July 15, 2025 • 30 mins
You can fit a lot of body parts in a 150 square foot apartment in Japan.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Listen to Hudson River Radio dot Com. Don't make us
come and find you.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Linda Zimmerman.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this is.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Good evening everyone. How are you doing? Brian?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
All right? Hanging in there, trying to stay cool like
everybody else.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yes, quite the hot summer. I'll take it. I'll take
every day of heat over cold and snow I'm getting.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, So we are doing the Twitter Killer tonight. And
as you pointed out earlier, it's now x, but at
the time it happened, it was still called Twitter and
he was called the tweet Oh, I said, he so know.
We now it's a heat Okay, it is the Twitter Killer.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
We all fairness also point out that I didn't care
and I hate that guy. So you call it whatever
you want.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yes, it's on. It's on the right. Yeah. I don't
do Twitter. I you know, I enjoy my private life
what I have of it, and enough enough already. All right,
So where I don't know that we have ever taken
the show to Japan? Have we not?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
That I remember?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
No? Yeah, so yeah, so this one is you know,
there's a very current aspect just within a week of
US recording this, and uh, it's just it's a universal topic.
So let us jump in. We're going back to twenty
(01:41):
seventeen when Twitter was Twitter and now apparently in Japan
they they don't name victims usually, okay, and a lot
of case it's kept private. So I don't have I
don't have. I do have a couple of names, but
(02:04):
for the most part, I'll just be identifying with Like
the twenty three year old woman disappeared near Tokyo, and
there were a couple of disappearances, but you know, people
take off, they just drop out of sight for a while.
But police are investigating this and they find that she
(02:29):
had made a Twitter post where she said she wanted
to take her own life. Now, suicide is a big
problem in Japan. In fact, do you know the suicide Forest.
There's a I've heard of it. Yeah, yes, very creepy
where lots of people go to take their own lives.
(02:53):
So I looked up statistics and currently Japan is around
seventeen per one hundred thousand people. The US is at fourteen.
This goes up and down, particularly during COVID numbers went
way up. Guyana for some reason is forty and the
(03:17):
African country of Lasuitu eighty seven people per one hundred thousand,
which leads me to believe things are not going well
in Lsuitu.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
That's rough.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah. Yeah, So her post said I'm looking for someone
to die with me. So her brother goes into her
Twitter account and finds some very disturbing and suspicious interactions.
So he contacts the police. And I don't know exactly
(03:53):
who arranged this, whether it was the police or the
brother or together. They got a woman to agree to
contact this person on Twitter and arranged to meet at
a train station, and the police were watching, so they
they set this person up to see what happened. So
(04:14):
they follow the man back to his apartment. They knock
on the door, the door opens. The smell of decomposition
in this tiny l it's a one hundred and fifty
square foot apartment, okay, which is basically a closet. Right,
(04:34):
I mean, that's that's it, the whole the whole thing.
Yeah right, wow, Yeah, welcome to Japan, right Manhattan, Yeah,
that's true. So the smell is so bad. Apparently some
law enforcement officers are vomiting and they see a white
(04:55):
handbag that they believe was belonged to this missing three
year old woman. So the man who answers the door,
they say, this bag, you know, where is she? Where's
the woman who owned this bag? So he points to
a large cooler on the floor, you know, like you
(05:17):
take camping, big cooler, and he says, she's in there. Okay,
not good. Why don't we take our first break at
this point? Hudson Riverradio dot com. Hudson Riverradio dot com.
(05:46):
We are back in your police career. Did you ever
come upon a victim in a cooler?
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I have not, but now I'm gonna caution everybody from
buying a used yetti on craigslist?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah? Or didn't we cover one where somebody bought a
used freezer and there was a body in it?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
There were ye? Yeah? That rings about Yeah, so used anything? Uh?
Doing all this makes me reconsider even more.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yes, yes, So who was this man who answered the door.
