Rosleny Magdalena (28) was shot dead in broad daylight in Amsterdam ten years ago. Her family has been in the dark ever since about who is responsible for this brutal murder. "Someone knows more."
It is a rainy morning on Thursday, November 17, 2016. Rosleny takes her six-year-old daughter to school, as she does every day. By bike, just a ten-minute ride.
She gives her daughter a kiss. "Mommy is coming to pick you up later. Have fun," she says. She cycles back home, through the Maldenhof in the Bijlmermeer. Rosleny crosses the bicycle bridge when suddenly multiple shots are fired.
Not long after, she is hanging over the railing of the bridge, severely wounded. "Call 112, I've been shot," she manages to cry out.
She was shot from behind with two bullets by a cyclist who had followed her, as later revealed by camera footage. Emergency services attempted to resuscitate and even operate on her at the scene. However, she died on the bridge shortly thereafter.
No DNA, witness, or weapon
Rosleny's cousin Shulesca watched the camera footage countless times. "The cyclist is wearing a rain coat, stops under a bicycle bridge, and waits for her. And when Rosleny cycles past, that person follows her," she says on autopilot.
To this day, it remains unclear who murdered her. "There is no DNA, no witness, and no weapon," says Shulesca. "We don't even know if it was a man or a woman."
After ten years she is still furious, she says. "It is só cowardly to shoot someone from behind. She didn't realize what was happening. She stood no chance."
Shulesca on the bridge where her cousin Rosleny was murdered ten years ago.
Image: Shulesca de la Croes
Someone knows more
The anger is fueled by the lack of help in this case, she explains. "There are people who know more. People who were close to Rosleny or people who were supposedly on good terms with her: someone knows something. I am convinced of that."
She holds this conviction because, over the years, several people have approached her on the street. One by one, they claim to know something about the murder, but also that they cannot say anything about it.
Shulesca describes the Bijlmer as "a big village, where everyone knows each other." Rosleny was also a familiar face there. "Rosleny loved the hood , everyone knew her," she says. According to Shulesca, there is a kind of code language in the neighborhood: "You don't snitch."
That is precisely where Shulesca's anger lies. "It is nonsense that no one knows who murdered her. It is known that many Black people live in the Bijlmer. We need to support and help each other. We all shout Black Lives Matter, but then we shoot each other dead there."
Hypocritical, she thinks. "If you know something about a murder and you've kept my mouth shut for ten years, how can you live with yourself?" According to the police, Rosleny had no criminal past.
Contact with Peter R. de Vries
The police threw all their might into the case. Over the years, many names have been mentioned and several people arrested, but also released again. Despite a reward of 15,000 euros, no crucial tip has yet come in.
After two years, Shulesca and her family were close to despair and contacted Peter R. de Vries (note: Dutch investigative journalist and crime reporter. Known for having stood by and helped multiple families of people (often minors) that were murdered in cases that then turned cold). He delved into the case and, through his sources, came up with names that Shulesca herself or the police had not come up with. "Peter said: 'This is going to be a long haul, but we will get through this'," Shulesca recounts. "But then Peter himself was murdered."
With that, the hope for a definitive answer vanished. Tuesday marks exactly ten years since Rosleny was murdered. "Not knowing what happened for ten years is a really long time," says her cousin. It still holds her and her family in its grip.
"Processing is impossible without answers," says Shulesca. "My emotions are locked away." She only enjoys herself occasionally and has a short fuse. Her social circle is small because she trusts few people. "The person I am now, I never wanted that for myself."
I have become her voice
Shulesca still finds it painful to see the daughter of her murdered cousin, who is now sixteen years old. "When I see her, I see Rosleny. She looks so much like her mother." She does not want to reveal anything else about her niece for privacy reasons.
Shulesca describes Rosleny as someone who made life a party. "We miss her being with us. Her positivity, her cheerful presence. We are no longer complete. A grandchild is missing. And a mother."
Yet she thinks the case will be solved someday. "I hope people's consciences will kick in. I am going to keep hoping. I promised her that." Rosleny herself can no longer speak, Shulesca explains. "That's why I do it. I am her voice."
A little while ago I picked up a book titled Submerged by Hillel Levin, who co-authored the book Black Bird: One Man's Freedom Hides in Another Man's Darkness, which then went on to become a popular AppleTV mini-series.
Reading the book has been harrowing as the topic of the book is about a 16 year old girl found murdered in a small town in Indiana. Rayna Rison at the age of 12 was a victim of rape by the hands of her brother in law Raymond McCarty. She was impregnated by her abuser, and had to seek out an abortion. Her family was in no way supportive of her during her abuse, and constantly blamed her for "tempting" the grown man that was Raymond McCarty. Her sister, the wife of her abuser, being the one most vocal and vitriolic in her disdain for her abused sister. Following this, Raymond was arrested and charged, however was allowed a sentence of 3 years probation, on the condition he not associate himself with his victim, or any other child of that age, and to participate in counseling. All these conditions were violated, yet his parole officer found him suited to continue participating in society, and his wife still found him fit enough to be a husband.
4 years later Rayna Rison would be found dead submerged in a local pond, shortly after Raymond had started to rape the 16 year old Rayna again. He would be considered a prime suspect, however charges were dropped, and the case left cold for years. Eventually, an ex middle school boyfriend and close friend to Rayna, Jason Tibbs, would be arrested and found guilty for the murder of his friend, due to the confession of an inmate and former friend of Tibbs. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2014. The account by the inmate claims that he drove Tibbs to the place where Rayna worked on the night of her murder, a veterinarian hospital, and the two argued. They were driven around, continuing to argue, before Tibbs allegedly strangled Rayna to death. It's important to note that this testimony was only obtained after the inmate, Eric Freeman, was offered immunity by the law. There was also a testimony by one Ricky Hammons, who was also reported to have take a deal with the prosecution, to hopefully reduce his 40 year sentence for murder. Anything I have found concerning the case has labelled Tibbs an "obsessive" and "jealous" ex boyfriend, who killed her because he could not get back with her.
Years later, Hillel Levin began researching this case, no doubt because of the loose connection it has with Larry Hall, the serial killer at the heart of his other work Black Bird: One Man's Freedom Hides in Another Man's Darkness, as Larry Hall was briefly considered a suspect for the murder, before investigators found he was in Kentucky at the time. However, according to his book Submerged, Hillel Levin has found new evidence which he reports definitively proves that Jason Tibbs is innocent, and that Raymond McCarty was the one responsible for Rayna Rison's murder.
In response to this book, a retrial for Jason Tibbs has been denied, and there is no more news concerning this case. Raymond McCarty was found dead in jail in 2018, there is no listed cause of death that I could find in any news articles online. There are no wikipedia articles, barely any reddit posts, barely any youtube videos, or true crime podcast episodes that do not predate the release of this book. I have yet to find any discussion about this book whatsoever.
Anyone who has looked into this case or has read this book, please comment and let me know your perspective on this. When I read or hear of these cases which are cold for years and years, I at least see a wikipedia page about the victim or the suspects, yet I have found nothing relating to this case that wasn't published a decade before.
Utah Teen Kylie Arellano was safely rescued in Oregon by authorities on November 1, 2026, after 521 days of allegedly being held against her will. The 17 year old vanished from her home when she was 15, in May of 2025.
According to a police source, Kylie was lured away by the kidnapper she met on Snapchat & got into his car willingly. He then threw her phone into a lake & told her she wasn't free to go.
Kylie was allegedly forced to sleep against a wall in her kidnapper's basement, was threatened with a knife, was assaulted throughout her captivity, and was forced to remove her braces with pliers.
She was eventually given a phone to use for gaming & hooked onto wifi. While playing "Among Us" she told another child that she was being held against her will. That boy told his mother, who figured out where Kylie was & contacted authorities.
39 year old Adam Harmel, the alleged abductor, was arrested during a traffic stop. He's currently charged with transporting Kylie across state lines to exploit her. I'm sure more charges are to come.
“A horrific crime strikes three innocent children in a down-and-out Siberian steel town. But the townspeople are too preoccupied with their own struggles to express alarm,” The Moscow Times reported on 14th June, 1997. The ‘steel town’ where this massacre took place, Novokuznetsk, is an industrial city in southwestern Siberia, home to one of Russia’s largest steelmaking centers."
Throes Of A Struggling Town
By the late 1990s, Novokuznetsk’s citizens were dealing with the consequences of a country in the throes of a painful transformation.
The Soviet Union had collapsed in 1991, and the transition to a market economy had left much of the population struggling to make ends meet. Given the circumstances in which the adults of this town themselves were, it is hardly difficult to imagine the plight of their children.
Vanora Bennett’s report in The Moscow Times described a city struggling with poverty, unpaid wages and widespread social neglect. Homeless children lived in cellars, begged on the streets and sniffed glue. Many kept their distance from adults, whom they associated with drunkenness, violence or trouble with the police.
It was among these vulnerable children and young people that Alexander Spesivtsev, later dubbed ‘The Siberian Ripper,’ found his victims.
A Bitter Mama’s Boy
Alexander Nikolayevich Spesivtsev was born on 1 March 1970 and raised in an apartment on Pionerskiy Prospekt in central Novokuznetsk, the largest city in Kemerovo Oblast, in Siberia, in the former Soviet Union.
According to a 2024 investigation by the Russian regional publication NGS42, he was born at home, and his birth was registered only two years later.
In 1974, the Spesivtsevs moved into an apartment in a nine-story building at 53 Pionersky Prospekt, in the very center of Novokuznetsk. Years later, it was there that Spesivtsev would commit his atrocities.
From birth, Spesivtsev had a rather unusual relationship with his mother, Lyudmila Spesivtseva, who worked at a nearby school and the prosecutor’s office.
Reports describe Spesivtseva as being very affectionate toward her son, even saying she was ‘his only true friend’. But that wasn’t the unusual part.
Apparently, Lyudmila would bring home photographs of corpses from work, and she and her son spent hours gazing at them.
“He was raised under an overprotective mother, who considered him “weak and vulnerable.” She didn’t particularly indulge his whims, but when he misbehaved, she always took her son’s side, actively defending him, believing he was indisputably right,” his case file states.
Spesivtsev’s father, on the other hand, was an abusive alcoholic who had abandoned the family.
Spesivtsev’s In School
A schoolmate, journalist Rostislav Bardokin, recalls a particularly compelling incident involving him.
“He [Spesivtsev] identified some boys who were influential in the class and could potentially pose a threat to him. To gain their favor, he handed out Makarov pistol cartridges to the boys, real ones he’d gotten hold of somewhere,” he said.
He added that, rather than spending breaks with other boys, Spesivtsev often went to his mother’s office, where she worked at the same school.
During his final year of school, in 1985, Spesivtsev was caught stealing for the first time. He was caught twice more in 1987 and 1988, following which he was detained and sent to pretrial detention.
