Japan - Miyazawa family of 4 murdered, Setagaya, Tokyo, 30 Dec 2000 #3

[FacelessPodcast]

For those wondering whether Yokota kids could drive. Also, note the Tokyo number plates on the cars.

 

[annemc2]

Yokota also had a Union Race Team that would compete against the Tokyo Sports Car Club. The monthly drifting race took place in the front parking lot of Yokata High School "for several years," even though I'm only seeing it mentioned in the 1998 yearbook.

 

[Incoherent]

Re: Yokota AFB selling half sizes for shoes in the stores, I just had a look at the Yokota Main Exchange website which is the mega mall on the base. While Slazenger is not listed as a brand of shoe they sell currently, they do sell in half sizes.
Interestingly, they do sell Slazenger clothing still. This leads me to believe they likely had shoes there at some point too, JMO.
I’m unsure where I could find the information from 24 years ago though.

Shop Army & Air Force Exchange Service

www.shopmyexchange.com

 

[Charlot123]

Re: Yokota AFB selling half sizes for shoes in the stores, I just had a look at the Yokota Main Exchange website which is the mega mall on the base. While Slazenger is not listed as a brand of shoe they sell currently, they do sell in half sizes.
Interestingly, they do sell Slazenger clothing still. This leads me to believe they likely had shoes there at some point too, JMO.
I’m unsure where I could find the information from 24 years ago though.

Shop Army & Air Force Exchange Service

www.shopmyexchange.com

I assume that an army base store is an extension of US stores. Culturally, American. In any US footwear store or a major department store, both shoes and sneakers come in half sizes.

 

[Incoherent]

I assume that an army base store is an extension of US stores. Culturally, American. In any US footwear store or a major department store, both shoes and sneakers come in half sizes.

Yes, quite naturally. So then, when the TMPD discover the footprint is 27.5cm and isn’t a size available in Japan, it is interesting they decide the shoe is automatically from another country (in this case South Korea) and not from the military base down the road that sells shoes in larger half sizes and also sells other Slazenger items too (even today).

Of course if they were a half centimetre off then they were available in Japan.

 

[fridaybaker]

Re: Yokota AFB selling half sizes for shoes in the stores, I just had a look at the Yokota Main Exchange website which is the mega mall on the base. While Slazenger is not listed as a brand of shoe they sell currently, they do sell in half sizes.
Interestingly, they do sell Slazenger clothing still. This leads me to believe they likely had shoes there at some point too, JMO.
I’m unsure where I could find the information from 24 years ago though.

Shop Army & Air Force Exchange Service

www.shopmyexchange.com

Wow! Incoherent, you are good! It didn’t occur to me that we “civilians” would be able to view merchandise offered for sale at a military exchange. I see two Slazenger items offered for sale right now.

Of course, this “proves” nothing, but in my mind, it’s a nice little piece of information. Earlier on in the thread it was established that in the late 90’s Slazenger shoes were, indeed, known to be worn quite a bit by tennis players, specifically, and now we see Slazenger clothing items offered for sale on the Yakota Main Exchange site.

Incoherent, I’m just editing this to add: You mentioned that you looked at the “Yakota Main Exhange website which is the mega mall on the base”. When I click the link, though, it looks like a website where any military person from around the world can order clothing online. Can you clarify a bit? Maybe not the strong clue that I thought? TIA!

 

[SteveL]

I have 2 strong POIS. Leaning towards one. Circumstantial evidence continues to grow. I’m curious if others have a POI.

 

[fridaybaker]

Yes, quite naturally. So then, when the TMPD discover the footprint is 27.5cm and isn’t a size available in Japan, it is interesting they decide the shoe is automatically from another country (in this case South Korea) and not from the military base down the road that sells shoes in larger half sizes and also sells other Slazenger items too (even today).

Of course if they were a half centimetre off then they were available in Japan.

Yeah- a half a centimeter! It’s pretty hard to think that they couldn’t have been off by a half a centimeter, but it’s very tempting to rely on that half-size being a salient clue.

Right now, though, I’m just pondering the Slazenger brand, and who might have likely been wearing that brand.

 

[Incoherent]

Incoherent, I’m just editing this to add: You mentioned that you looked at the “Yakota Main Exhange website which is the mega mall on the base”. When I click the link, though, it looks like a website where any military person from around the world can order clothing online. Can you clarify a bit? Maybe not the strong clue that I thought? TIA!

RSBM: Hey Friday! Hope you’re well.