His name was Taka Taka Hero shira Ishi, twenty seven
year old. His mother said he was a quiet child
and he wouldn't hurt a bug. Okay, well there weren't. Yes,
(06:42):
and these weren't bugs that we were we are talking
about that he killed. The neighbors described him as cheerful,
polite kind. For a couple of years, he worked in
a loop local supermarket. Just seemed like a normal, really
nice kid. Except they talked to a couple of his
(07:05):
friends and he and a friend played a game when
they were younger where they would take turns choking each
other until they almost lost consciousness. And that's what they
were doing for fun. So would you call that a
red flag?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's one of the few where I
would say maybe you should go play video games.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Right instead rather than choking one another. Well, he realized
a regular job wasn't for him, so he decided to
it would be easy work. One thing he was good
at was Twitter and posting, so he decided to become
a scout for a prostitution ring run by the Yakuza,
(07:55):
which is the Japanese mafia hm okay. Some tough people
ball there and it was his job to scout out
young women and lure them into prostitution. They later spoke
to some of the women he had lured, and he
(08:15):
said he was gentler than most people in this business,
but he had a really intense fascination for death. So
apparently they busted this prostitution ring, or at least caught
him in and he was arrested February of twenty seventeen. Okay,
(08:37):
February twenty seventeen important because they gave him a three
year suspended sentence. Oh those suspended sentences. How many people
have died as the result of people who should be
behind bars but weren't. So at this point, after he
(09:02):
was convicted, he told his father, I want to get
my own apartment. I met a girl and I want
to have some private time with her. Well, not really,
he wanted a layer. He wanted a killing field. That's
why he got his own apartment. So he got into
(09:24):
his new apartment August of twenty seventeen in Zama in
the Kanagawa prefecture, which is a suburb of Tokyo, and
he just he even said, I was really good at
luring women. That was his strong point. He had five
(09:47):
Twitter accounts. One of them his name of that Twitter
account was hanging pro. Another one was Hangman, and he
kept posting, hanging isn't hard to do. If you can't
do it yourself, I can help kind of sometimes putting himself.
(10:12):
I'm an angel of mercy. If you really, if life's
got you down and you just don't have the courage
to do it, I can help you, okay, kind of
a Japanese doctor Kovorkian, but predatory, the predatory version. So
this woman, he met, this twenty three year old who
(10:34):
was missing, met her at the train station, took her
back to the apartment, and just to you know, she's
obviously you're going to be nervous and fearful. So he
gave her alcohol, sleeping pills, and tranquilizers, any one of
which would.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That's true, All three together are just not a good thing. No,
that action and not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I bet I bet so. Once she could not you know, function,
he raped her and then spent three days cutting the
flesh off of her bones. He threw out the flesh
and organs in the garbage, and to disguise the flesh
(11:30):
and cover the smell, he covered the flesh and organs
in kitty litter. Did you ever hear of that?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
No, you know you're a garbage man and something smells
bad and you see some decaying flesh covered in kitty litter.
You're not going to examine it. You're probably pretty much
just gonna let's get rid of this.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
I think, yeah, I mean, maybe just something smells that
bad and you open it, you see kitty litter in it,
and that explains the smell, and you go, no further
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that too. So I thought that was
disturbingly clever. Never heard of that before. So he was
he was clearly trying to get rid of evidence. However,
he kept He said he kept the bones out of
fear of getting caught. So I guess it's one thing
(12:29):
to see an amorphous blob of some sort of organic
matter covered in kitty litter. It's another if you see
a jawbone or a I guess like bone.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
That's a disturbing way to look at it.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
But okay, well I'm trying to think, why would he
not throw out the bones?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, it's clearly demented logic. But I guess, you know,
getting rid of bones is harder because they don't decompose
like all the soft gooey stuff does the soft cooey stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So there's some confusion again, since they don't really give
out the names. It was. I you know, some articles
said a boyfriend was searching for her, but I think
they confused that there was a man who was also
looking to die, and he came to the apartment and
(13:26):
then he changed his mind and he said, you know
this is this is not for me. But sheer sheets. Well,
this guy's a threat. Now he knows what I do.
So he killed him and dismembered him. All right, So
the the body counts is going up. But wait, there's more.
Remember I said it was one hundred and fifty square foot,
(13:48):
the whole apartment one hundred and fifty square feet.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
You're not where do you keep all your kiddy litter.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
In the coolers with? Well? Police found a total of
two hundred and forty bones in his little apartment, arms, legs,
and I want to guess how many skulls they found,
take a wild guest.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Six.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It was over a two month period. Nine in two months,
nine skulls were in coolers and toolboxes. So he's sleeping
in this tiny apartment with this horrific smell and the
bones and parts of all his victims. But he liked it.