In 1988, during a routine court hearing, Spesivtsev reportedly began to bang his head against the bars and scream, “I won’t go to jail! I don’t want to! I don’t want to!” This prompted a forensic psychiatric examination, which found him ‘insane,’ and he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Following this, Spesivtsev was sentenced to compulsory treatment at the Novokuznetsk Psychiatric Hospital, where he remained from October 1988 to March 1989, after which he escaped and lived with his mother, hiding from hospital staff and the police.
Even during his time at the hospital, he apparently beat weakened patients, took medications that were not prescribed to him, and was ‘deceitful and devious’.
The Siberian Ripper’s First Victim
Spesivtsev’s first known victim was a teenage girl whom he met in 1991. Kommersant, reporting on his October 1997 trial, identified her as Evgeniya Guselnikova, or Zhenya, and noted her age as 16.
According to this report, Guselnikova frequently visited Spesivtsev’s apartment before failing to return home one day. Her family reported her missing, but they could not find her.
Months later, Lyudmila called an ambulance, whose medical personnel discovered Guselnikova alive but in a profoundly deteriorated condition, suffering from extensive wounds and severe physical neglect.
Her head had been partially scalped, with bedsores, festering wounds, and cigarette burns. The girl had lost almost a third of her body weight. Soon after, she succumbed to her injuries.
NGS42’s report adds that Spesivtsev had repeatedly beaten the girl on previous occasions as well. On one occasion, she had to be hospitalized with a head injury, and a criminal case was opened against him for assault.
When her body was eventually discovered on 13 June 1991, investigators added a murder allegation.
Spesivtsev denied responsibility, claiming that she had arrived at his apartment already injured.
Investigators arrested Spesivtsev on 27 June 1991. A forensic psychiatric examination followed, and doctors recommended compulsory psychiatric treatment at a specialized hospital in Oryol. As a result, the case did not immediately lead to a prison sentence.
Following further psychiatric assessments and compulsory treatment, on New Year’s Eve, 1995, Spesivtsev was declared sane and discharged from the hospital, allowing him to go free.
In early February 1996, he encountered a woman named Elena Trunova while visiting a neighbor. As he explained, he had met her at a party the previous evening, and as he was about to leave, Spesivtsev invited her to come over to his residence.
Alone with her, he tried to become intimate, much to Trunova’s discomfort.
“After we had sex, something didn’t sit right with her, and she started swearing at me. I didn’t like it, I got angry, and decided to scare her. I went into the kitchen, picked up a kitchen knife from the table, went back into the bedroom, and stabbed her in the chest and stomach,” Alexander Spesivtsev testified during interrogation.
The Killing Spree Begins
Elena died from her wounds, and Spesivtsev reportedly asked his mother to remove the body once she returned. He claimed that he went to bed soon afterward, and when he woke up, neither his mother nor the victim’s body were home.
According to investigators, either Alexander, his mother, or both of them dismembered the body that evening, with Lyudmila Spesivtseva then removing the remains from the apartment piece by piece and burying them in a nearby vacant lot.
Macabre as this sounds, this was only the beginning of Spesivtsev’s killing spree.
Spesivtsev later confessed to investigators to 15 murders he’d committed between March and August 1996. Among the victims were 11 minors, consisting of both boys and girls.
According to his account, the boys approached him to ask for cigarettes. After a brief conversation, he invited the group back to his apartment.
Once there, Spesivtsev claimed he began lecturing the children about life, but they dismissed his interference, telling him their behavior was none of his business.
Angered by their response, he allegedly seized a knife and killed the five boys. He subsequently killed the two girls, claiming that he had learned they were ‘prostitutes’ and that this had provoked his disgust.
Interestingly, Spesivtsev did not specify that his mother had disposed of the bodies in this case. Instead, he vaguely repeated the trope of his mother coming to the apartment and discovering the bodies, after which Spesivtsev would go to bed or leave the apartment; when he woke up or returned, nothing was there.
It is believed Lyudmila would dispose of unwanted remains by throwing them from buckets into the Aba River, late at night, which is also supported by the fact that gangrenous severed heads, torsos, and arms of unidentifiable children were found washed up on the banks of the River Aba.
Spesivtsev allegedly never asked his mother where the bodies had gone.
The Bait
In the summer of 1996, Alexander asked his mother to find him a ‘girlfriend’, according to his criminal case file.
On 24 September that year, Lyudmila Spesivtseva encountered three schoolgirls near a shop in Novokuznetsk who were patients at a local hospital and had gone out to buy batteries for one of their music players.
Lyudmila approached them and asked them to accompany her to her apartment, ostensibly to help her open the door.
Of course, no assistance with the lock had been provided. After bringing the girls upstairs, Lyudmila knocked on her son’s apartment door. Once inside, she forced the schoolgirls into a room.
Spesivtsev stabbed one of the girls to death. According to the account given by the sole survivor, she’d attempted to fight back with a bottle, hoping to escape, but struck him on the shoulder instead of the head. He then allegedly ordered the two surviving girls to dismember their dead companion, handing them a saw and forcing them to carry out the task.
In his initial testimony, Spesivtsev claimed that his mother had deliberately brought the girls to the apartment at his request, knowing that he intended to harm them. Lyudmila denied this.
Soup Made from Human Flesh
Much of what occurred behind those fatal doors is known from the testimony of the only victim who had survived for long enough to be found, Olga Galtseva.
Recounting the ordeal, she described how Alexander, who had introduced himself to the victims as Andrei, served her soup allegedly made from the flesh of their murdered companion, Katya.
“He fed us soup made from Katya’s flesh, although I didn’t see whether he ate any himself. The old woman had cooked it. She knew where Andrei had obtained the meat and what it was. I also saw her leave with a bag containing body parts, which she carried away to an unknown destination. They never discussed what she did with them. From their conversations, however, I gathered that Andrei had paid her for bringing us to him. He always addressed the old woman simply as ‘eh’ and never called her by any other name,” she recalled.
Two and a half weeks later, Spesivtsev killed a second girl and ordered the only survivor at the time, Olga Galtseva, to saw up her body as well.
In her testimony, Olga recounted the escalating violence she and her companion, Marina, endured. Andrey repeatedly assaulted and abused them, eventually leaving Marina critically injured after a brutal beating. Despite the survivor’s attempts to revive her, Marina died.
Andrei (Alexander) then left her body in the apartment for three days before ordering the surviving girl to dismember it and dispose of the remains. The testimony also describes the continued sexual violence and confinement the survivor suffered during her captivity, in harrowing detail.
The Last Survivor
At this point, Spesivtsev decided to get rid of his final victim, Olga Galtseva.
Spesivtsev first electrocuted the schoolgirl, then stopped feeding her, and finally stabbed her in the stomach. Despite all the brutality, the girl remained alive.
By an extraordinary stroke of luck, the very next day, October 24th, utility workers knocked repeatedly on Spesivtsev’s door and asked him to open it so they could check the heating system.
When he refused, they said they’d return with police force and break the door if necessary, which is exactly what happened.
While they broke down the door from the outside, Spesivtsev went out onto the balcony and used the fire escape to flee, though they caught him only two days later.
When utility workers and police finally entered the apartment, to their utmost horror, they found human remains scattered throughout the ransacked premises, along with a severely injured schoolgirl who was still alive.
She was rushed to hospital, but despite the doctors’ efforts, she died on 28 October 1996. Before her death, however, she managed to recount the horrors she had witnessed, providing investigators with crucial testimony that would prove instrumental in building the case against Alexander Spesivtsev and his mother.
Olga’s Testimony
In her testimony, the surviving girl, Olga Galtseva, recalled that on the afternoon of 24 September 1996, an elderly woman approached her, Katya, and Marina near a row of kiosks. Recognizing her, the girls agreed to help her open her apartment door and followed her to a ninth-floor flat.
Instead, they were confronted by a man who introduced himself as Andrei and ushered them inside, accompanied by a large black dog to scare them further. When the girls begged to leave, he refused, saying someone would have to come and examine them first.
Realizing they were in danger, Katya (one of the three girls) suggested striking him with a bottle and escaping. When Andrei returned to the room, she attempted to do so, hitting his shoulder rather than his head.
He retaliated by stabbing her repeatedly before strangling her. The surviving girl recalled that the elderly woman briefly entered the room and asked what was happening, but Andrei ordered her away and threatened to do the same to her.
The girl later testified that, on the second day of their captivity, Andrei photographed the three of them and threatened to send the image, smeared with blood, to her mother. By then, Katya was dead, and the surviving girls had been forced to help dismember her body.
Alexander and Lyudmila denied ever feeding their victims human flesh. Nadezhda Spesivtseva, Alexander’s sister, claimed she was in another room the entire time, saw the girls only once, then left the apartment, and knew nothing about what happened to them.
She was never charged.
The Trial And It's Aftermath
Spesivtsev initially confessed to killing around twenty children and adolescents, but later retracted his admissions.
According to Kommersant’s reporting, he claimed that he wanted to turn the trial into a spectacle and hoped that someone would eventually write a book about him.
In 1997, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of three girls, and at that time, an expert examination found him to be of sound mind. Based on the evidence found, he is suspected of having committed over 80 murders starting as early as 1991. However, he was only convicted of four of these murders.
In 1999, a fresh psychiatric assessment by Moscow’s Serbsky Institute concluded that Spesivtsev was legally insane in connection with the later killings.
Spesivtsev’s mother, Lyudmila, was charged with the kidnapping of three girls and complicity in their murder under aggravating circumstances in a joint criminal case with her son. She was found guilty in 1999 and sentenced to 13 years in a general regime penal colony.
After her release, she and her daughter, Nadezhda, were spotted near the same apartment on Pionersky Prospekt in Novokuznetsk, sparking outrage among local residents. The women decided not to live there, took their belongings, and soon moved out.
Alexander Spesivtsev remains confined to a specialized psychiatric hospital. In May 2024, the Kemerovo Regional Court found him responsible for fifteen additional murders committed in 1996, eleven of the victims being minors, and ordered that he continue to receive compulsory psychiatric treatment.
A former staff member interviewed by V1.ru described Spesivtsev as outwardly calm and polite, adding that he repeatedly asked to be released. The same employee said he doubted he would ever leave the institution.
AIF Kuzbass very recently investigated rumors that Lyudmila Spesivtseva had died at the age of 87 after her records disappeared from Russia’s bailiff debt database, but these rumors haven’t been confirmed yet.
In October 2003, 23-year-old Felipe Santos was involved in a minor fender bender, and in January 2004, 27-year-old Terrance Williams suffered a vehicle breakdown. Because both men were driving illegally at the time of their police encounters, Collier County Sheriff’s Deputy Steven Calkins had the legal authority to detain them. Witnesses saw both Santos and Williams being placed into the back of Calkins' patrol car. Neither man was ever seen alive again.
When questioned by investigators, Calkins offered the exact same alibi for both disappearances. He claimed he took pity on the men, decided against arresting them, and instead dropped them both off at local Circle K convenience stores. However, no video footage or eyewitnesses ever corroborated that either man made it to a gas station. Calkins' story completely fell apart when dispatch logs revealed he had run a background check on Williams using a specific alias birthdate almost an hour after he claimed to have already dropped him off, strongly suggesting Williams was still in his custody.
