Ryuichi Tsukamoto (born June 16, 1950) is the alias of a Japanese serial killer who, as a teenager, killed three women in three separate prefectures between 1966 and 1967.[1] Dubbed by investigators "Metropolitan Designated Case No. 106", Tsukamoto was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1972, but is believed to have been paroled in the late 1980s.[2][3]
Ryuichi Tsukamoto was born on June 16, 1950, in Shiogama, the son of a black American soldier, A. Johnson, who had been stationed at a nearby military base, and a 16-year-old Japanese girl.[1] It is said that Tsukamoto had trouble breathing when he was born, possibly due to complications relating to his underage mother's pregnancy.[4]
About a week after his birth, the Korean War broke out, resulting in his father being dispatched to Korea, where he was later killed in combat.[2] At the age of 4, his mother married an American soldier in Fukuoka, with whom she later returned to the US, leaving her illegitimate son in the care of her grandparents in Sendai.[2] According to author Shigeru Azuchi, he was then living under his mother's surname, which, according to Azuchi, is "a common Japanese surname starting with an S."[5]
In 1955, a pair of American soldiers offered Tsukamoto's grandmother to adopt him. She initially agreed to the proposal, but later turned the offer down when the couple demanded 50,000 yen from her.[4] Three years later, the grandmother passed away, and Tsukamoto was taken in by his uncle, an employee of the Japanese National Railways who had a wife and children.[4]
Despite his mixed-race heritage, Tsukamoto was never bullied by his peers, who feared him due to his remarkable physical strength.[4] Due to this, however, he distanced himself from others and frequently skipped school to walk alone in the fields, explored temples or hid under cars. His grades in every subject, with the exception of physical education where he outperformed even older students in high jumping, saw a gradual decline as a result. Tsukamoto also showed violent tendencies at home, where he would cut furniture with a knife or break roof tiles if he wasn't given something he wanted.[4]
In his second year of junior high school, Tsukamoto was arrested for the first time after he attempted to steal an air gun from a gun shop.[4] For this crime, he was sent to a juvenile welfare facility in Sendai, where he was ostracized by other teenagers for his skin color. In response, he would beat up the offenders, and less than two months after his admission, he again found himself isolated from others. Despite this, Tsukamoto developed a close relationship with the dormitory overseer, seeing her as a parental figure. Wishing to be her "son", he began using the alias "Ryuichi Tsukamoto" in her honor.[4]
Like with school, Tsukamoto would frequently skip lessons, sometimes for weeks on end, during which he travelled to Toyohashi and Osaka, but always returned to Sendai.[4] It is said that he would take questionnaires about future aspirations, where he would write that he wished to become a sailor and travel the world. However, as this could only be achieved through registering through the employment security office, Tsukamoto decided to begin an apprenticeship at an automobile maintenance shop in April 1966, where he was described as a diligent and obedient worker by his boss. By June of that year, however, he started skipping out on work and eventually left altogether.[4] He then stole some money from a house and used it to travel to Kyushu, his mother's ancestral home, where he remained for some time before returning to Sendai.[4]
Murders
Soon after his return to Sendai, Tsukamoto began burgling into people's homes. He was caught in early September and confessed to 11 burglaries, for which he was sent to a juvenile detention facility.[1] However, soon after his arrival, the facility experience an outbreak of dysentery, and since Tsukamoto was the suspected originator, he was sent for treatment at the Tsutsujigaoka Hospital.[4] He escaped from the hospital on October 4 and jumped aboard a train headed towards Niigata. From October 11 onwards, he stole money from houses he burgled into, travelling from prefecture to prefecture and staying at hotels to avoid getting caught.[4]
Tsukamoto's first murder occurred on December 13, 1966, when he broke into a house in Toyohashi.[1] In it, he came across the 24-year-old pregnant housewife Kazuko Ando, whom Tsukamoto accosted, tied her hands up with her own clothes and then strangled her with a towel.[4] He then dragged the body to the bathroom, filled the bathtub with water and pressed her head underwater. After killing Ando, he stole 20,000 yen and fled the house, leaving Ando's body to be discovered by her husband later in the day.[4]
In the middle of the night of December 27, Tsukamoto broke into another house in Abiko, in which 28-year-old housewife Yoshiko Watanabe and her 3-month-old baby were currently in. Tsukamoto beat and then tied her hands with shoelaces, before wrapping her head and neck in a futon, strangling her in the process.[4] He then ripped open her sweater, and stabbed Watanabe in the left breast with a sharp object. After killing her, he stole 24,000 yen and left the house, sparing the baby. Watanabe's body was found on the next day by her husband.[4]