(14:43):
I you know, I think I think anybody who's doing this,
we can say, is enjoying what he's doing.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
And I'm guessing how parents never visited after he got
the new place.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Huh. Apparently not. Apparently not. They may have been glad
to see him go.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
That's true, that's true. Let me help you pack your stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, yeah, don't let the door hitch in the butt
on your way out. So obviously he was arrested at
this point, but before he was indicted, he underwent five
months of psychiatric testing and at the end of it
he was deemed to be mentally stable. I have a
(15:30):
problem with that.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Well, if he's not, then I guess he can't be
charged either.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I mean, somebody who could missed these kind of things
is obviously not right in the head. But it's a
matter of whether they understand what they're doing and whether
it's right or wrong.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point, because clearly this was
he he planned, He planned very very well, and kept
doing it over and.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
You know, say routine somebody. So he had to get
rid of that guy, and so.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Right and understood, he had to get rid of evidence.
So the prosecution was looking for the death penalty. Enter
the defense attorneys. Oh, I love Japanese defense attorneys just
as much as in other countries because they said no, no, no, no, no,
this was murder with consent. Did you ever hear of
(16:28):
that murder with consent? That these victims all gave him
permission to kill them? Well, not the guy who had
changed his mind.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Hm.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And they didn't give him permission to rape them. And
we'll find out they really nobody really gave him permission
and they tried to. You know, again, he's he's just
such an empathetic guy. He's just trying to help these people.
He's a good guy, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Misunderstood all that, sure.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Right, right, right, right? So Shiahi said it was so
easy to manipulate women, to convince them that they wanted
to die. He did whatever he had to do, you know,
changed his story with each one. With some of them,
he made suicide side pacts. You know, I'm right with you,
(17:30):
I understand completely. Let's do it together. I'll help you die,
then I'll kill myself. Yeah, he forgot the second half
of that pact. There. He would pretend to be some
sort of spiritual person, like a spiritual leader, and like,
you know, death really is the best thing for you.
(17:52):
So these were vulnerable people, obviously in crisis, and he
just exploited them. And we see serial killers are very
very convincing, often extremely charming people. And he he obviously
had this. So before we get to the trial, why
don't we take our second break. This is Hudson River
(18:15):
Radio dot com. This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
So I just had a thought on our break there.
Perhaps we should have called this the kitty litter killer.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Okay, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I don't know it is the Twitter killer.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
But yeah, made contact with people, that's right, right, And
you know what, how many lessons have we heard about
the people you meet online? Just in general? You don't
know who they are. Yeah, and all right, you want
to have a chat, you want, Okay, but man, there's
don't send there, don't meet people, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It's like at this point they're predators. Yeah, it's it's
a predator's hunting ground. There was the Craigslist killer. Maybe
we should cover that. And I know somebody who was
very high in a organization and was luring young underage girls,
(19:20):
you know, on the Internet, and it's you know, it
happens all the time. They have you know, the police
have special people posing as young underage girls because that's
where predators go. So the trial was September started September thirtieth,
twenty twenty. And as much as the defense wanted to paint,
(19:42):
you know, shara Ishi as this merciful, empathetic, good guy,
he just came out and said, yeah, I killed the
women without their consent. It's the defense attorney. He's nightmare.
He said. One woman was sleeping when he killed her,
(20:05):
so clearly no consent. Another woman had basically changed her
mind and said, hey, why don't we go out to dinner,
We'll get something to eat, we'll go do something fun.
So maybe she you know, she didn't want to die.
She just she was lonely and she met this guy
and he's charming. It turned her around. Well, he ended
(20:25):
up killing her as well. During the trial, they said
he was just unnaturally calm, and the defense attorneys weren't
because in the middle of the trial he starts complaining,
this trial is taking way too long. Look, I'm guilty.
(20:46):
I killed nine people, Please just give me the death penalty.
I planned it, I did it. I did it for
sexual gratification, for money. It thrilled me, and I was
aroused by the dead bodies, so.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
That saved a lot of time, didn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Well if he had done this to begin but the
defense attorneys were in their pitching for him at Hill.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
They were doing their job.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, but anyway, so they're like, okay, you want to
plead guilty. That's you know, you're guilty. So he made
a statement in court. Okay, this is perhaps the most
honest serial killer statement I've ever heard. I am sorry
(21:39):
for having killed some of the victims with whom I
spent a lot of time, and would like to apologize
to these families. But for the others I don't really
feel a sense of regret. In any case, I am
only sorry because I failed when I got caught. If
I wasn't arrested, I would not be regretting anything. Mmm.
(22:03):
Oh yeah, how many times do we you know?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah, I'm sorry after I get caught.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yep, yeah, yeah, so guilty on all counts. December fifteenth,
twenty twenty. He is a a sentenced to the death penalty.