Despite showing signs of deception on a polygraph test and being fired by the sheriff's office in 2004 for untruthfulness, Calkins was never criminally charged. Investigators scoured his patrol car and used covert surveillance, but found no blood, DNA, or physical evidence linking him to a crime. Without a body, a crime scene, or a confession, the state attorney determined they lacked the probable cause required to pursue a murder case. Over twenty years later, Calkins remains a free man living out of state, and the families of Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams are still fighting for answers.
A civil lawsuit was brought on behalf of the men’s families with the help of actor Tyler Perry, but was eventually dismissed due to the lack of evidence in the case. The swamps in Collier County are vast, and not likely to yield any secrets hidden there in.
Semih Çelik and İkbal Uzuner, both 19, knew each other from school. They both lived in Eyüpsultan, a district of Istanbul, Turkey.
İkbal’s father said Semih constantly harassed her and sent her threatening messages and videos. It affected her so badly that he moved her to another high school.
Her family thought she didn’t feel the same way about him. But messages found later showed they had dated for a while. Both families had tried to keep them apart.
In March 2022, İkbal’s mother reportedly called Semih’s family because she was afraid the two might take their own lives together.
She also accused Semih of brainwashing her daughter. That same day, Semih attempted suicide and spent about three weeks in the hospital afterward.
According to his father, Semih had been deeply religious until around the age of 16 and performed the five daily Islamic prayers.
He had even questioned his father for not praying.
“Why aren’t you praying? God will punish you if you don’t.” He was also polite, responsible, and engaged in school.
But things changed when the pandemic hit.
He started keeping to himself and spent a lot of time on his computer. He began questioning his faith and eventually called himself a deist. He didn’t want to attend school in person anymore, so he finished school through distance learning.
After that, he worked as a butcher for a while. He quit a few months before the murders. His father also said Semih was using drugs and wasn’t taking his prescribed psychiatric medication.
İkbal’s father said Semih kept harassing her and was taking a serious toll on her mental health.
Around the time of the earthquakes in February 2023, she ran away from home to be with him.
A few months later, she disappeared again and was found by police after her family reported her missing.
Her family got her psychological help. Her father said she slowly started feeling better. They also got her a cat she’d wanted. She took loving care of it and seemed to find comfort in having it around.
Her parents began to believe her life was finally settling down.
Semih started dating Ayşenur Halil in late 2023, about a year before the murders. He knew her from school too. She regularly visited him at home, and they also went out together.
Around that time, Semih’s mother reportedly told İkbal’s family he had a new girlfriend. She said he was happy and would leave İkbal alone. İkbal’s father later said they felt reassured.
They thought the two had finally stopped talking.
But their messages later showed that Semih and İkbal had secretly stayed in touch. He continued dating Ayşenur right up until the day of the murders.
At the same time, Semih’s father started finding disturbing things in his room.
On the desk, he found creepy charcoal drawings of figures that looked like the devil. Semih had drawn them himself. He had also hung eerie symbols and disturbing drawings around the room.
When his father asked about the drawings, Semih said his family just didn’t understand him. He said they saw things differently. His growing interest in Satanism deeply worried his parents.
An older video also surfaced of Semih speaking directly to İkbal. He said he’d gone to an earlier meeting to kill her. But he hadn’t gone through with it.
He also said he wanted to kill someone before ending his own life. He wanted that person to be her. He later even uploaded the video to YouTube.
Semih also sent her images of dismembered women’s bodies. İkbal sent him recordings of her own self harm. Even after everything that had happened, she secretly kept in touch with him.
To this day, no one knows why.
After the murders, even Semih’s mother said she had warned İkbal’s family. She told them to keep their daughter away from him. She also told them to take her somewhere he couldn’t find her.
His own family’s accounts showed they had been deeply worried about his behavior long before the murders.
And other disturbing comments followed.
Semih made a remark to his father about how he should cut him up. On the day of the murders, he asked his mother if they would still be alive that evening.
Investigators later saw these statements as evidence that he had planned the murders.
On October 4, 2024, Semih and Ayşenur arrived together at his apartment in Eyüpsultan. It was around 10:30 a.m. His father had already left, and his mother was staying with his sister in Ankara.
His father called that morning. Semih said Ayşenur was there and told him not to come home during the day.
His mother also spoke to him on a video call that morning. Semih told her Ayşenur was in the bathroom. He said she was too shy to be on camera.
His mother later said nothing about the conversation seemed unusual.
Inside the apartment, Semih killed Ayşenur by cutting her throat. He left alone about three hours after they’d arrived together. He took a taxi to the historic city walls at Edirnekapı.
İkbal was already waiting for him there. She saw him on top of the wall and waved.
They talked on the phone before she went up to meet him. Investigators later found that they met just before 2 p.m.
There, Semih also killed İkbal with a knife and dismembered her body. He threw parts of her body off the wall, including her head.
What happened between their meeting and the attack was never clearly made public. Neither was what they said to each other.
People who witnessed what was happening immediately called the police.
That afternoon, İkbal’s parents tried to reach her by phone. Her father later said a man answered the first call. He told them İkbal was in safe hands. It was later believed that the man was most likely Semih.
When they called again, a different man answered. He said the phone had fallen from above and he’d found it. He told them where he was near the city wall. They could come and pick up the phone there.
When her parents arrived, they started looking for İkbal. Her father said they first tried to get up onto the wall. But barriers blocked their way. Back down below, they saw a crowd looking up.
When they got closer, they saw their daughter’s severed head in the street.
İkbal’s mother screamed in anguish at what had been done to her daughter. She tried to reach her daughter’s head. People nearby held her back.
The whole time, Semih sat on top of the wall. He looked completely detached and relaxed.
He then tied a rope around his neck. The other end was secured to the wall. Police officers went up right away to try to restrain him.
But he jumped before they could stop him.
The rope broke as he fell, and he hit the ground. Paramedic took him to the hospital. He died there.
The spot he jumped from was about 25 meters (82 feet) above the ground.
Videos of İkbal’s mother seeing her daughter’s head have circulated online. Videos of Semih’s suicide have also been shared.
It’s still unclear why he killed both girls on that particular day. Why he also killed Ayşenur was never explained.
İkbal Uzuner was buried on 5 October 2024 with Istanbul Governor Davut Gül and Fatih Mayor Mehmet Ergün Turan in attendance at the funeral.
On the same day, Ayşenur Halil was buried after the funeral prayer at Pazariçi Sadet Mosque.
Semih Çelik's funeral was cancelled for security reasons and was buried at Kilyos Cemetery with only three people participating.
When investigators checked Semih’s social media. They found signs that he’d been active in Satanist groups and incel forums.
They also found drawings and writings that suggested misogynistic and sexist interests. Some illustrations showed extremely disturbing violence against women.
He also reportedly admired several famous serial killers, including Richard Ramirez. And there are rumors that some of his drawings resembled the murders, but this claims were never confirmed.
For these reasons, police classified the double murder as femicide.
The case sparked outrage and major protests across Turkey. Women took to the streets to protest misogyny and femicide.
People also couldn’t understand how such a brutal murder could happen in public, with so many people watching.
The investigation was closed in January 2025 because Semih had died. Ayşenur’s family challenged the decision. They later raised several concerns. One was that digital evidence hadn’t been thoroughly checked.
The families still had questions about what led up to the murders and what happened that day.
In Turkish news reports and on X, the case is known as “Sur cinayetleri.”
A shooting at VIDA Fitness in Washington, D.C., on November 12 left one person dead and four injured. The suspected gunman was identified as Dr. Matt Lambert, who later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after barricading himself in an apartment. Police have not confirmed a motive.
On Monday June 9, 2014, the bodies of 3 people were found in a burning white pickup truck on the desert outskirts of Surprise, Arizona. All 3 victims had been shot to death before the truck was set ablaze.
Their names were 57-year-old Lisa Baker and 41-year-old William “Billy” Kling of Whittman, Arizona, and 25-year-old Garth Tuggle of Phoenix.
Very few details were released to the public in the case. It was never announced publicly how the victims knew each other.
There have been unverified rumors online that the murders were drug related. An unidentified person claiming to be living on the east coast made a 2016 forum post claiming a friend who moved to his city and claimed Garth’s friends were meth dealers and committed the murders.
An online memorial page for victims for gun crimes claimed Garth attended Dysart High School.
Another article claimed that Lisa Baker was a 1975 graduate of Mason City High School in northern Iowa and had attended Iowa State University before relocating to Arizona.
Surprise PD never released a statement on the forum postings, or an update on the status of the investigation.
The location where the truck was found was the intersection of 219th avenue and Sun Valley Parkway. Sun Valley Parkway is a long remote desert road that turns south from Bell Road past the White Tank Mountains for roughly 20 miles down to Interstate-10 in Buckeye.
Silent Witness currently offers a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the suspects.
Some true-crime cases sound like something written for a psychological horror movie. The story of Katie Rose Fusco Pladl and her biological father, Steven Pladl, is one of them.
It involves adoption, alleged childhood abuse, a family reunion, incest, a secret pregnancy, marriage, criminal charges, and ultimately three murders across three states.
The timeline is particularly disturbing because Katie's adoption was reportedly arranged partly to protect her from the very man she would eventually reunite with.
1. THE ORIGINAL FAMILY AND ADOPTION
Steven Pladl met Alyssa Garcia online in 1995 when he was approximately 20 and she was 15.
In January 1998, Alyssa gave birth to their daughter, Denise.
Alyssa later alleged that Steven physically abused the infant, including pinching her until she bruised and putting her inside a cooler in a way that nearly suffocated her.
Believing her daughter was unsafe, Alyssa placed Denise for adoption when she was approximately eight months old.
Tony and Kelly Fusco adopted her, renamed her Katie Rose, and raised her in New York.
2. THE REUNION
In January 2016, shortly after turning 18, Katie located her biological parents and contacted them.
By August, she had moved into Steven and Alyssa's home in Virginia.
Alyssa later described noticing increasingly inappropriate behavior between Steven and Katie. She reportedly discovered Steven sleeping on the floor in Katie's bedroom and confronted him about their relationship.
Steven eventually left the household with Katie.
3. THE INCESTUOUS RELATIONSHIP AND PREGNANCY
In May 2017, Alyssa discovered information in one of her younger daughter's journals suggesting that Steven and Katie were sexually involved.
She also learned Katie was pregnant.
Steven reportedly confirmed the relationship when confronted, telling Alyssa that he and Katie were in love.
Even more disturbing, Steven had allegedly instructed his younger children to refer to Katie as their stepmother rather than their biological sister.
Alyssa contacted law enforcement.
4. THE MARRIAGE
On July 20, 2017, Steven and Katie traveled to Maryland and married, concealing their biological relationship on their marriage application.
On September 1, 2017, Katie gave birth to their son, Bennett.
Steven was now both the child's biological father and maternal grandfather.
The couple lived together in North Carolina.
5. THE ARRESTS AND SEPARATION
In January 2018, Steven and Katie were arrested on incest-related charges, including incest involving an adult, adultery, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Both were released on bond and ordered not to contact each other.
