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The Killer Stayed Several Hours in the House After Killing (The Setagaya Family Murders Mystery)
They were murdered during a home invasion in the middle of the night by an unknown killer who then remained in the house for several hours before fleeing.
The Setagaya Family Murders
At their home in the Kamisoshigaya neighborhood of Setagaya in the western suburbs of Tokyo on December 31, 2000, the bodies of Mikio Miyazawa, 44, his 41-year-old wife, Yasuko, and their daughters, Niina, 8, and Rei, 6, were discovered by Yasuko’s mother, Haruko, who reported it to the police. Mikio, Yasuko, and Niina had all been stabbed to death, and Rei had been strangled to death as well.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s investigation of the crime scene revealed that the family had been murdered on December 30 at approximately 11:30 p.m. (Japan Standard Time) and that the perpetrator had remained in the house for several hours after the murders were committed.
Miyazawa’s killer got in through an open window in the second-floor bathroom at the rear of the house, which is near to Soshigaya Park, by climbing up a tree and then removing the window screen. Strangling Rei, who was sleeping in his second-floor room, the killer used his bare hands to asphyxiate him.
Mikio went up the first-floor stairs after noticing a disturbance in Rei’s room, fighting and wounding the killer until he was stabbed in the head with a Sashimi bōchō knife. According to a police investigation, a section of the Sashimi knife blade broke off inside Mikio’s head. The killer then stabbed Yasuko and Niina with the broken blade before murdering them with a Santoku knife from the Miyazawas’ house.
For between two and ten hours, the killer remained inside the Miyazawas’ home, using the family computer, consuming barley tea, melon, and ice cream from their refrigerator, using their toilet and leaving his feces in it without flushing, treating his injuries with first aid kits and other sanitary…