Now it's very different. Remember he was called the hanging
pro the hangman. Well, they do death by hanging. Interestingly enough,
(22:32):
in Japan it takes years usually to carry out the sentence,
and I had never heard this They don't tell anyone,
not even the people on death row when they will
be hanged. They don't know one day to the next. Yeah,
is it going to be tomorrow? Is it going to
be tomorrow? Is it going to You know, the families
(22:54):
don't know. They don't talk to the press, nobody. It's
all done in secret, so they don't know until the
day of You know, you wake up one morning, Hey,
guess what today's your number is up. So he was
just executed June twenty seventh, twenty twenty five. He was
(23:16):
hanged at the Tokyo Detention House. One victim's father said, personally,
I wanted him to get a life sentence over which
he has no choice but to atone for his wrongdoings,
rather than give him the death penalty he wanted. I understand,
(23:39):
and I know you have that opinion. Just let them
sit there and think about it forever. But is this
the kind of guy who's going to atone? Consider this?
This is a stake here.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Say a tone, just to be clear. Oh okay, I'm
not right for salvation at all with the with any
of this. I just don't think we should lower ourselves
to the same level, which I know we talked about before,
but that's sure we will again.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yes, Well, he was kind of looking forward to life
in prison if he was to get it, because he said,
get this, this is now he killed eight women and
one man, all right, now, I want to meet an
ordinary girl. I want to get married. I want to
(24:30):
find a marriage partner while I'm in jail. So he's
making plans to meet an ordinary girl. Oh, I'm sure
women would love to meet you. You did what to them?
This is where this guy's head was at. So was he,
(24:50):
And I'm sure he would have gotten all kinds of
pen pals, and he would have, you know, probably not
had a terrible life with all the people who would
sick enough to communicate with him. So I kept reading
over and over again. This case caused shock and anxiety
(25:12):
across the country for years. Apparently Japan has a really
big stigma about mental health issues. It's something you don't
talk about. People are embarrassed by it, and there's an
enormous amount of pressure to succeed in school, to succeed
in work. They work very long hours, there's a very
(25:35):
high expectations, so there's just a lot of pressure. So
I was able to find a couple of names, and
I just, you know, we often don't talk about the
victims enough, and in this case they didn't even name,
you know, all name victims. But there was twenty one
(25:56):
year old Mazuki Miora. She was an office war She
had been bullied in high school. So he on his Twitter,
Oh you poor poor thing. I was bullied too, you know,
I'll whatever it is I can lure you with. I'm
(26:17):
there too. I want to help you end your life.
And he drugged strangled, and this time he didn't. He
raped the dead body and then dismembered it in his bathroom.
Nineteen year old Hinako Shirashina, she was a runaway. Same deal.
(26:39):
Lorder on Twitter said exactly what she needed to hear. Drugged, raped,
strang strangled, raped the dead body, same thing, you know,
and he took his time cutting it up. A few
victims in the smell around the apartment was getting bad,
but he just so happened his apartment was near a sewer,
(27:01):
so people thought this. I don't know if he chose
it because it already it came with a bad smell
in the neighborhood. Anyway, twenty year old that the man
Sho Goo Nishinaka. He was the one who had changed
his mind. But because he knew too Yeah, he knew
(27:23):
too much. And since they he got rid of all
the flesh and organs, they needed to do DNA to
find the identities, which which they did. I checked the apartment.
He had a nice little cozy end unit. They renovated
(27:46):
the apartment. I bet it needed to be stripped down
to the studs and yeah, yeah, and there are new
tenants in there who were asked, don't you mind, No,
it's a it's an extra low rent here. Why So
because of this case, hopefully some good came of it.
(28:09):
They said there was more mental health awareness and they
strengthened social media predator laws and a lot more people
became more conscious, conscious of the dangers of social media.
But I guarantee right now there are predators actively around
(28:30):
the world on you name the social media platform, looking
for whatever victims. However they choose to victimize people. So
that is the Twitter kitty litter Killer's twister. Yes, Twitter
(28:51):
kitty litter killer. There we go, there we go. So
just a really sick individual. And personally, I'm glad he's
not around because he would just start messing with women's
heads by letter writing or something something somebody like that
(29:12):
is not going to stop.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
True.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
So there we have it all right.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, look, there's always that one extra twist you got
in there.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, this was a real twisty one kitty. Yeah that
I hope we just didn't give somebody out there a
light bulb didn't just go off over their head. What
a great idea.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
It doesn't work that well. So well, bother.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, So that is it. So I hope it wasn't
too horrifying for everybody. But if you choose to come
back to another episode, we will see you again here
on Murder in the Hudson Valley. If you don't find
yourself under a layer of kitty litter, This is Hudson
(30:06):
River Radio dot com.