His third and final murder occurred on January 16, 1967, when he broke into a house in Kōfu. Once inside, he came across 25-year-old Yoshimi Watanabe, whom he proceeded to bind and gag. He then took a knife and sliced up her clothing, before grabbing an electrical cord and strangling her with it.[4] Tsukamoto then grabbed a blunt instrument and hit her on the head, before grabbing some nearby sausages, cucumbers and eggs, which he proceeded to forcefully insert into her genitalia.[2] Finally, he dragged the body to the upper floor, where he left it hanging from an alcove. Tsukamoto then rummaged through the drawers, stole 10,000 yen and left.[1] Watanabe's body, which had blood gushing from her mouth and crotch, was later found by her mother and the janitor's wife.[4]
Investigation and arrest
Due to the similarity in the three murders, the police departments in Toyohashi, Abiko and Kōfu all worked in unison to resolve the cases.[1] After interviewing witnesses, police deduced that in each case, a young man with short hair and brown skin had been seen wandering around the areas.[2] While going over the clues, it was noticed that the towel used in the first murder had an engraving of the Futaba Ryokan, a local hotel. When they cross-checked with hotel staff, they revealed that they had a guest matching the description, who registered himself as "Ryuichi Tsukamoto" and claimed to be from Sendai.[4]
On January 23, 1967, the wife of a police officer in Kashiwa noticed a young boy matching the description of the offender her husband had told her about, carrying a bag and walking towards the train station. She immediately contacted police, who detained the teenager.[4] When asked to show his residency permit, the detainee replied that he was a Japanese citizen, and was then brought to the police station for further interrogation. There, he professed that his name was Ryuichi Tsukamoto, but after investigators found a knife, a screwdriver and adhesive plaster in his bag, he broke down and confessed both his real name and to the crimes.[4]
Trial, sentence and current status
On May 25, 1967, Ryuichi Tsukamoto was put on trial for the three murders, as well as multiple charges of theft, attempted burglary, robbery and attempted robbery.[1] Throughout the proceedings, Tsukamoto stood expressionless and simply glanced at the audience, and when pressed about his motive by the judges, he claimed that he had killed the women because "he hated their eyes".[4] On September 9, 1972, the Chiba District Court found him guilty. Although relatives of his victims wanted Tsukamoto executed, he was sentenced to life in prison due to his age.[4] He was sent to serve at the Osaka Prison, and never appealed his sentence.[2]
Tsukamoto's later fate was left unclear until 1997, when journalist Shigeru Azuchi was interviewed by Takarajimasha.[5] In the interview, Azuchi claimed that he had met Tsukamoto while serving a 15-year sentence for fraud at the Osaka Prison, and that they remained friends even after his early release. According to Azuchi, Tsukamoto was paroled in his late 30s, is currently working a regular job and has vowed to remain single for the rest of his life, as penance for his crimes.[5] Following the interview, Azuchi wrote a book detailing the case, which he published in March 1999.[4]
Junko Furuta was a Japanese high school student who was abducted, raped, tortured and subsequently murdered. Her case was called the "concrete-encased high school girl murder case", since her body was discovered in a concrete drum.
The Tochigi patricide case, or Aizawa patricide case, is a landmark father–daughter incest and patricide case in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. The trial of the incident is also known as its common case name Aizawa v. Japan. In the incident, a victimized daughter, Chiyo Aizawa who had been sexually abused by her father for about 15 years, eventually killed him on October 5, 1968. She was accused and convicted of murdering her father, but her sentence was suspended.
Futoshi Matsunaga is a Japanese serial killer who both defrauded and tortured his victims in what is collectively known as the Kitakyūshū Serial Murder Incident. Matsunaga was convicted of six counts of murder and one count of manslaughter between 1996 and 1998 and sentenced to death. He murdered his victims with an accomplice, Junko Ogata, who received a life sentence.
Kiyotaka Katsuta was a Japanese serial killer and thief.
Yoshio Kodaira was a Japanese serial killer, serial rapist, and war criminal who murdered at least 8 people in the Tokyo and Tochigi Prefecture areas between 1932 and 1946.
Rie Isogai was a 31-year-old Japanese office clerk who was robbed and murdered in Aichi Prefecture on the night of 24 August 2007 by three men who became acquainted through an underground message board. Because the three men met on an underground website, the case is frequently called the Dark Site Murder in Japan, "dark site" being the Japanese term for underground websites. Despite Japan's death penalty not normally being used in cases involving a single murder, Isogai's mother launched a petition to have the three killers face the death penalty; one was sentenced to death on 18 March 2009, while the other two were sentenced to life in prison on 13 April 2011.