Katie returned to New York to live with her adoptive parents, while Bennett was placed in the custody of Steven's mother.
Katie eventually decided she no longer wanted to continue the relationship.
Steven would not accept the separation.
6. THE MURDER OF THEIR INFANT SON
On April 11, 2018, Steven murdered his seven-month-old son, Bennett, at their former residence in Knightdale, North Carolina.
The medical examiner determined that Bennett died from asphyxia after his torso was squeezed.
Steven subsequently confessed to his mother, who contacted emergency services.
7. THE MURDERS OF KATIE AND TONY FUSCO
On April 12, 2018, Katie and her adoptive father, Tony Fusco, were traveling through New Milford, Connecticut.
Steven tracked them down and opened fire on their vehicle.
Katie, just 20 years old, was killed.
Tony, who was 56, was also killed.
The man who had raised Katie, supported her, and provided her with a home was now dead alongside her.
8. STEVEN'S SUICIDE
After murdering Bennett, Katie, and Tony, Steven contacted his mother and confessed to the killings.
He was subsequently found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Dover, New York.
Four people were dead:
- Bennett Pladl, seven months old.
- Katie Pladl, 20.
- Anthony Fusco, 56.
- Steven Pladl, the perpetrator.
Three murders. Three different states. One family.
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CLOSING ARGUMENT
Consider the sequence of events.
A mother gives up her infant daughter because she believes the father is dangerous.
That daughter grows up in another family, eventually reunites with her biological parents, and unknowingly enters the household of the very man her mother had feared.
The father becomes sexually involved with her, impregnates her, marries her, and has a child with her.
The relationship is exposed. Criminal charges follow. They are separated.
The daughter attempts to move on.
The father murders their infant son, tracks down his daughter, murders her and her adoptive father, and then takes his own life.
What began as an adoption intended to protect a child ended with that child, her infant son, and the father who raised her all dead.
This case raises serious questions about family protection, adoption reunification, abuse allegations, risk assessment, and the failures of intervention when warning signs continue escalating.
Katie deserved a future. Bennett deserved to grow up. Tony deserved to live.
Instead, all three became victims of the same man.
Update: Received FOIA records for the Charleen Garelli case (1976) A little update on my research into the two unsolved Cuesta Grade murders in San Luis Obispo. I recently received records back from a public records request I submitted to the SLO County Sheriff’s Office regarding Charleen Garelli and Cheryl Manning. There are some interesting details in the documents, especially regarding Charleen’s case. One of the biggest things I found is that her investigation was officially reopened in 2017. The report specifically states it was reopened “to accommodate new investigation.” I also received additional forensic documentation, including details from the original autopsy report that weren’t readily available in newspaper coverage. still going through everything and comparing the original reports with what was published at the time. For context, Charleen was murdered in 1976, and Cheryl Manning was murdered in 1978. Their bodies were discovered less than a quarter mile apart near Cuesta Grade. Both cases remain unsolved.
Edit: The "Flordai" in the title is supposed to be spelled as "Florida." Sorry for that egregious spelling error, I wasn't paying attention to what I was actually typing, and it's a shame that reddit doesn't allow post titles to be edited and fixed.
In 2018, Joseph Ables shot and killed his neighbor’s pet cat with a pellet gun, and the owner reported him to the police. After a pair of responding deputies arrived at his residence to question him, Ables confronted them at his front door and shot one of the deputies, 40 year old William Gentry, in the head. He then surrendered to other officers that arrived as reinforcements at the scene. Gentry was airlifted to a hospital and died of his injuries a day later.
At the time of Gentry’s murder, Ables was on parole for an assault on an elderly person related conviction, and he had a criminal history involving violence against police officers dating back to 1983. His neighbors complained of his violent and erratic behavior, which reportedly included an incident of him assailing a dog owner with mace in retaliation for letting their dog loose. Due to his prior felony convictions, Ables was also charged with illegally possessing the handgun he used to fatally shoot Gentry.
After seven years of proceedings, Ables was sentenced to death for Gentry's murder by the state of Florida. Per FDC records, he currently remains on death row.
On October 21, 2026, Kristian Josip Periš, a 32-year-old former athlete, died at Sveti Ivan Psychiatric Hospital in Zagreb, Croatia.
According to Croatian media reports, surveillance footage shows several hospital staff members violently restraining Periš while he was tied to a hospital bed. During the approximately eight-minute incident, staff members allegedly punched him, pressed their knees against his body and neck, and held a pillow over his head.
By the time staff realized he was unconscious, attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.
Four male psychiatric nurses have since been arrested and placed in pre-trial detention on suspicion of aggravated murder.
The case has sparked outrage across Croatia, particularly because serious questions have emerged about the hospital's handling of the incident. The family reportedly filed a complaint shortly after his death, but police did not obtain the surveillance footage until more than two weeks later.
Croatia's Ministry of Health has criticized the hospital for failing to promptly report the death.
The investigation is ongoing, and no criminal convictions have been reported.
I’m here to ask a question and discuss something I’ve been wondering about regarding this case.
I wonder whether Paul was some kind of trigger for Karla. We know that he was perverted and deeply disturbed from the beginning, and we also know that Karla was a willing participant in all the crimes they committed.
She had violent fantasies, but would she have acted on them if she had never met Paul? Was he the catalyst that allowed her to act on those fantasies and even enjoy them? Or might she have ended up committing horrific crimes on her own?
(Thanks to LoydoRedi2910 for suggesting this case. If you'd like to suggest any yourself, please head over to this post, which asks for case suggestions from my international readers, as I focus on international cases.
If you're wondering how I got a case with this much information out so quickly despite having just uploaded a write-up here yesterday, I always have two write-ups I work on at the same time: one a reader suggestion and one on my own personal backlog and one day I'll work on one and then the other the next. So by the time I uploaded yesterday's write-up, this one was basically already finished.)
Ramin Sherzaj was born around 1993 in Afghanistan. When Ramin was only 17 years old, his mother and younger brother fled Afghanistan seeking asylum in Sweden, arriving in 2010. The family never became Swedish citizens, but they were allowed to stay in the country, with Ramin settling in a rental apartment in Sundsvall.
Neighbours described him as a quiet, calm young man who kept to himself, but also as "a nice, pleasant guy" who greeted neighbours when they crossed paths and occasionally shared a few words. Those who knew Ramin personally said that he was lively and full of energy.
Ramin enrolled in an adult education center in Sundsvall and completed an internship at an elderly care home while studying to become a nurse.
In January 2015, while studying to become a nurse, he met 23-year-old Zahraa Abdul Razaq Djabbar, a fellow nursing student and immigrant.
Zahraa had been immersed in Swedish and European culture and norms much longer than Ramin, as her family left Southern Iraq in 2000, when Zahraa was only 7. People described Zahraa as "modern" due to growing up in Sweden.
In November 2010, when she was still 17, Zahraa married a Kurdish Immigrant from Iraq, 10 years her senior, a hair salon owner named Hello Abdulqader Faraj Zangana; they had two sons.
Despite Zahraa and Hello being Arabic and Kurdish, respectively, their families both approved the marriage, one that it's been theorized Zahraa was pressured into, a theory with some credibility, seeing her age at the time and how quickly it deteriorated and also the circumstances behind it, with Hello's marriage being how he was able to immigrate to Sweden from Iraq in the first place, arriving in February 2011.
Hello also didn't interact much with locals in his new country, and his social circle consisted entirely of fellow Iraqi and Kurdish immigrants, including 22-year-old Nawzad Milano Bakir and 20-year-old Mustafa Irfan Ahmed.
With all this in mind, Zahraa appreciated Ramin when she met him, and the two nursing students quickly became good friends; not everyone in Zahraa's life was happy about it. And that was before they learned that Zahraa was having an affair with Ramin
On May 26, 2015, Ramin was driving Zahraa somewhere after classes; around the same time, Hello arrived at the school to pick her up and saw Zahraa inside Ramin's car. Immediately, Hello thought Zahraa was being unfaithful, and although the two didn't divorce, they did decide to seperate.
The next day, on May 27, Hello went to Ramin's apartment, defaced his car, and began pounding on the door. Ramin refused to open the door and eventually called the police, though Hello left before they arrived.
In July, after extended pressure from Hello, Zahraa finally dropped out of the nursing class, although her relationship with Ramin continued in secret. Zahraa then tried to divorce Hello, but her brothers opposed it, especially her older brother, Hussein Abdulrasaq Jabbar, who warned that such a separation would bring serious consequences.
For example, they warned her that if she tried going through with the divorce, they would restrict her movement, forbidding her from going outside on her own and that they might just send her back to Iraq.
Her parents lent her no support because it was "for the brothers to decide" and said that nothing regarding their marital issues was to become public, or else it would be a "matter of honour". Since they had children together, Zahraa's brothers also tried to mediate between the two.
Hello also had issues with his own family stemming from the fact that he wasn't abusive or controlling. He faced constant insults and humiliation from his own older brother, who routinely berated him for "failing to control his wife" and shouted at him that "You're no man, you're nothing!", all because he gave her independence.
Hello was a little more proactive with Ramin, as on October 5 he filed another police report saying someone, likely Hello, had defaced and damaged his car. The police took his report, but with no evidence, Hello faced no repercussions.
Allegedly, Ramin then retaliated, seeing as Hello made his own report to the police on October 25 to tell them that somebody had thrown a rock through the window of his hair salon. But as with Ramin's call to the police about Hello, nothing was done because of a lack of evidence.
Then on November 9, Hello and Zahraa reported Ramin to the police for harassment, accusing him of following them, threatening them, harassing Zahraa and being involved in a vehicle collision. However, Zahraa told the police that she didn't want to pursue any charges against him, even though Hello insisted to the police that Ramin threatened Zahraa at knife point and told her to kill herself.
And speaking of charges, Zahraa's family would start facing some. Her older brother Hussein, the one who threatened to take away her freedom or even force her to leave Sweden if she divorced, decided to go on a little trip of his own. However, he was arrested in Germany for human smuggling.
On December 29, with Hussein still in German custody, it fell on Zahraa's other brother, Ali Kadhim Abdulrazak Jabbar, to confront Ramin at his home in front of his family.
On January 4, 2016, Zahraa left her home in Hello's car. By the early hours of January 5, she still had not returned. This prompted Zahraa's sister to call the police and tell them that she was afraid Zahraa might kill herself because somebody was ruining her life. Ali then messaged his sister, expressing concern for her well-being but also telling Zahraa that he would kill the "shit dog" responsible for destroying her life.
This finally prompted the police to take a report from either Ramin or Zahraa's family seriously and keep an eye out for Zahraa, and when they finally found her, she was taken to a hospital. While at the hospital, Zahraa sent a message to Hello telling him that she would never return to him "even if I die". She then went no contact with her family, leading them to believe she was either being held for observation at the hospital or had gone to a women's shelter.
