range and the Tasman Sea was a previously unknown gallery of dense rainforest regions and rolling grassy plains.

With an abundance of natural resources hidden away in this fascinating landscape, it was not long before new towns and settlements began to spring up in and around it.

But as with similar endeavours located elsewhere in the country, the arrival of numerous determined entrepreneurs soon led to conflict with the native populations, culminating in a wave of bloody engagements.

What was perhaps the most notorious of these took place along the banks banks of the Minamura River in October of 1818, when a local village was destroyed by new settlers.

Sadly, like so many confrontations from that time, this brutal and unwarranted incident would forever leave an indelible stain upon the history of the region, and as it turns out, it may be that this occurrence also had profound consequences extending beyond what was initially evident.

Leading from the sandy shores of Minamura Beach, inland to a now deserted mansion situated on the outskirts of an otherwise quiet coastal town, a series of unexpected and mysterious deaths have transpired along a narrow and defined corridor, with alarming regularity.

This has earned this thin strip of land the unwanted nickname of the Bloody Mile.

From the moment he had arrived in Australia as a young child, George Fuller had always been keen to set out on his own and make his fortune.

Having spent his formative years helping his own family to establish their own local business, he set off for the chaos of the nation's goldfields.

Fifteen years later, he returned with sufficient funds to purchase a substantial tract of land, which bordered the banks of the Minamura River.

Fuller would name the sizeable home he had built there, Dunmore House, after the region of Ireland that his family had originated from.

Over the coming years, he would funnel the proceeds from his investments back into the nearby town, funding the construction of a school and hospital.

But rather than becoming a beacon of hope to the local population, his home took on a far darker reputation after his death.

Strangely, The land upon which it sat became the scene of a series of infamous tragedies, all typified by the horrific way in which those involved met their end.

The first of these incidents took place on Mark's farm, which adjoined the property in May of 1836, with the murder of the owner, Robert Fox.

The businessman's head had been repeatedly hammered with an unknown object, his remains left exposed in an open field, to later be discovered by his family.

A search of the farm's outbuildings would uncover a bloodstained hatchet, lying near to the the accommodation of one of the workers, James Tobin.

Tobin was arrested and later convicted of his employer's murder, but claimed all throughout the subsequent trial that he was completely innocent of the crime.

Even as he was led up to the gallows, Tobin had cried out that he had no memory of the event and could not account for how the bloodied tool had been found at his dwelling.

In April of 1853,

another local business owner by the name of William Gard had gone fishing with friends in the river, not far from Dunmore House.

Informing the others of his party that he was going to collect some shells from the riverbank, Gard went off alone, and ultimately did not return.

An extended search of the river eventually located his lifeless body further downstream, lying on its front with the head pushed deep underwater.

It was never fully established quite how the 36-year-old had met his fate, particularly as he was known to be a capable swimmer.

For years it was speculated that he must have encountered someone whilst walking alone by the river, who then subsequently drowned him, but no viable suspect was ever identified.

Rumours of an unknown killer or an evil presence in the area began to circulate, and were only strengthened in the aftermath of of another horrifying incident, which took place eight years later.

In January of 1861, Anne White was in her bed at home when the cries of her newborn baby roused her from sleep.

Hurrying to the child's crib, she soon discovered that the frenzied screams had been emanating from outside her house and had now eerily subsided.

As she ran out of the premises, she froze in horror, finding her sister Ellen Flynn, standing in the fields adjoining the property.

In her arms, she held the battered and lifeless body of Anne's infant child.

Ellen had cooed and sang to herself, uttering words that made little to no sense, as White tried to contemplate the tragic scene unfolding before her eyes.

Doctors who later examined Flynn determined that she had entirely lost her sanity, unable to pinpoint any rationale for how such madness could have engulfed her in such a short space of time.

She was deemed unfit for trial and was instead committed to an asylum where she went on to live out the rest of her days.

But sadly for the hapless inhabitants of Minamura, she would not be the last of their number whose souls would be claimed by such an inexplicable madness.

The murder of George Simpson in 1924, which occurred during a drunken argument, initially appeared to be a clear-cut case.

The victim had been out at a dance in Shell Harbour earlier that same evening and had fallen out with another local man named William Murray.

When Simpson was later found with his throat cut, to the extent where his head was all but severed from his body, Murray was arrested with a bloodied razor recovered from his person.

But as with James Tobin so many years before, Murray claimed he had no recollection of having committed the murder.

During the assessment for his prosecution, it was decided that Murray was not fit to be tried in court due to the severe stress he had suffered as a soldier during the Great War.

He was therefore institutionalised, though it was never ascertained if his temporary loss of memory was linked to his wider diagnosed trauma.

In addition to the perplexing aspect of murders being committed by those who didn't otherwise exhibit murderous tendencies, there has also been a string of peculiar accidents.

One morning during 1894,

a man travelling along the path outside the gates of Dunmore House unexpectedly encountered a riderless horse grazing on the lush grass.

Having inquired at the Fuller residence, The traveller was able to confirm that the horse did not belong to the family and that they had no knowledge of who the owner might be.

Consequently, the man took charge of the animal and proceeded on his journey, only to discover the lifeless body of its owner lying beneath the nearby river's bridge.

It would later be ascertained that the dead man was a local farmer by the name of John McEnross, who had been visiting friends in nearby Shell Harbour and had failed to return home.