Listen to Hudson River Radio dot Com. Don't make us
come and find you.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Linda Zimmerman.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this is.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Good evening everyone. How are you doing? Brian?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
All right? Hanging in there, trying to stay cool like
everybody else.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yes, quite the hot summer. I'll take it. I'll take
every day of heat over cold and snow I'm getting.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, So we are doing the Twitter Killer tonight. And
as you pointed out earlier, it's now x, but at
the time it happened, it was still called Twitter and
he was called the tweet Oh, I said, he so know.
We now it's a heat Okay, it is the Twitter Killer.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
We all fairness also point out that I didn't care
and I hate that guy. So you call it whatever
you want.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yes, it's on. It's on the right. Yeah. I don't
do Twitter. I you know, I enjoy my private life
what I have of it, and enough enough already. All right,
So where I don't know that we have ever taken
the show to Japan? Have we not?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
That I remember?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
No? Yeah, so yeah, so this one is you know,
there's a very current aspect just within a week of
US recording this, and uh, it's just it's a universal topic.
So let us jump in. We're going back to twenty
(01:41):
seventeen when Twitter was Twitter and now apparently in Japan
they they don't name victims usually, okay, and a lot
of case it's kept private. So I don't have I
don't have. I do have a couple of names, but
(02:04):
for the most part, I'll just be identifying with Like
the twenty three year old woman disappeared near Tokyo, and
there were a couple of disappearances, but you know, people
take off, they just drop out of sight for a while.
But police are investigating this and they find that she
(02:29):
had made a Twitter post where she said she wanted
to take her own life. Now, suicide is a big
problem in Japan. In fact, do you know the suicide Forest.
There's a I've heard of it. Yeah, yes, very creepy
where lots of people go to take their own lives.
(02:53):
So I looked up statistics and currently Japan is around
seventeen per one hundred thousand people. The US is at fourteen.
This goes up and down, particularly during COVID numbers went
way up. Guyana for some reason is forty and the
(03:17):
African country of Lasuitu eighty seven people per one hundred thousand,
which leads me to believe things are not going well
in Lsuitu.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
That's rough.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah. Yeah, So her post said I'm looking for someone
to die with me. So her brother goes into her
Twitter account and finds some very disturbing and suspicious interactions.
So he contacts the police. And I don't know exactly
(03:53):
who arranged this, whether it was the police or the
brother or together. They got a woman to agree to
contact this person on Twitter and arranged to meet at
a train station, and the police were watching, so they
they set this person up to see what happened. So
(04:14):
they follow the man back to his apartment. They knock
on the door, the door opens. The smell of decomposition
in this tiny l it's a one hundred and fifty
square foot apartment, okay, which is basically a closet. Right,
(04:34):
I mean, that's that's it, the whole the whole thing.
Yeah right, wow, Yeah, welcome to Japan, right Manhattan, Yeah,
that's true. So the smell is so bad. Apparently some
law enforcement officers are vomiting and they see a white
(04:55):
handbag that they believe was belonged to this missing three
year old woman. So the man who answers the door,
they say, this bag, you know, where is she? Where's
the woman who owned this bag? So he points to
a large cooler on the floor, you know, like you
(05:17):
take camping, big cooler, and he says, she's in there. Okay,
not good. Why don't we take our first break at
this point? Hudson Riverradio dot com. Hudson Riverradio dot com.
(05:46):
We are back in your police career. Did you ever
come upon a victim in a cooler?
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I have not, but now I'm gonna caution everybody from
buying a used yetti on craigslist?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah? Or didn't we cover one where somebody bought a
used freezer and there was a body in it?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
There were ye? Yeah? That rings about Yeah, so used anything? Uh?
Doing all this makes me reconsider even more.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yes, yes, So who was this man who answered the door.