Zahraa wasn't trying to kill herself but rather meet up with Ramin, as they had booked a ferry to Tallinn, Estonia and Ramin even arrived at the hospital to pick her up that same day. They then went on a short vacation across Sweden, staying in hotels in Linköping, Gothenburg, and Arboga, and returned to Sundsvall on the evening of January 10.
But during their vacation, Hello shared a picture of Ramin with a fellow Afghan immigrant and asked about him; the man said he was at a wedding in Gothenburg with a woman. This then prompted Hello to contact Ali to ask for Ramin's address, which he happily provided to his brother-in-law.
After Zahraa returned to Sundsvall, she stayed with her parents, and Hello quickly called her and demanded that she choose whether to divorce him or reconcile. However, Hello preferred reconciliation and asked what needed to be done to repair their relationship, to which she said, "That pimp must be killed". (For clarification, "Pimp" is a derisive nickname Zahraa's family gave him to insult him, not because he was an actual pimp)
On January 21, Zahraa told Hello where he could find Ramin, and he headed straight over and started following him, but Ramin noticed him and ran away. Hello called Zahraa's mother to tell them what happened, and she expressed disappointment in her son-in-law for wasting a "good oppertunity".
Then on January 22, Ramin called the police once more and reported that a man who had previously assaulted him was following him. Once again, without any overt threat or evidence, the police did not arrest Hello. In the meantime, Hello kept calling Zahraa to further plot Ramin's death.
On February 14, after failing to kill Ramin, Zahraa finally divorced Hello and moved into her parents'. True to their word, Zahraa's brothers began limiting Zahraa's movement and kept her confined to the house as best they could. Additionally, even though the divorce was about reconciliation, Zahraa's family wasn't inclined to leave Ramin be.
After the divorce, Zahraa once sent Ramin a message saying she'd kill herself and then, on March 1, asked to meet him outside a grocery store. Ramin went to the store but noticed Hello's car nearby and ran back home instead. He also saw Hello's car near another meeting with Zahraa, which scared him away from approaching Zahraa going forward.
Ramin then contacted the authorities once more. After dealing with them for over a year, the Sundsvall police were familiar with Ramin and Zahraa's family by this point. When Ramin called the police on them once more for his 11th police report, this time alleging that Zahraa's family had threatened to kill her while at the same time colluding with Zahraa to kill him, they were a little skeptical by now and saw Ramin as a boy crying wolf. Unfortnuately, Ramin's fears were well founded, though in part because he helped them manifest.
From March 2 to March 3, for reasons unknown, perhaps wanting to humiliate or embarrass Hello in retaliation for his constant "harassment," Ramin posted a series of images to his Facebook account. The images were all pictures he had taken with Zahraa during their trip to Estonia and across Sweden. They included the most damning picture, which depicted Zahraa kissing Ramin before her divorce.
These pictures were the straw that broke the camel's back for their secret romance. Zahraa lashed out at Ramin, telling him that he "sold" her, disgraced her honour and, more importantly, placed her life in grave danger, opening up the possibility of a so-called "Honour Killing".
Zahraa was so afraid that she called a Woman's Shelter and helpline and told the workers that in her culture, those photos were more damaging than if she had just posted nude pictures of herself directly.
The same day Ramin hit upload, Zahraa ended the relationship and changed her phone number on March 5 so he couldn't contact her.
On March 10, the German police released Hussein, and Hello drove to Germany to pick him up. Now with the family back together and Ramin's photos on everyone's mind, Hello tried to undo their divorce and reconcile with Zahraa once more, even bringing her a cake for her birthday.
On March 18, after learning of the photos, Hussein tracked Ramin down to a McDonald’s in Härnösand to confront him. Hussein demanded Ramin's cellphone, and he actually handed it over. Hussein then went through it, searching for the other photos he took with Zahraa which hadn't been uploaded. Hussein left after finding nothing, unaware that Zahraa was actually storing them on a USB stick.
On March 27, Hussein confronted Ramin again, and this time Hello appeared as well, with the two trying to surround Ramin. Uneased, he fled the scene and took it a step further and left Sundsvall altogether to stay in Eskilstuna with a friend.
But before leaving, he told everybody about the USB stick with more pictures of him and Zahraa, threatening to upload their contents as an "insurance policy" to prevent anyone from coming after him.
On April 4, 2016, a local of the small city of Gävle was out for a late-night run on the north side of the Gavleån when he saw a large group of people moving toward a parking lot on the other side of the river.
Once he crossed the bridge over to their side of the river, he saw two cars and heard the sounds of shouting and screaming alongside somebody repeatedly honking one of the cars' horns to try and drown out the noise, but ultimately to no effect. But on the topic of the screaming, the man heard the scream become muffled, as if somebody was holding their hand over the mouth of the man making it.
As he got closer, he saw the men wearing balaclavas and speaking in Arabic. One of the vehicles was an Audi A6 with its registration imperfectly transcribed, with letters and numbers transposed or misidentified. He also saw a woman behind the cars, apparently on the phone, wearing a belted white quilted coat and with dark, shoulder-length hair. They then forced one of the men into the Audi, and both cars sped off.
The jogger then ran away and reported a kidnapping to the police, giving them a description of both vehicles and describing the individuals involved to the best of their ability. He wasn't the only one thoguh, two other people came forward to report something similar to the police.
Around the same time, a man left a restaurant with his colleague when they heard a scream from the parking area near the county governor’s residence. They looked toward the noise and saw two cars backed into spaces, one door open, with a woman nearby.
He saw the first car turn toward Hamiltongatan, enter Kungsgatan, and travel south at a high speed. Meanwhile, the woman didn't get into one of the cars; instead, she walked behind him and his colleague, looking completely calm.
A second car followed the first, paused at a traffic signal, and then continued south. According to him, he saw a young male in the driver's seat, but both vehicles had tinted windows, so he couldn't describe any other occupants.
He described the woman as 20–25 years old, of average height, with fairly long dark hair, a white three-quarter-length padded coat, and dark trousers.
In response, the police wrote down the information provided and told all units to be on the lookout for the Audi.
At 8:30 a.m. on April 5, Zahraa called the Gävle police in tears to report Ramin missing. She told police they were out on another secret date when a group of men stopped them on the way back to their hotel and asked Ramin to come with them. Ramin assured her it was okay and told her to go back to the hotel, which she did.
She then showed the police her phone, showing a text message Ramin had sent her at 9:38 p.m. saying he was going to Eskilstuna to collect money from acquaintances, would return the next day, and that she should call the police if he failed to return or answer. In response, Zahra told him she was worried for him, loved him, and hoped she'd wake up to see him by her side.
The police were quick to link Ramin's disappearance to the kidnapping reported the night prior and found their first suspect already. After all, there was a problem with these texts: Ramin's poor Swedish had apparently improved overnight, now matching Zahraa's fluency.
Next, the police spoke to Ramin's friend in Eskilstuna, where he was staying. According to him, Ramin said he had to go pick up Zahraa. According to him, Rahim said he had gotten a text from her explaining that she had been disowned and kicked out of the family, had nowhere to stay and wanted to see Rahmin, even telling him they could be married one day.
Aware of why he left Sundsvall, Rahmin's friend implored him not to meet her alone, but Rahmin insisted because Zahraa was alone.
The Gävle police then reached out to their counterparts in Sundsvall, who told them all about the ongoing feud between Ramin and Zahraa's family, their constant police reports and the subject of their current feud: the photos Ramin uploaded to Facebook. With this information, the police scrutinized Zahraa's account even further, now believing that an "honour killing" may have just occurred.
On April 6, a local resident reported seeing a fire near road 331 slightly north of the town of Timrå. The fire department arrived and saw a car engulfed in flames. After extinguishing the vehicle, they brought in the police, who confirmed that it was one of the vehicles involved in Rahmin's abduction.
The police conducted a large search of the surrounding woods, but they found nothing, leading them to assume Rahmin was still alive or disposed of elsewhere.
The police then issued an appeal asking anyone who saw the vehicle or knew the owner to come forward.
The police continued their investigation by putting Zahraa's family and Hello under surveillance and also tapping their phones to listen in on their conversations, conversations in which they spoke using indirect or coded language. The police also detained Zahraa and put her into a safe house in case her family tried to take her life in an "honour killing" as well.
On April 10, Zahraa tried to leave the safe house to see her children, which prompted the police to arrest her as a suspect in Rahmin's disappearance.
Then on April 11, when Hello met up with several men in his hair salon whom he called over for an "emergency meeting", the police raided the establishment and arrested Hello and everybody inside. Among those arrested were Hello's two friends, Nawzad Milano Bakir and Mustafa Irfan Ahmed and Nawzad happened to own an Audi A6, one of the two vehicles involved in the abduction.
One man managed to escape the salon, then the country, then the continent, making his way to Iraq. His name was Garmian Khaleel Qader, and the Swedish police later issued an Interpol Red Notice in his name.
Then, on April 13, Zahraa’s brothers Ali and Hussein were arrested by the Danish police at the Öresund Bridge near Malmö, clearly in the midst of trying to flee. The police found a combined total of 48,000 Kroner on their persons.
The police seized Nawzad's Audi, and in the back seat, the forensic team found blood droplets, runs, wiped or smeared blood, and blood spatter on the back seat, floor, interior side of the door, the door handle, and the window seal. Based on the spatter, it was concluded that the blood was a mix of blunt force trauma, the victim coughing blood, and the assailants wiping their bloodied hands on the various surfaces. The blood was then sent for DNA testing, where it matched Ramin.
Forensics also found a cigarette butt in an ashtray in the backseat. The butt was also sent off for DNA testing, where the results came back a match for Zahraa's brother, Hussein. DNA traces matching Hello were also found in the trunk. All things considered, they did a shoddy job cleaning up the vehicle, which was shaping up to be the crime scene.
Everyone arrested denied any involvement and even claimed they had never been to Gävle, but their phone records and vehicle data contradicted that. Additionally, the police seized CCTV footage from over 161 different locations
According to the data, the footage and data from their phones and cars, after Zahraa left, the two Audis drove back toward Sundsvall. Traffic cameras recorded the Audi A3 crossing the Sundsvall Bridge southbound at 3:11 a.m. while the Audi A6 crossed fifteen seconds later. Then, at 3:16 a.m., Hussein called Hello, and the call lasted 34 seconds.
At 3:26 a.m., Hello called Hussein for 46 seconds. Their telephones pinged outside the village of Njurunda, south of Sundsvall. The car curiously made a stop there before moving again.
The Audi A3 crossed the Sundsvall Bridge northbound at 3:48:36 a.m. Phone calls continued after the crossing. Hello later used one of Ali's phones to call Ali's other phone, Mustafa, Hussein, and Nawzad between 4:10 and 4:54 a.m.
Hello, Nawzad and Mustafa's phone records also placed them in the Sundsbruk area north of Sundsvall. Shortly after midnight, Hello and Hussein's phones contacted each other near Viksjö, approximately 50 kilometres north of Sundsvall.
They then connected again in Östergraninge at 12:37 a.m., before their phones went dead until 1:23 a.m. Ali’s phone also pinged in Viksjö at 1:35 a.m. when he called his wife.