Yoshitomo Hori is a Korean-Japanese serial killer who killed a couple in Hekinan in 1998, and later participated in the murder of Rie Isogai in 2007. Sentenced to life imprisonment for the latter crime, he was linked to the double murder and another attempted murder in 2012, for which he was sentenced to death and currently awaits execution on death row.
The Ashikaga murder case occurred in the city of Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, when a 4-year-old girl, Mami Matsuda, went missing from a pachinko parlor on May 12, 1990, and was found dead at the Watarase River nearby. This case is part of the North Kanto Serial Young Girl Kidnapping and Murder Case.
Yasuko Watanabe was a 39-year-old unmarried Japanese woman, a senior economic researcher at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) moonlighting as a prostitute on the streets by night. She fell victim to murder by strangulation and rape by an unknown assailant in Harajuku, Shibuya on March 9, 1997. After being reported missing by her mother with whom she lived, her body was discovered on March 19, 1997 in a vacant apartment in the Maruyamachō neighborhood of Shibuya, Tokyo where she engaged in prostitution.
The North Kanto Young Girl Serial Kidnapping and Murder Case is a serial kidnapping and murder case that has been going on since 1979 in Japan's Tochigi and Gunma prefectures. The Ashikaga murder case is included in this.
Yasunori Suzuki was a Japanese serial killer who robbed and killed three women in Fukuoka Prefecture between December 2004 and January 2005, raping two of them. He was sentenced to death for his crimes, and executed in 2019.
Kau Kobayashi was a Japanese serial killer who, together with accomplice Mitsuyoshi Onuki (大貫光吉) was responsible for murders of hotel owners Kamasuke and Ume Ikukata, called the Hotel Nihonkaku Incident After her arrest, she confessed to fatally poisoning her husband in 1952, and was later sentenced to death and executed for her crimes.
Shige Sakakura was a Japanese baby farmer and serial killer who, together with two accomplices, was responsible for the murders of numerous infants in Hioki Wakasa between 1898 and 1913. For her crimes, both she and her accomplices were sentenced to death and hanged in 1915.
Takeshige Hamada was a Japanese serial killer who, together with his wife and two accomplices, murdered three people over life insurance policies in Fukuoka from 1978 to 1979. He was sentenced to death for his crimes, but died before he could be executed. At the time of his death, at the age of 90, he was the oldest convict on death row.
Gen Sekine was a Japanese dog breeder and serial killer who, together with his common-law wife Hiroko Kazama (風間博子), murdered at least four clients in Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture, between April to August 1993. Both were sentenced to death for their crimes, but Sekine died on death row prior to execution.
Masakatsu Nishikawa was a Japanese serial killer who killed four snack bar hostesses and attempted to kill two others from 1991 to 1992 in three prefectures. An ex-criminal with a murder conviction, he was convicted of his latter crimes, sentenced to death and executed in 2017.
Tetsuyuki Morikawa was a Japanese serial killer who killed two of his ex-wife's relatives in Kumamoto, after having been released on parole for killing his mother-in-law in 1962. For the latter crimes, Morikawa was sentenced to death and subsequently executed in 1999.
Yoshinori Ueda is a Japanese serial killer who was responsible for the so-called Osaka Dog Lover Murders (大阪愛犬家連続殺人事件), in which five people were poisoned with suxamethonium in Shiojiri, Nagano from 1992 to 1993. Ueda was convicted of the murders and sentenced to death, and is currently awaiting execution on death row.
The Shinjuku–Kabukicho Love Hotel murders is the nickname given to an unsolved series of murders committed in the Shinjuku and Kabukicho areas of Tokyo in 1981. The three victims, all women, were strangled to death in love hotels at night. The murders only stopped after a fourth victim survived.
References
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Hirohisa Asahara (March 1, 1998). 実録 戦後殺人事件帳―人を殺したい夜に読む本[The Postwar Murder Memoir - A Casebook to Read At Night When You Want To Kill People]. Aspect. ISBN4757200439.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Akiyuki Hozumi (November 7, 2020). "愛知・千葉・山梨で相次いで若い女性が殺害『混血少年連続殺人事件』【衝撃の未成年犯罪事件簿】"[Young women killed one after another in Aichi, Chiba and Yamanashi in "Mixed-blooded boy serial murder case" [Shocking underage criminals casebook]]. Niconico (in Japanese). Archived from the original on November 7, 2020. Retrieved August 2, 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
1 2 3 隣りの殺人者たち―彼や彼女はなぜ、人を殺したのか?[The murderers next door - why did he or she kill people?] (in Japanese). Takarajimasha. September 1, 1997. ISBN4796693335.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
