Janitor101
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- Joined
- May 22, 2020
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I don't understand why the TMPD would be so dismissive in terms of the contents of the killer's hip bag. What earthly reason would they have to discount ANY potential evidence recovered from the perp's personal belongings.There was an update on this front which, I'm pretty sure, came in a subsequent discussion with the Chief. It's not been very clear but basically, I've spoken to him many times -- on several occasions officially which were recorded and on the record for the podcast. And then, after that, we became friends. That stuff is mostly off the record, of course. But it was on the latter side where I learned that the CCTV footage did exist and for many years thought to be a good lead on the killer. Then, around 2022 or so, the man in the video was finally identified, located, and eliminated from the investigation through fingerprinting. It was simply a guy who had the bad luck to have bought the same knife as the killer in the days leading up to the murders. The Chief wouldn't get into exactly *how* they found him or why it took 22 years for that CCTV to prove fruitful.
I've obviously spent many, many hours pondering this / discussing this. Ultimately, I think the thing that makes the most sense is politics. That's a rabbit hole where we could speculate on everything from North Korea to the US being its largest trading partner (by trade balance according to World Bank). But if we accept the premise the killer might've been a US citizen, living in Japan via a USAF family, then we'd ultimately be talking about Japan putting to death an American. I don't have the info to hand but we're talking about a very short list, let alone one stationed at a USAF base. Now, I don't say this is exactly what is happening, nor do I say I have any concrete reason to think it. I just don't have a better premise in its place. I'm welcome to ideas. As to why the TMPD wouldn't pursue an international angle--considering they went to China on the mere possibility the knife was wrapped in the vein of Chinese fish factory workers, considering they went to Korea on the possibility the shoes were sold in Korea... I just can't make much sense of that. Perhaps they have information I do not. But from the many, many hours of discussion I had, it would've been very easy to say 'there are no good reasons for looking into the US, I can't tell you why.' That never came up. Not a single solid point made against the theory, or the sand, or even Edwards AFB.
There's also a lot of precedent of the US politely telling nations to get stuffed. The death of Harry Dunn recently showcased this and the UK is a friendly nation, too... If you throw into the mix a possible death sentence and Japan's arguably inhumane death row system, I'm sure there'd be ample cause for such a request to be turned down. And that's ignoring whether or not a military court would come into the mix. I'm not a JAG, I have no idea about the process but it would possibly fall down on one of two sides here for the TMPD:
1) It's an eternal mystery, we tried everything we could.
2) We know who he is and, for diplomatic reasons, we can't get him.
I can tell you the ensuing scandal would be massive. Again, I'm just riffing here. But assuming all these notes form a melody, that's lose-lose for a lot of people except Setsuko Miyazawa. And, frankly, she's pretty much the only person in this whole storm I care about.
Were the fingerprints of the killer matched against employees, soldiers, etc. from any of the military bases or was any solid reason ever given as to why they didn't pursue this avenue of investigation?
What have they got to lose?