Once news of the kidnapping became public, a woman came forward. She lived 2 hours away on a barn outside Sundsvall. She told the police that at around 2:00 a.m. she saw two cars near the entrance to her property. Her barn had CCTV cameras attached, which showed Audis driving by and leaving the area.
Based on the route they reconstructed, search teams aided by sniffer dogs and a helicopter searched 360 kilometres of woods from Gävle to Örnsköldsvik, hoping to find Ramin's body. The police also released Ramin's name and photograph to the public, asking anyone who had seen him to come forward.
On April 20, a forestry worker outside the village of Njurunda was clearing some brush in a region called Maj when he noticed an object floating in a water-filled ditch off the side of the road.
The police were promptly called, and after fishing the partially decomposed and bloated body from the ditch, they immideately identified him as Ramin.
The autopsy found no signs of illness, drugs or alchool in his system and instead determined the cause of death to be ligature strangulation alongside several blunt force injuries to his head and chest, some of which broke and cracked bones. According to the medical examiner, they were likely made with the fists and feet of his attackers rather than any weapon.
Ramin's death was declared a homicide, and soon the prosecution upped the charges Nowzad, Mustafa, Zahraa, and her family were facing. Now they were all charged with murder or being an accessory to murder, and they still denied any involvement even in the face of all the evidence.
But regardless, the case was now solved. It was the largest and most extensive investigation ever undertaken by the Gävle police and the biggest investigation into an "honour-based crime" Sweden had seen.
While Zahraa and Hello were behind bars. They managed to communicate secretly, either by graffitiing the bathrooms where they knew they would be or by writing letters and hiding them in the prison's recreation areas, such as a rowing machine, to get around the fact that they were to be separated.
They managed to get away with this until the summer when prison officials finally discovered what they had been doing. One of the letters Zahraa delivered to Hello declared her newfound love for him and included a detailed account of what the police asked her during the interrogation and how she responded.
But then the letter took a sudden turn when Zahraa wrote down: "The police said his nose was broken and his head was crushed and he died when someone strangled him. The bones of his body, I think his sternum, were broken. My heart rejoiced, but at the same time I was bored because I wished I had been the one who broke his bones"
Since nobody confessed to the police, no matter how damning things became, the police and prosecutors mostly had to guess what happened, but they assumed it went something like this.
On April 2, 2016, the family, accompanied by Hello's friends, Nawzad and Mustafa, met at his home and began plotting the murder.
Zahraa agreed to re-establish contact with Ramin and tell him that she had been kicked out of the family and had nowhere to stay as a ploy to lure him out of hiding, even offering to marry him. Ramin took the bait and agreed to take her to Gävle after she arrived in Gothenburg.
After a brief dinner with Hussein and Ali on April 3, Hello took Nawzad and Mustafa with him to buy burner phones, SIM cards, and Balaclavas in preparation for their journey. Meanwhile, before executing their plan, Zahraa had dinner with Ramin's family.
After meeting up with him, Zahraa and Ramin departed from Eskilstuna and reached Gävle on April 4, where they booked a hotel while Zahraa waited for Hello, Nawzad, and Mustafa to arrive from Sundsvall; they arrived at 8:18 p.m.
Zahraa and Ramin then went out that night, visiting a bowling alley and then an electronics store next to it. Inside the store, Zahraa walked behind Ramin so she could use her phone to tell Hello, Nawzad and Mustafa where they were. Zahraa also sent a message to her mother saying, "Today he will die." Zahraa also apparently noticed the store's CCTV camera and tried moving out of its view.
Afterward, the two left the store and walked to a parking lot where the three were waiting for them.
Upon seeing him, Hello, Nawzad, and Mustafa charged toward Ramin and grabbed him. Ramin resisted, fighting back against the three and screaming for help, prompting them to cover his mouth to silence him while another got back in their car to repeatedly honk the horn. During the struggle, they also stole Ramin's cellphone and handed it to Zahraa
Due to having the advantage in numbers, Ramin was soon overpowered and forced into their car while Zahraa walked back to her hotel, where she used Ramin's cellphone to send messages to her own account so she could mislead the police with them when she reported him missing the next day.
The police assumed that Ramin was beaten to death and then strangled by the occupants of the vehicle at some unknown point between Gävleborg and Västernorrland County with an unknown implement. They then pulled over to the side of the road outside of Njurunda to dispose of Ramin's body in the stream.
After the murder, Nawzad and Mustafa took the Audi A6 back home, where they spent the night haphazardly washing the vehicle before then driving Hussein's Audi A3 to the forested road to torch it. Nawzad then drove Hello and Ali around to where they left the body and where they burnt Hussein's car so they could see they did their jobs properly.
This was the very spotty story the prosecution presented before the Gävle District Court when the trial opened on March 7, 2017. Hello, Hussein, Ali, Nowzad, Mustafa and Zahraa were all charged with kidnapping and murder. Meanwhile, prosecutors charged six others with aiding and abetting, including 19-year-old Garmian Khaleel Qader, who was being tried in absentia after fleeing Sweden.
The trial got off to a pretty alarming start when Zahraa couldn't even attend the first day, as apparently she had been hit with several threats to her life by members of her community. The interrogation report on Zahraa that the police submitted, in fact, began with, "She does not want what was said in the interrogation to come out. If it does, the police must help her". Additionally, she apparently hyperventilated and broke down once the police told her that Ramin's body had been found.
This mirrored the situation facing Ramin's family, who also went into hiding after being hit with a wave of death threats.
However, there was also a positive when Hello confessed, albiet it was a pyrrhic victory handed to the prosecution since Hello still denied being a murderer. According to him, he did kidnap and help Ramin into the car, but after it drove off, he assumed Ramin would just be subjected to a beating to scare him and sent on his way.
He said he was horrified to learn they had killed him and denied that he ever wanted to take part in an honour killing, telling the court that it was Zahraa's side of the family pressuring and hounding him to even threaten Ramin, let alone kill him.
As for his co-defendants, well, even when the prosecution presented the eyewitness accounts, CCTV footage, phone records, vehicle data, all the forensic evidence seized from Nowad's vehicle confirming that Ramin had been killed while inside and even showed the Facebook photos that sparked the murder, they all maintained their innocence in the face of said evidence and claimed to be nowhere near Gävle.
Those who brought their phones with them and therefore couldn't deny going to Gävle, such as Hussein, said their trip had an innocent purpose, with Hussein claiming he went to the city to check out a car that was being advertised. However, when asked to produce the advertisement, Hussein was unable to do so. Ali's phone also pinged in Gävle, but he still said he was nowhere near the city, explaining that he was there because he let Hello borrow his cellphone.
When it was finally deemed safe enough for Zahraa to testify, she also denied any guilt or knowledge of what the rest of her family planned, telling the court that "Ramin and I only looked forward".
She argued that Ramin suggested going to Gävle instead of her preferred destination, Arboga, and stood by the story she initially told police: a group of people approached Ramin while they were out, and Ramin told her to go back to the hotel while he dealt with the situation.
On July 17, 2017, after a 5-month trial, the court returned its verdicts. For the "Honour Killing" of Ramin Sherzaj, Zahraa Abdul Razaq Djabbar, Hello Abdulqader Faraj Zangana, Hussein Abdulrasaq Jabbar, Ali Kadhim Abdulrazak Jabbar, Nawzad Milano Bakir, and Mustafa Irfan Ahmed Ahmed were all found guilty.
When it came to sentencing, the court followed the prosecution's advice; the prosecutor wanted a message to be sent to show that honour killings would not be tolerated in Sweden, so with that in mind, the court sentenced Zahraa, Hello, Hussein, Ali and Nawzad to life imprisonment.
Mustafa was treated more leniently and given a sentence of just 14 years in prison, but that was only because he was under 21 at the time of the murder and Swedish law prohibits a life sentence from being given out for a crime committed when the perpetrator was under the age of 21; being 20 at the time, Mustafa narrowly avoided life in prison.
However, Mustafa will be permanently deported from Sweden once those 14 years are up. The prosecution also asked for Hello and Hussein to be sent back to Iraq were they ever to be released, but the court rejected their request, citing the amount of time they lived in Sweden and the effect it would have on their children.
In addition to the sentences, the defendants were all ordered to pay Ramin's family 143,876 Kroner in compensation.
The defendants then appealed their sentences and gave new stories when they appeared before the Court of Appeal for Lower Norrland on September 5.
The defendants were still saying that they personally were innocent, but now the family had turned on each other and were trying to unload all responsibility onto their relatives. One such example was Zahraa, who finally admitted that she had lured Ramin into the trap but stated she only did so out of fear for her life and the lives of her children, arguing that she might have been subject to an "honour killing" herself had she not complied. She also further accused her own family of withholding her children from her until she agreed to take part in the plan.
The appeal courts returned their verdicts on December 20, and the results were a mixed bag. Zahraa had her life sentence reduced to 18 years, and Mustafa also had his 14-year sentence further shortened to 12.
However, Hello, Hussein, Ali and Nawzad all had their sentences increased. In addition, the appeals court overturned the lower court's ruling and ordered that Hello, Hussein, and Ali be deported if they are ever released from prison.
In January 2018, the verdicts were appealed to Sweden's Supreme Court and on April 18, 2018, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeals, making the sentences final.
With that, the case was over, at least until this year, when it received a sudden update. On June 2, 2026, the police in Kirkuk, Iraq, arrested a 28-year-old man based on an Interpol Red Notice; his name was Garmian Khaleel Qader, one of the many accused of covering for the family and the one defendant who got away.
As of now, Garmian remains in Iraqi custody, having not yet been extradited to Sweden.
Willie Crain was condemned for the 1998 disappearance and presumed murder of 7 year old Amanda Brown. Although the precise circumstances are currently unknown due to Brown’s still missing body and Crain’s protests of innocence, prosecutors believe that Crain raped and then killed Brown inside his residence. On the night Brown disappeared, Crain visited her home and played with her. According to Brown’s mother, Crain gave her a large dose of valium and other sleeping pills, and she fell asleep. After Brown’s mother regained conscious, she was unable to find Brown anywhere in their home, and she reported her daughter missing.
A police search of Crain’s home recovered blood soaked underwear and found bloodstains on a toilet seat. DNA testing on those blood samples matched them to Brown. When he was arrested, Crain had scratch marks covering his arms. Many of Crain’s acquaintances also testified that he bragged to them about committing a murder and hiding a body. Furthermore, Crain was convicted in 1985 of child sexual abuse pertaining to molesting five young girls, and he also faced many untried rape accusations from other women. Those other women reported that Crain raped them as girls similar in age to Brown during the 1960s and 1970s.
Despite the police and investigators’ inability to find Brown’s body, prosecutors were able to charge Crain for her murder on the bloodstained items in his home, his personal history of sexual abuse against children, his positioning inside Brown’s home during her disappearance, and eyewitness testimonies of his reported confessions. After a year of proceedings, Crain was sentenced to death by the state of Florida.