Yes, the Yokota Main Exchange is a shopping mall on the base. You are correct it looks like items from the mall can be ordered online too.
If you check Google you can see pictures of inside the mall and what it looks like:

 

[Incoherent]

Correction re: the Yokota Main Exchange website, it does look like the website covers a more extensive area including outside of Japan rather than just the exchanges on AF bases in Japan.
This makes it more difficult to narrow down what items are sold there and what aren’t, so the searchable merchandise on the website may or may not be available on the AF base and could just be online only.

@fridaybaker you are right this may not be as big of a clue as initially hoped sadly!

 

[Hausos]

I have 2 strong POIS. Leaning towards one. Circumstantial evidence continues to grow. I’m curious if others have a POI.

If you’re talking about the yearbook, there was someone that caught my eye but none of it matters because he has a foreign father.

In fact, the vast majority of kids at Yokota are either fully white, fully black, fully Filipino, or mixed race with the vast majority of those unions being the results of a foreign father x Japanese mother (makes sense, it’s Japan and two decades ago).

If there’s one thing I’m sure about the case, 99.99% positive, is that the killer has an East Asian or SE Asian father.

That makes the list of potential POIs extremely small. Looking through this now narrowed down list and even doing my own extended sleuthing with google and social media sites, I can’t say I have a POI. A lot of these Yokota AB individuals also have really good jobs now and went to decent universities in the US I’ve noticed.

 

[Hausos]

I wonder how Japan can give the DNA to some lab to find out the killer’s haplogroups without any trouble from the government but can’t do basic isotoping to find out what locations the killer may have spent his life nor determine a phenotype profile. I know if I had the DNA, I would be able to do so.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

I wonder how Japan can give the DNA to some lab to find out the killer’s haplogroups without any trouble from the government but can’t do basic isotoping to find out what locations the killer may have spent his life nor determine a phenotype profile. I know if I had the DNA, I would be able to do so.

As I’ve posted many times throughout the thread: because this information was leaked by someone at the university lab they went to the second opinion for. (Side bar: it was an eminent university, not some lab).

The TMPD didn’t want any of the DNA information to be out there and even asked Wikipedia to remove it as it would lead to assumptions about the killer’s ethnic make-up. Wikipedia rejected this.

Put simply, we don’t know what the killer’s genetic make-up is. We don’t know whether he’s ‘mixed race’ and certainly this cannot be stated as fact.

Even Dr. M, the man who ran the aforementioned lab and the one of the few people outside of the TMPD to have looked at the killer’s DNA, is cagey to this day about it all. In my most recent communication with him, he wouldn’t get into an explanation of the assertion that everyone always quotes: ‘1 in 4 chance of being Korean.’

 

[FlowersInBloom]

Correction re: the Yokota Main Exchange website, it does look like the website covers a more extensive area including outside of Japan rather than just the exchanges on AF bases in Japan.
This makes it more difficult to narrow down what items are sold there and what aren’t, so the searchable merchandise on the website may or may not be available on the AF base and could just be online only.

@fridaybaker you are right this may not be as big of a clue as initially hoped sadly!

Darn. That would have been extremely useful if we could see exactly what is sold in the Yokota exchange and not just overall…

But it is still useful information… because we at least have an idea of what they sell there. And if Slazenger is on the website, it could possibly mean it’s in the exchange too. So, thank you Incoherent for looking into that… it is worth taking into consideration I think.

 

[FlowersInBloom]

As I’ve posted many times throughout the thread: because this information was leaked by someone at the university lab they went to the second opinion for. (Side bar: it was an eminent university, not some lab).

The TMPD didn’t want any of the DNA information to be out there and even asked Wikipedia to remove it as it would lead to assumptions about the killer’s ethnic make-up. Wikipedia rejected this.

Put simply, we don’t know what the killer’s genetic make-up is. We don’t know whether he’s ‘mixed race’ and certainly this cannot be stated as fact.

Even Dr. M, the man who ran the aforementioned lab and the one of the few people outside of the TMPD to have looked at the killer’s DNA, is cagey to this day about it all. In my most recent communication with him, he wouldn’t get into an explanation of the assertion that everyone always quotes: ‘1 in 4 chance of being Korean.’

AFAIK Wikipedia does take down information when requested to as long as it is proven to be false or untruthful by the person who requests. If Wiki refused it could allude to the TMPD not being able to prove the leaked information is false so it’s still up there.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

AFAIK Wikipedia does take down information when requested to as long as it is proven to be false or untruthful by the person who requests. If Wiki refused it could allude to the TMPD not being able to prove the leaked information is false so it’s still up there.

Tokyo LE told me: “We requested the removal of the information. They responded that they would only do this with a court order.”