His name was Taka Taka Hero shira Ishi, twenty seven
year old. His mother said he was a quiet child
and he wouldn't hurt a bug. Okay, well there weren't. Yes,
(06:42):
and these weren't bugs that we were we are talking
about that he killed. The neighbors described him as cheerful,
polite kind. For a couple of years, he worked in
a loop local supermarket. Just seemed like a normal, really
nice kid. Except they talked to a couple of his
(07:05):
friends and he and a friend played a game when
they were younger where they would take turns choking each
other until they almost lost consciousness. And that's what they
were doing for fun. So would you call that a
red flag?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's one of the few where I
would say maybe you should go play video games.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Right instead rather than choking one another. Well, he realized
a regular job wasn't for him, so he decided to
it would be easy work. One thing he was good
at was Twitter and posting, so he decided to become
a scout for a prostitution ring run by the Yakuza,
(07:55):
which is the Japanese mafia hm okay. Some tough people
ball there and it was his job to scout out
young women and lure them into prostitution. They later spoke
to some of the women he had lured, and he
(08:15):
said he was gentler than most people in this business,
but he had a really intense fascination for death. So
apparently they busted this prostitution ring, or at least caught
him in and he was arrested February of twenty seventeen. Okay,
(08:37):
February twenty seventeen important because they gave him a three
year suspended sentence. Oh those suspended sentences. How many people
have died as the result of people who should be
behind bars but weren't. So at this point, after he
(09:02):
was convicted, he told his father, I want to get
my own apartment. I met a girl and I want
to have some private time with her. Well, not really,
he wanted a layer. He wanted a killing field. That's
why he got his own apartment. So he got into
(09:24):
his new apartment August of twenty seventeen in Zama in
the Kanagawa prefecture, which is a suburb of Tokyo, and
he just he even said, I was really good at
luring women. That was his strong point. He had five
(09:47):
Twitter accounts. One of them his name of that Twitter
account was hanging pro. Another one was Hangman, and he
kept posting, hanging isn't hard to do. If you can't
do it yourself, I can help kind of sometimes putting himself.
(10:12):
I'm an angel of mercy. If you really, if life's
got you down and you just don't have the courage
to do it, I can help you, okay, kind of
a Japanese doctor Kovorkian, but predatory, the predatory version. So
this woman, he met, this twenty three year old who
(10:34):
was missing, met her at the train station, took her
back to the apartment, and just to you know, she's
obviously you're going to be nervous and fearful. So he
gave her alcohol, sleeping pills, and tranquilizers, any one of
which would.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That's true, All three together are just not a good thing. No,
that action and not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I bet I bet so. Once she could not you know, function,
he raped her and then spent three days cutting the
flesh off of her bones. He threw out the flesh
and organs in the garbage, and to disguise the flesh
(11:30):
and cover the smell, he covered the flesh and organs
in kitty litter. Did you ever hear of that?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
No, you know you're a garbage man and something smells
bad and you see some decaying flesh covered in kitty litter.
You're not going to examine it. You're probably pretty much
just gonna let's get rid of this.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
I think, yeah, I mean, maybe just something smells that
bad and you open it, you see kitty litter in it,
and that explains the smell, and you go, no further
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that too. So I thought that was
disturbingly clever. Never heard of that before. So he was
he was clearly trying to get rid of evidence. However,
he kept He said he kept the bones out of
fear of getting caught. So I guess it's one thing
(12:29):
to see an amorphous blob of some sort of organic
matter covered in kitty litter. It's another if you see
a jawbone or a I guess like bone.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
That's a disturbing way to look at it.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
But okay, well I'm trying to think, why would he
not throw out the bones?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, it's clearly demented logic. But I guess, you know,
getting rid of bones is harder because they don't decompose
like all the soft gooey stuff does the soft cooey stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So there's some confusion again, since they don't really give
out the names. It was. I you know, some articles
said a boyfriend was searching for her, but I think
they confused that there was a man who was also
looking to die, and he came to the apartment and
(13:26):
then he changed his mind and he said, you know
this is this is not for me. But sheer sheets. Well,
this guy's a threat. Now he knows what I do.
So he killed him and dismembered him. All right, So
the the body counts is going up. But wait, there's more.
Remember I said it was one hundred and fifty square foot,
(13:48):
the whole apartment one hundred and fifty square feet.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
You're not where do you keep all your kiddy litter.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
In the coolers with? Well? Police found a total of
two hundred and forty bones in his little apartment, arms, legs,
and I want to guess how many skulls they found,
take a wild guest.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Six.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It was over a two month period. Nine in two months,
nine skulls were in coolers and toolboxes. So he's sleeping
in this tiny apartment with this horrific smell and the
bones and parts of all his victims. But he liked it.
(14:43):
I you know, I think I think anybody who's doing this,
we can say, is enjoying what he's doing.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
And I'm guessing how parents never visited after he got
the new place.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Huh. Apparently not. Apparently not. They may have been glad
to see him go.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
That's true, that's true. Let me help you pack your stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, yeah, don't let the door hitch in the butt
on your way out. So obviously he was arrested at
this point, but before he was indicted, he underwent five
months of psychiatric testing and at the end of it
he was deemed to be mentally stable. I have a
(15:30):
problem with that.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Well, if he's not, then I guess he can't be
charged either.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I mean, somebody who could missed these kind of things
is obviously not right in the head. But it's a
matter of whether they understand what they're doing and whether
it's right or wrong.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point, because clearly this was
he he planned, He planned very very well, and kept
doing it over and.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
You know, say routine somebody. So he had to get
rid of that guy, and so.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Right and understood, he had to get rid of evidence.