On November 10, governor Ron DeSantis signed Crain’s death warrant for a December 10th execution date. If it is carried out, Crain will be the 22nd inmate executed by the state of Florida in 2026.
Twenty years after the killings of Molly Dilts, Kim Raffo, Barbara Breidor and Tracy Roberts, investigators have yet to identify the killer. All four women had connections to Atlantic City’s sex trade, and authorities have said they believe the killings were the work of a serial killer.
Police cars swarmed the motel on Nov. 20, 2006, after two women walking behind the building discovered Raffo’s body. That same day, authorities found the bodies of Dilts, Breidor and Roberts in the same swampy waterway.
Investigators ruled that Raffo was strangled to death. Roberts died from asphyxia. The remains of Breidor and Dilts were too decomposed to officially determine how they died.
The discovery quickly drew national attention, and the unidentified killer became known in media reports as the “Eastbound Strangler,” a reference to reports that the women were found with their heads facing Atlantic City.
Despite years of investigation, scrutiny of potential suspects and advances in forensic technology, the case remains unsolved.
“They said it was a bad guy…they never knew who the bad guy was,” Jeremiah Dilts said.
While investigators continue searching for answers, relatives say the passage of time has done little to heal their loss. Some hope renewed attention could bring the breakthrough authorities have sought for two decades.
But some with knowledge of the investigation have questioned whether mistakes made early in the case had hurt the chances of finding answers.
Huang Fu-kang was born in early 1973 in a town called Puli, located in Nantou County, Taiwan, and was the younger of two brothers. Fu-kang was also mixed-race, with his father being ethnic Chinese while his mother was a member of one of Taiwan's Indigenous Tribes. In addition, his parents had a 23-year age gap.
During his childhood, Fu-kang was "obedient" toward authority figures and his parents, though they still found excuses to "discipline" him from time to time.
Fu-kang hardly ever stood up for himself; any rebellion he did engage in happened out of his parents' or teachers' sight. For example, in his third year of high school, after two years of good grades, he began skipping classes to play billiards, and his grades plummeted.
Additionally, after Fu-kang got his license, he frequently got into traffic accidents.
From a young age to early adulthood, Fu-kang started to imagine a bunch of grandiose ideas of what he could achieve; for example, he felt he could unify the world as a great and kind emperor, that he could establish his own nation in Africa or that he would be the one to discover how to create a real-life immortality elixir.
Fu-kang's family, when they heard of this, assumed it was just some quirk of his or that he was being "foolish" rather than any mental illness. However, around the time Fu-kang began imagining himself as a world leader, he also started to "rebel" and argue with his parents, which prompted his older brother to physically "discipline" him.
After barely graduating high school, Fu-kang enrolled in the electrical engineering department at Guangwu Industrial Junior College. However, he disliked studying, performed very poorly and dropped out around the same time as his brother.
Now out of school, Fu-kang jumped from odd job to odd job, including working as an apprentice at a relative’s plumbing and electrical business and as a repairman installing equipment in people's homes.
As an adult, Fu-kang was large and strong, so he naturally assumed the military would want him. And he was correct; Fu-kang signed on to the Taiwanese Air Force as a volunteer. During his time in the air force, Fu-kang developed an interest and passion for Japanese Manga; his favourite being Battle Angel Alita (銃夢), which he read often in his off time.
Fu-kang's time in the air force ended abruptly after he suffered an accidental injury during his service, leading to a medical discharge. Now a civilian again, Fu-kang returned to jumping between odd jobs such as plumbing and electrical repair work.
Fu-kang's sense of self-worth also diminished; he believed he had no relationship skills and no friends. He also believed his co-workers were under the impression that he had been spreading rumours about his colleagues.
The most notable example was when he was misunderstood as spreading rumours that the building's general manager and vice chairman were having an affair, and was subsequently beaten by the vice chairman result
Then Fu-kang's father suffered a stroke, which left him bedridden, and Fu-kang had to be his main caregiver for about five years until he passed away.
Around the same time, Fu-kang's personality shifted again; he became more stubborn, argumentative, and impulsive, and his work and personal relationships suffered as a result.
Despite it all, Fu-kang did find love. He met a woman from China online, and the two began a long-distance relationship. Despite immense disapproval from his family, Fu-kang wanted to marry her and to get around his family, he went to China himself to marry her there. After the marriage, he arranged for her to travel to Taiwan, where the couple had two children.
The couple awkwardly lived with Fu-kang's mother and brother, and despite being under the same roof, Fu-kang's wife had little to no interaction with the rest of the family, or even with Fu-kang, for that matter.
She often left Taiwan without notice to visit her home in the Guangxi Autonomous Region, sometimes staying there for six months to a year at a time, which meant Fu-kang's mother had to help raise his children. His wife often used their children as leverage to get Fu-kang to do what she wanted.
Disputes were frequent, and Fu-kang's mother and brother often had to mediate between the two. Though largely to no avail, since Fu-kang was essentially considered a doormat who would always comply with her every wish and whim.
Additionally, Fu-kang's wife allegedly abused him often. His family would regularly see bruises, wounds and injuries on his body while his wife was spotless. At first, Fu-kang tried passing them off as the result of an accidental fall or car accident, but eventually, he'd admit that his wife had been hitting him.
However, he never did anything to protect himself against this mistreatment and abuse. He told his family that he deserved such treatment for failing to be an adequate provider for her.
Hoping to change that, Fu-kang decided to start making investments instead. Poor investments that cost him 6 million New Taiwan dollars and put him 1 million NTD in debt. He also ranted about being cheated out of money, including losing 150,000 NTD in a botched sale and entrusting 3.7 million NTD to a friend who never paid it back. As a result, his family had to sell their home.
Now unemployed and on the brink of homelessness, Fu-kang spent most of his time at the computer, reading Manga, going to internet cafes and having to rely on his parents' savings for basic living expenses while spending next to nothing on himself, as he once again felt like he didn't deserve it.
Finally, Fu-Kang began seeking help by going to the Taipei Veterans General Hospital and Puli Veterans Hospital in July 2005, January 2006 and May 2008. However, despite Fu-kang's earlier grandiose beliefs and mentions of auditory hallucinations, such as hearing his wife calling his name even though she was back in China, the hospital staff didn't diagnose a psychotic disorder. Fu-kang, in fact, went ot the hospital because of his "low mood", insomnia and suicidal thoughts such as cutting his abdomen open.
After leaving the hospital, Fu-Kang developed a heavy addiction to sleeping pills, which he often took just to get five hours of sleep.
Fu-Kang also had a fair degree of paranoia, now worrying that anybody might try to attack him one day, prompting him to carry around pepper spray at all times.
Now at his lowest, Fu-kang went back to his favorite Manga, Battle Angel Alita (銃夢). Battle Angel Alita is a Science Fiction Manga, and one of the villains is named Makaku; his backstory is that his mother abandoned him and threw him into a ditch.
He was bullied and burned as a child, but a scientist saved him and turned him into a bio-engineered weapon albiet, Makaku was in constant pain and survived by eating human and dog brains, treating other beings' endorphins as painkillers.
Makaku eventually said this line to the titular character Alita: "`My life began with suffering! "Power!" "Suffering", these two feelings, like water flowing downhill, are enough to make everyone else suffer. I escaped from suffering. Only by gaining the "power" that plunges everyone into the abyss of pain can I make my life worthwhile!! "
Fu-kang was at the lowest point in his life when he turned the page to this scene, and upon reading this line, Fu-kang felt he could relate to Makaku and sympathize with this line; he likened it to people who faced abuse or humiliation in public or at work and then took it out on their family.
However, he took it a step further; he not only felt sympathy, but also found inspiration and decided to take a page out of Makaku's book and act on that line in the real world.
For the longest time, Fu-kang had already been considering either taking his own life or the life of another but was never able to follow through on either of the two. But the final straw was when his laptop broke down and he had to pay 6,600 NTD to fix it, only for it to stay in a repair shop for three months with no progress
On March 5, 2009, Fu-kang went to the Jiuru Hardware Department Store in Puli and bought a heavy knife for 550 NTD.
Now with a murder weapon in hand, he went to an Internet Cafe in Puli to start browsing rental listings, looking for ones in Taipei
Fu-kang also had a personal stake in targeting them, as he felt landlords deserved to die because they could afford to rent out spare rooms while he struggled to make any money.
Fu-kang's plan was to reach out to one of the landlords behind the listings to meet them at the empty property and murder them. Fu-kang wrote down the names and phone numbers of everyone who piqued his interest on a sheet of paper. The list with 11 names on it was his "Death List,".
With his list complete, Fu-kang went home to collect his pepper spray and two hammers before leaving for the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, that evening. Once in the city, he was allowed to stay with his older brother for the duration of his visit.
Fu-kang stayed with his brother for 4 days before carrying out his plan on the morning of March 9, 2009.
He put the pepper spray, the knife, the two hammers, and a spare shirt into his backpack, then borrowed his brother's motorcycle, drove to the Shilin District, and used 4 seperate public telephones to start calling the landlords on his list.
The first three men unknowingly escaped with their lives because they either didn't answer the phone, couldn't arrange a time for Fu-kang to view the property, or had already rented out the property Fu-kang pretended to be interested in.
Number 4 on his list and the one to finally answer was 51-year-old Chien Tien-chih. With all the information laid out for Fu-kang, comparatively little is known about his victims. Tien-chih lived in Taipei with his 50-year-old wife, Yu Jui-ying, and his son, Chien Yu-lun, in his early 20s, who was studying at a university.
Tien-chih spent many years working for a trading company before retiring in 2008 and joining Jui-ying at her sales job. The couple were local landowners in the Tianmu area and acquired several apartment buildings in Taipei, which they rented out to anyone who asked; they were even willing to rent to foreigners, and both were multilingual.
But in the end, the family lived modest, humble lives in an apartment complex of their own. The couple even used one of their plots of land to start a vegetable farm. This made them well liked by the neighbours, with Tien-chih respected for his kind and polite personality.
Tien-chih answered Fu-kang's call at 9:51 a.m., and Fu-kang told him he was interested in renting the fourth floor of a property he owned on Dexing East Road, conveniently in the Shilin District. Tien-chih agreed and arranged the viewing for 10:00 a.m., only 9 minutes after the call.
Tien-chih arrived on time and showed Fu-kang the property, describing the utilities and rooms while Fu-kang pretended to be interested. Once Tien-chih led Fu-kang to the bathroom, he seized the oppertunity, brandished his pepper spray, and pretended to accidentally spray it into Tien-chih's eyes.
Panicked and in pain, Tien-chih rushed to the sink to wash his eyes, his back turned to Fu-kang as he retrieved one of the hammers from his backpack. Then, with that hammer, he struck the back of Tien-chih's head twice, bringing him to the ground, before retrieving his knife and hacking away at his head, lower face, neck, chest, right abdomen, and hand. He kept slashing at Tien-chih until eventually his intestines spilled out.
Tien-chih didn't stand a chance and bled out on the bathroom floor. During the frenzy, Fu-kang wound up cutting his own left index finger and bled all over the apartment.
