About An Irie's family not hearing the noises.
If Rei was behind, maybe, barely verbal, he could be prone to head-banging. If so, this could explain why the noises were totally misinterpreted.
As I understand it, Rei would shout. Whether his typical sounds could be confused with the murder of four people, I don't know. Just on the face of it, it's hard to imagine how the two could sound similar.
I don't know how the perp chose the Miyazawas. Perhaps his luck lay in the correct choice of the victims. They had no connection to him, and he was a stranger to them.
I agree very much. This lack of connection, paired with his ability to leave without a trace, I think is the key to his success (along with a lot of luck).
I think he did stalk them, though. I doubt he spent a lot of time among the skateboarders. Once, maybe. But he had many chances to observe the Miyazawas. Where? If we answer this, we have a clue.
I don't think such a person would have easily blended in with that crowd without a love of skating and the necessary language skills. In the case of my POI, the latter would've been debatable. The former, I have no idea.
About the family. IMHO, there is certain projection here.
@FacelessPodcast, you say that the father was strict, but the way the perp treated Rei and Mikio, I suspect he is rather indifferent to men. MOO - he views women as his adversaries. He did quite a job on poor Niina and especially, Yasuko.
I don't say that Mikio was a strict father. He kept strict records / book-keeping. I think he was a good father. I do know that certain colleagues described him as a nice man who was good at his job, although sometimes difficult. Setsuko described him as loving and funny, he always used to make her laugh. That he spent his money on books and always kept financial records, even as a child. We also think that sometimes he would shout at people who parked too close to the house. Every man is a collage. Every man is what he is on that given day. I've said many times that trying to divine who the "true" target of the killer was is nebulous at best. It's true that Yasuko was stabbed the most. But everyone is dead. Perhaps she was his real target. Perhaps they all were. I have no opinion on the killer's attitudes towards men or women. Though I will say that in the case of my POI, nobody I spoke to felt he had any problem with women. Indeed, he seemed relatively social across different groups, girlfriend etc. But as I say, his life changed and he responded with anger.
And then you look at the Miyazawa family. I came across an interesting word describing people like Mikio in my mother tongue, "the botanists" (i.e., nerdish, science-inclined and harmless). Not so Yasuko. Opposite attracts, they say. She is strong, she stands out, and she is emotional.
Yasuko is the one I know the least about. Ann would not speak to us and Setsuko would not get on to her beyond saying that she was a good mother. I couldn't agree or disagree with what you say.
One wonders if in the perp's family, the layout was not dissimilar. The father, an obsessive perfectionist. The mother, emotional, perhaps slightly over the top. One wonders if she was even present in their lives by the time of the murders. Even if she was, I doubt that she and his father are married now. Somewhere along the line, she must have left. I don't know how (simply got free? Or got sick and was in the hospital?). The abandonment wounded the perp. Who did he attack the most viciously? Yasuko. What made him angry? JMO - the fact that she stayed by Niina and took care of her.
He attacked Yasuko most viciously, yes. But also Niina's front two teeth were missing. Her spinal column was severed. Is this because of anything they did? Nobody knows. Is this because of a pathological hatred of women. Again, no clue. It could just as easily be the fact that they were the last two that allowed the killer to visit more brutality on them. Don't forget that he aborted his attack on them to go downstairs for a different knife. That doesn't speak to me of a man driven by hatred, necessarily. Perhaps he wanted to ensure the knife would do its work.
Yasuko was not totally trapped. She could scream, maybe she could have run. But she stayed, to protect the child and fight for her. It angered the killer.
From her movements, it sounds like it took everything she had to carry Niina downstairs. Then it seems as if the child went to get the first aid kit. (One of the many incredibly tragic moments in this whole episode). I don't know if they were in any shape to fight by the time he returned with the carving knife. And again, I can't tell you with my hand on my heart that the killer
was angry. Though my guess is yes. Or at least, he was driven by the need for release. And I think what he was releasing was rage
So even if there was a girlfriend, i doubt that the split drove him overboard. More likely, it was some conflict between him and his mother. Because if you are right,
@FacelessPodcast, and they were from the base, look how the killer manipulated his "strict" father into helping him.
We don't know if the killer had any help at all from the father. My assumption is, at minimum, the father told nobody about the son's wounds (assuming he registered them as suspicious at all). I won't get into the specifics of my POI, but I can tell you that given changes in his life, I believe he was angry. His mother doesn't factor into any of that.
I even wonder if the parents had already split, perhaps the mother took the sibling, and left him. Or if she stayed, the killer was angry that she did not protect him. I don't know the pattern of his relationships with women, but if he still hunts, then he is 1) likely to attack women; 2) who are strangers; 3) judges women and hates "emotionally unavailable mothers". I feel there is some mess, he hates himself (unloved?) and takes it on women. I might be wrong, of course, but men he learned to manipulate.
I hope Yasuko fought him, and scratched him, too.
If any of that is true, he likely hasn't done that in the US (or if he has, he hasn't been apprehended nor has his profile been circulated). He certainly hasn't done this in Japan. My feeling is that he counted his blessings and started a quiet life. As I always say, half of homicides in the US go unsolved. That's a lot of men whistling as they mow the lawn, and wave a cheery good morning at their neighbours. I have no evidence for it and it's of course possible that he's committed other crimes. JMO that those crimes were pre-Setagaya.