I think it’s less that what was leaked was *false* per se, more likely misunderstood or misrepresented. As I say, there’s the idea that killer is mixed race spoken of as a given fact out there — everywhere from forum free thinkers to respected news outlets. This simply is not established.

 

[Charlot123]

If you’re talking about the yearbook, there was someone that caught my eye but none of it matters because he has a foreign father.

In fact, the vast majority of kids at Yokota are either fully white, fully black, fully Filipino, or mixed race with the vast majority of those unions being the results of a foreign father x Japanese mother (makes sense, it’s Japan and two decades ago).

If there’s one thing I’m sure about the case, 99.99% positive, is that the killer has an East Asian or SE Asian father.

That makes the list of potential POIs extremely small. Looking through this now narrowed down list and even doing my own extended sleuthing with google and social media sites, I can’t say I have a POI. A lot of these Yokota AB individuals also have really good jobs now and went to decent universities in the US I’ve noticed.

It would seem so, logically. Theoretically speaking, however, the provider of Y-Chromosome for the perpetrator could have been a Chinese migrant who came to California during the Gold Rush of 1848, and the percentage of Asian genome in the perpetrator could have been 1-3%. That’s the problem with Y, it gets passed over from father to son, doesn’t recombine, and slowly mutates. So for all we know, mother could have been Asian but with European mitoDNA (for the same reason, we are talking about what happened centuries ago) and the father could look and feel absolutely non-Asian. In my whole family tree, the thing that differs from the main ethnicity is the Y. Mito is generally not reliable for ethnicity to start with. So with the information that we have, Y and mito, we can’t assume anything about the perpetrator’s ethnicity- at all. Autosomal tests would tell us more. I just presume that the killer did not stand out in Tokyo so he should have been at least half-Asian, or more likely, fully. But what side, we don’t know. Maybe - the irony! - he was neither Japanese nor Chinese nor Korean but could pass for an Asian due to his looks. It happens, too as looks do not always match the main ethnicity as well.

 

[Hausos]

Oh no, I don’t actually think the killer is mixed race. In fact, the opposite.

I think the whole Y DNA being seen in 1/4 Koreans thing was only spread because there’s a common trend in Japan to blame any crime on foreigners, in particular the Koreans & the Chinese. The data the lab in the university has given is wrong, if it’s what they gave, because the haplogroup is most commonly seen in SE Asians and Chinese first (nearly 1/2 of Chinese!), and then Japanese, and then Korean. In fact, it’s ultra rare in ethnicities outside of these.

That’s why I was looking at potential POI’s with certain surnames or profiles. There was only one person that interested me in the Yokota YBs but he has a foreign father, Japanese mother. It doesn’t match with my opinion (because it’s not fact, it’s just me guessing based on probability as the Y haplogroup belonging to someone with origins not from SE Asia, China, Japan, Korea, etc is virtually nil).

Or maybe I’m dumb and family name doesn’t get passed from father to child in Asia.

I was mostly mentioning the data given because it does seem like they have some authority to work on the DNA. They don’t have to leak it to commoners, but they can utilize it to find out more info about the killer. I wonder if the TMPD already has done so? Maybe that’s why they’re hesitant to talk about the few but important killers that link the prep to America?

 

[FacelessPodcast]

I was mostly mentioning the data given because it does seem like they have some authority to work on the DNA. They don’t have to leak it to commoners, but they can utilize it to find out more info about the killer.

RSBM

Just wondering what you’re basing this on, @Hausos? Do you have a link / source handy?

 

[SteveL]

My opinions continue to evolve and formulate, so I decided to listen to "Faceless" today for the THIRD time, in entirety. It continues to be thoroughly engaging. Nic, I can't commend you enough. Thanks for the work you put into it. As I consider it THE reference source, it brought up more questions..

I believe Miura High School may be a potential short term stop for the POI. I haven't looked at their yearbooks yet, but wonder if this may hold clues. USAF military travels frequently, and this is another base close by Yakota. Does anyone share this opinion?

I apologize, as I HATE when others bicker with Nic. However, I still think the skater angle is something to consider. In the podcast, Nic agrees with other skaters opinions the clothing didn't match what skaters wear, ad nauseam. I AGREE. However, my contention is the killer was trying to LOOK like a skater (failing). What would draw the killer to the Miyazawa home? I believe the killer had ties to Yokota, 18 miles away. My contention continues to be the skate park. Why else would the killer randomly choose this isolated home? My opinion, there has to be some kind of skater influence. And again, the Faceless podcast touches on the grip tape angle. Thanks sincerely Nic, for covering this. I think it means something.