So the prosecution was looking for the death penalty. Enter
the defense attorneys. Oh, I love Japanese defense attorneys just
as much as in other countries because they said no, no, no, no, no,
this was murder with consent. Did you ever hear of
(16:28):
that murder with consent? That these victims all gave him
permission to kill them? Well, not the guy who had
changed his mind.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Hm.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And they didn't give him permission to rape them. And
we'll find out they really nobody really gave him permission
and they tried to. You know, again, he's he's just
such an empathetic guy. He's just trying to help these people.
He's a good guy, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Misunderstood all that, sure.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Right, right, right, right? So Shiahi said it was so
easy to manipulate women, to convince them that they wanted
to die. He did whatever he had to do, you know,
changed his story with each one. With some of them,
he made suicide side pacts. You know, I'm right with you,
(17:30):
I understand completely. Let's do it together. I'll help you die,
then I'll kill myself. Yeah, he forgot the second half
of that pact. There. He would pretend to be some
sort of spiritual person, like a spiritual leader, and like,
you know, death really is the best thing for you.
(17:52):
So these were vulnerable people, obviously in crisis, and he
just exploited them. And we see serial killers are very
very convincing, often extremely charming people. And he he obviously
had this. So before we get to the trial, why
don't we take our second break. This is Hudson River
(18:15):
Radio dot com. This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
So I just had a thought on our break there.
Perhaps we should have called this the kitty litter killer.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Okay, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I don't know it is the Twitter killer.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
But yeah, made contact with people, that's right, right, And
you know what, how many lessons have we heard about
the people you meet online? Just in general? You don't
know who they are. Yeah, and all right, you want
to have a chat, you want, Okay, but man, there's
don't send there, don't meet people, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It's like at this point they're predators. Yeah, it's it's
a predator's hunting ground. There was the Craigslist killer. Maybe
we should cover that. And I know somebody who was
very high in a organization and was luring young underage girls,
(19:20):
you know, on the Internet, and it's you know, it
happens all the time. They have you know, the police
have special people posing as young underage girls because that's
where predators go. So the trial was September started September thirtieth,
twenty twenty. And as much as the defense wanted to paint,
(19:42):
you know, shara Ishi as this merciful, empathetic, good guy,
he just came out and said, yeah, I killed the
women without their consent. It's the defense attorney. He's nightmare.
He said. One woman was sleeping when he killed her,
(20:05):
so clearly no consent. Another woman had basically changed her
mind and said, hey, why don't we go out to dinner,
We'll get something to eat, we'll go do something fun.
So maybe she you know, she didn't want to die.
She just she was lonely and she met this guy
and he's charming. It turned her around. Well, he ended
(20:25):
up killing her as well. During the trial, they said
he was just unnaturally calm, and the defense attorneys weren't
because in the middle of the trial he starts complaining,
this trial is taking way too long. Look, I'm guilty.
(20:46):
I killed nine people, Please just give me the death penalty.
I planned it, I did it. I did it for
sexual gratification, for money. It thrilled me, and I was
aroused by the dead bodies, so.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
That saved a lot of time, didn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Well if he had done this to begin but the
defense attorneys were in their pitching for him at Hill.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
They were doing their job.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, but anyway, so they're like, okay, you want to
plead guilty. That's you know, you're guilty. So he made
a statement in court. Okay, this is perhaps the most
honest serial killer statement I've ever heard. I am sorry
(21:39):
for having killed some of the victims with whom I
spent a lot of time, and would like to apologize
to these families. But for the others I don't really
feel a sense of regret. In any case, I am
only sorry because I failed when I got caught. If
I wasn't arrested, I would not be regretting anything. Mmm.
(22:03):
Oh yeah, how many times do we you know?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah, I'm sorry after I get caught.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yep, yeah, yeah, so guilty on all counts. December fifteenth,
twenty twenty. He is a a sentenced to the death penalty.