The injuries to the dead man's face were so severe that his family could only identify him by by his clothing and the presence of his horse.

The local constable would close the matter by speculating that the wounds must have been inflicted by the farmer being thrown from his horse when the animal had been spooked by some unknown catalyst.

In the years that followed, two more bodies were discovered lying near to the south coast railway line, which ran between the town itself and the cities located further up the coast.

The remains of Eugene Shaw were discovered in September of 1922, having apparently been dragged along the line by a train to a point just short of the entrance to Minamora station.

Very little of Shaw's upper body was intact, having repeatedly impacted the ground as it hung down from the train he had been a passenger on.

It was never ascertained how he had come to be dangled from the train, whether the result of some tragic accident or the actions of an unknown third party.

Similarly, when the body of James Wales was located on open ground next to the same railway line four years later, the head and arms of the deceased were both found to be missing.

The dead man's family could offer no explanation as to how Wales had come to be in the vicinity of the railway tracks in the middle of the night.

and they refuted suggestions he may have voluntarily lain down in front of a passing locomotive.

They stated that he had been of sound mind and in good health at the time of the incident.

However, such tragedies were not limited to the town's railway line, as a sequence of unfortunate accidents involving motor vehicles on the Dunmore Road would later demonstrate.

In 1931, The local police were called to a report of a fatal traffic accident having taken place directly outside the main gates of Dunmore House.

Upon their attendance, they found that a car had collided head-on with a motorbike at high speed, causing the death of that vehicle's rider, Joseph Penny.

The injuries caused to Penny were catastrophic and had resulted in his immediate death, with his head all but severed from his body by the force of the impact.

Years later in 1949, another equally horrific accident occurred just meters away from where Joseph Penny's body had come to rest.

Neville Fielding, a local man, was driving home late at night in his car with his father sound asleep in the passenger seat beside him.

For whatever reason, Fielding failed to see a truck which had broken down outside Dunmore House.

The resulting collision removed Fielding's head clean from his body and severely wounded his father, who miraculously survived the accident.

It is indeed indeed peculiar that all of these incidents seem to share a hauntingly similar pattern, with the victims' heads and faces consistently sustaining a disturbing level of damage, at times leading to complete decapitation.

And whilst it would perhaps be easy to explain away these incidents using a rational argument, such as poor safety standards within the localized transport network, There have also been a series of bizarre incidents, which in some cases seem almost supernatural.

In 1936,

another grisly discovery was made by the town's inhabitants when a badly burned man was found lying on open ground down by the Minamura River.

The victim was a 20-year-old homeless man called Frank Smith, who had been living in a tent on the edge of the grounds at Dunmore House.

A doctor was quickly summoned, but the severe burns inflicted upon Smith's hands and face were too extensive for him to survive.

Whilst he still clung to life, Smith told his rescuers that he had a dream in which he saw a house engulfed in flames, distinctly hearing the cries of a baby emanating from somewhere inside.

Forcing his way into the burning building, he had rushed from room to room in an effort to save the child.

only for the flames to eventually drive him back outside again.

A police investigation would later confirm that there was no sign of fire damage damage to any of the properties near to where Smith had been found lying.

Further to this, there was no indication he had lit a fire at any time outside his tent, which had been located a short distance away from his body.

This of course left the reasons for his death a complete mystery, only one of a number of bizarre supernatural reports to have originated from the town.

Several local residents would report hearing the sound of a baby crying coming from the road that ran from Dunmore House down to the beach.

And yet on every occasion, no baby or mother could ever be found, raising an eerie parallel with the manner in which Frank Smith had met his end.

There have also been numerous testimonies from travellers who state that they have encountered a headless figure at various points along the same stretch of highway.

The most famous of these was preserved in a newspaper interview conducted with a local bus driver, Barney Dion, during the 1920s.

Dion stated that on several occasions, whilst driving the night bus from Shell Harbour to Minamura, he was forced to stop by a figure that had appeared in the road before him.

Sometimes this entity took the shape of a man wearing a white sheet over his body, with a bloodied red stain where the man's head should have been situated.

At other times, this figure was more defined as a middle-aged man in older style clothing, either holding his head in one hand or crawling around on his knees in an apparent bid to locate it.

Regardless, these encounters were sufficient for Barney Dion not only to give up this particular route, but also to completely sell his bus company off to a competitor.

For the people who reside in the shadow of Dunmore House and the environs of the adjoining coastal town, there remains no doubt that some dark force also inhabits the area.

There can be no other explanation for how so many of their forebears have lost their lives in such a small area, and in what should have been completely avoidable circumstances.

They had all met their demise, either succumbing to their own peculiar behaviours, or falling victim to the uncharacteristic murderous intent of fellow members of their community.

The actions of those involved raised many questions, as they so sharply contrasted with every other aspect of their broader lives.

Whether this is a lasting result of the infamous massacre that took place during the town's earliest days remains unknown.

Perhaps some degree of the pain and suffering caused by that act travelled further downriver, to make its home amongst the community it held responsible.

As we shall see in future episodes, Minamora remains just one example of many coastal Australian towns blighted by tragedy, despite no tangible reason why it should be so.

Our thoughts are with the many souls who lost their lives in this foreboding region.

May they rest in peace.

Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify.

They have the tools you need to start and grow your business.

From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need.

There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them.

With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into

sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/slash special offer.