Now it's very different. Remember he was called the hanging
pro the hangman. Well, they do death by hanging. Interestingly enough,
(22:32):
in Japan it takes years usually to carry out the sentence,
and I had never heard this They don't tell anyone,
not even the people on death row when they will
be hanged. They don't know one day to the next. Yeah,
is it going to be tomorrow? Is it going to
be tomorrow? Is it going to You know, the families
(22:54):
don't know. They don't talk to the press, nobody. It's
all done in secret, so they don't know until the
day of You know, you wake up one morning, Hey,
guess what today's your number is up. So he was
just executed June twenty seventh, twenty twenty five. He was
(23:16):
hanged at the Tokyo Detention House. One victim's father said, personally,
I wanted him to get a life sentence over which
he has no choice but to atone for his wrongdoings,
rather than give him the death penalty he wanted. I understand,
(23:39):
and I know you have that opinion. Just let them
sit there and think about it forever. But is this
the kind of guy who's going to atone? Consider this?
This is a stake here.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Say a tone, just to be clear. Oh okay, I'm
not right for salvation at all with the with any
of this. I just don't think we should lower ourselves
to the same level, which I know we talked about before,
but that's sure we will again.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yes, Well, he was kind of looking forward to life
in prison if he was to get it, because he said,
get this, this is now he killed eight women and
one man, all right, now, I want to meet an
ordinary girl. I want to get married. I want to
(24:30):
find a marriage partner while I'm in jail. So he's
making plans to meet an ordinary girl. Oh, I'm sure
women would love to meet you. You did what to them?
This is where this guy's head was at. So was he,
(24:50):
And I'm sure he would have gotten all kinds of
pen pals, and he would have, you know, probably not
had a terrible life with all the people who would
sick enough to communicate with him. So I kept reading
over and over again. This case caused shock and anxiety
(25:12):
across the country for years. Apparently Japan has a really
big stigma about mental health issues. It's something you don't
talk about. People are embarrassed by it, and there's an
enormous amount of pressure to succeed in school, to succeed
in work. They work very long hours, there's a very
(25:35):
high expectations, so there's just a lot of pressure. So
I was able to find a couple of names, and
I just, you know, we often don't talk about the
victims enough, and in this case they didn't even name,
you know, all name victims. But there was twenty one
(25:56):
year old Mazuki Miora. She was an office war She
had been bullied in high school. So he on his Twitter,
Oh you poor poor thing. I was bullied too, you know,
I'll whatever it is I can lure you with. I'm
(26:17):
there too. I want to help you end your life.
And he drugged strangled, and this time he didn't. He
raped the dead body and then dismembered it in his bathroom.
Nineteen year old Hinako Shirashina, she was a runaway. Same deal.
(26:39):
Lorder on Twitter said exactly what she needed to hear. Drugged, raped,
strang strangled, raped the dead body, same thing, you know,
and he took his time cutting it up. A few
victims in the smell around the apartment was getting bad,
but he just so happened his apartment was near a sewer,
(27:01):
so people thought this. I don't know if he chose
it because it already it came with a bad smell
in the neighborhood. Anyway, twenty year old that the man
Sho Goo Nishinaka. He was the one who had changed
his mind. But because he knew too Yeah, he knew
(27:23):
too much. And since they he got rid of all
the flesh and organs, they needed to do DNA to
find the identities, which which they did. I checked the apartment.
He had a nice little cozy end unit. They renovated
(27:46):
the apartment. I bet it needed to be stripped down
to the studs and yeah, yeah, and there are new
tenants in there who were asked, don't you mind, No,
it's a it's an extra low rent here. Why So
because of this case, hopefully some good came of it.
(28:09):
They said there was more mental health awareness and they
strengthened social media predator laws and a lot more people
became more conscious, conscious of the dangers of social media.
But I guarantee right now there are predators actively around
(28:30):
the world on you name the social media platform, looking
for whatever victims. However they choose to victimize people. So
that is the Twitter kitty litter Killer's twister. Yes, Twitter
(28:51):
kitty litter killer. There we go, there we go. So
just a really sick individual. And personally, I'm glad he's
not around because he would just start messing with women's
heads by letter writing or something something somebody like that
(29:12):
is not going to stop.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
True.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
So there we have it all right.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, look, there's always that one extra twist you got
in there.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, this was a real twisty one kitty. Yeah that
I hope we just didn't give somebody out there a
light bulb didn't just go off over their head. What
a great idea.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
It doesn't work that well. So well, bother.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, So that is it. So I hope it wasn't
too horrifying for everybody. But if you choose to come
back to another episode, we will see you again here
on Murder in the Hudson Valley. If you don't find
yourself under a layer of kitty litter, This is Hudson
(30:06):
River Radio dot com.
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