Seeing as he was already in the bathroom where he had just murdered a complete stranger, Fu-kang used the sink to wash the blood off of his body and cleaned the knife and hammer. Fu-kang took off his shirt and changed into the spare one he had packed.
Fu-kang then looted Tien-chih's corpse, stealing his keys and possessions. Fu-kang placed Tien-chih's body in the bathtub, then locked the apartment from the outside to prevent his body from being discovered, and then browsed through Tien-chih's personal papers, which included his personal phone number.
Fu-kang then fled the scene, got back on the motorcycle, and drove to Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital, arriving at the ER at 11:50 a.m.
Once there, he told the staff that he had cut his finger on a cable knife. The attending doctor sutured the wound and sent him on his way.
As he left the hospital, Fu-kang decided he would head over to Tien-chih's home to kill his wife and son. Fu-kang rationalized this decision by thinking back to the grief he felt at his own father's death and deciding that killing the two would spare them from experiencing the same. He even went so far as to tell himself that he would be killing the two "Out of goodwill and out of a sense of responsibility"
At 12:46 p.m., Fu-kang called Tien-chih's wife, Jui-ying, from a public telephone at a convenience store. He told her that he and Tien-chih had finished discussing the rental and needed to sign the lease, and that he needed Tien-chih's address. Jui-ying gave him this information so Fu-kang got back on the motorcycle and drove to their third-floor apartment in the Shilin District, arriving at 1:10 p.m.
Jui-ying answered the door and initially didn't feel alarmed to see her husband absent. He asked to use their washroom and made his way over. He then told Jui-ying that there was a leak in her bathroom and offered his services as a plumber to fix it. Curious and fairly certain their bathroom was fine, Jui-ying went over to examine this supposed leak.
As soon as she walked inside, Fu-kang repeated what he had done to her husband. He sprayed her with the pepper spray. Rather than running for the sink, Jui-ying blindly fought back, moving the struggle into the living room as Fu-kang grabbed the hammer and struck her hand and slashed her across her head, neck, chest, and hands with the knife.
Jui-ying kept struggling and clung to life, screaming for her son. Yu-lun came running and charged toward Fu-kang, attacking him to defend her mother as Fu-kang kept the fight going, slashing Yu-lun's arms.
Eventually, Yu-lun began to flee, getting Fu-kang away from his mother now that his attention was focused on him. Fu-kang chased Yu-lun into the bathroom attached to the main bedroom, leaving him cornered, standing in the doorway. Yu-lun tried to squeeze past Fu-kang, only to be slashed on the back and neck, causing him to bleed heavily from his arterial region.
However, Jui-ying was still alive and conscious and approched Fu-kang from behind, using what little strength she had to pull Fu-kang away from her son.
This distracted Fu-kang long enough for Yu-lun, with his hands over his neck wound, to run out into the street and scream for help.
Fu-kang gave chase, but after seeing the neighbours starting to come outside, Fu-kang hopped back on the motorcycle and fled.
During his rampage, Fu-kang tore the stitches on his index finger, causing his blood to litter the second crime scene too.
After telling them that his mother was still inside, the neighbours rushed into the building and saw the apartment covered in blood with Jui-ying passed out, having finally lost consciousness. But not her life; the neighbours called for an ambulance, and they rushed both Jui-ying and Yu-lun to the hospital, where they were immideately rushed to the ICU.
Meanwhile, the police arrived, and luckily, the neighbours all had CCTV cameras mounted on their property, so they were able to witness the killer entering and leaving on his motorcycle and in the police's first lucky break, the motorcycle registration was clearly visible.
Jui-ying and Yu-lun were both rushed to Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital, the same hospital Fu-kang had gone to earlier. Despite the severity of his injuries, Yu-lun was miraculously still conscious and able to speak to the police.
He was able to describe their attacker as an adult, physically imposing man in a short-sleeved white shirt, but seeing as they had never met Fu-kang before, he couldn't identify him.
He did, however, tell the police that his father, Tien-chih, hadn't returned after heading out to show a property to a potential tenant, and seeing as his attacker called his mother to tell him they were about to sign the lease, he feared the worst had befallen his father.
Yu-lun was able to provide the police with one more detail: he witnessed his sutured wound on his finger becoming undone and watched the killer bleed all over their home. This prompted the police to issue an appeal to all hospitals, asking them to report anybody who came in with an accidental knife wound. But as fate would have it, the police didn't need to bother.
A bunch of journalists flocked to the hospital wanting to interview either the police or victims about the shocking and unprovoked assault. At 2:10 p.m., one of the journalists, a veteran crime reporter, noticed a large man in a short-sleeved white shirt entering the ER; the man's shirt had splotches of blood on it, and his hand was damaged.
He didn't know what Yu-lun had told the police, but this man still aroused his suspicions, so he rushed to summon a police officer stationed at the hospital to question Yu-lun and Jui-ying. Additionally, the doctors remembered treating Fu-kang for this exact same injury only a few hours earlier, so they also summoned the police.
A police officer rushed toward him and immideately ordered Fu-kang to drop to his knees and put his hands up, which he did without any resistance. Only four hours after the crime, Fu-kang was arrested in the same hospital that was treating his victims.
Fu-kang knew visiting the hospital was a bad idea, since he actually returned home and asked his brother to bandage the wound, but he insisted he go to the hospital instead.
After his arrest, the police went through his backpack where they discovered the blood-soaked knife, a hammer, a bloodied shirt, the receipt from the hardware store back in Puli, his pepper spray, and a bloodied piece of paper with all the names of the landlords Fu-kang had on his list.
An additional search of the motorcycle he had parked outside the hospital turned up the second hammer.
The first question the police asked was if he had killed Tien-chih, to which he confessed, handing the police the keys to the property on Dexing East Road so they could find his body. The police rushed over and, after unlocking the door, found blood all over the apartment with practically no attempt to clean up. And when the police ventured into the bathroom, they were greeted by Tien-chih's horrifically mutilated body hidden in the bathtub.
When Tien-chih's body was sent off for an autopsy, the true savagery of the murder came to light. The autopsy documented four scalp lacerations measuring approximately three to six centimetres, a depressed skull fracture approximately two to three centimetres in diameter, and intracranial bleeding.
The knife wounds included two neck wounds approximately ten centimetres long reaching the fourth and sixth cervical vertebrae; an eighteen-centimetre wound through the lower face with damage to the mandible; a ten-centimetre wound extending from the left lip across the left face; a seven-centimetre penetrating wound to the right abdomen passing through both lobes of the liver toward the right side of the spine; a five-centimetre penetrating wound near the xiphoid process; two smaller wounds near the left sternoclavicular and clavicular regions; and a defensive wound to the right wrist.
Fu-kang slashed at Tien-chih so violently that his internal organs were left protruding out of his body and the trachea, esophagus, and right carotid region were completely destroyed.
Fu-kang told the police he was motivated by frustration and resentment that others were happy and living better lives than he was, and he also said he would feel better if he could make others suffer as well. He even told the police about Battle Angel Alita.
Aside from Fu-kang's confession, the police had a pretty solid case against him. His fingerprints were on all the bloodied murder weapons in his possession, which he handled barehanded; his motorcycle was caught on CCTV with its information facing the camera; footprints seized from the crime scenes were a match to his own shoes; he was caught on camera, identified by both Jui-ying and Yu-lun, who both managed to pull through, etc., etc.; all things considered, it was a fairly open-and-shut case. The only room for ambiguity was what punishment he would receive.
After Fu-kang was charged with murder and two counts of attempted murder, the court saw fit to send him to the National Taiwan University Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, given his history. He was diagnosed with suspected "latent-type schizophrenia" and insomnia but aside from that, he was deemed competent to stand trial, and his mental impairment wasn't severe enough to render him unable to understand what he had done or the consequences of it, especially considering the premeditation involved and how his motive for going back to kill Jui-ying and Yu-lun was to supposedly spare them the anguish of losing their husband and father, proving that he was well aware murder was wrong and traumatic for those who lose someone to it.
Fu-kang's trial began at the Taiwan Shilin District Court shortly after his discharge in January 2010. In court, Fu-kang denied having any murderous intent and pleaded not guilty by reason of mental illness. Fu-Kang also repeatedly told the court that he had "forgotten the case facts"
Fu-Kang's behaviour in court was also quite erratic; he said he "lived with regret every day", he wrote apology letters to Jui-ying and Yu-lun and expressed his desire to compensate them, despite being too poor to do so.
But despite expressing such sentiments, he would also threaten to murder those handling his case. He also said that he killed because he was in a bad mood and because he used drugs, even though there were no drugs in his system or any history of abuse of heavy narcotics.
When Battle Angel Alita was brought up again, Fu-kang denied insinuations that he believed Makaku was real or that Makaku influenced him to commit the murder, saying he felt inspired after reading his dialogue.
He also filed a complaint against the prosecutor because prosecuting him for murder had "broken up his family" and, despite saying he regretted his actions, when asked what he would do were the court ot let him go, Fu-kang simply said, "You'd know what I would do" and "When I'm released, all of you people will find out what death means"
On April 8, 2010, for the murder of Chien Tien-chih and the attempted murder of Yu Jui-ying and Chien Yu-lun, the court handed down the maximum sentence available, giving Huang Fu-kang the death penalty for Tien-chih's murder and 18 and 15 years respectively for Jui-ying's and Yu-lun's attempted murder.
While Taiwan rarely issues death sentences, especially when it comes to murders with only a single victim, the court concluded that Fu-kang's "evil disposition" was "grave" and that there wasn't any potential to rehabilitate him.
Fu-kang appealed this verdict but later withdrew his appeal for the attack on Jui-ying and Yu-lun, allowing that verdict to become final. However, he pushed forward with appealing the death sentence.
On August 12, 2010, the Taiwan High Court would actually side with Fu-kang and vacate his death sentence. They determined that Fu-kang was remorseful and that he surrendered to the police and revealed the location of Tien-chih's body, which counted as a mitigating factor. Therefore, they sentenced Fu-kang to life instead.
This time, the prosecution appealed to Taiwan's Supreme Court and on December 16, 2010, they vacated Fu-Kang's life sentence and determined that this remorse was less than genuine, only emerging at trial. The case was sent back to the lower courts for a retrial.
Once again, Fu-Kang claimed he was not guilty by reason of insanity and was unable to clearly remember anything that had happened. On January 3, 2012, Fu-Kang was sentenced to death for a second time.
However, on March 1, 2012, the Supreme Court vacated the conviction once again. This time, because some evidence, psychiatric reports, and case materials had been improperly submitted via email, leaving them at risk of impersonation, tampering, or hacking and casting doubt on their authenticity.
As a result, the case was sent back for yet another retrial, albiet this one was just a formality to ensure there were no more procedural issues. On May 29, 2012, Taiwan's High Court sentenced Fu-kang to death once more, and when Taiwan's Supreme Court heard the case for the third time, on August 16, they finally upheld the sentence, making it final, albiet never carried out.
On October 17, 2023, Huang Fu-kang passed away at the Taipei Detention Center from cardiogenic shock before his execution could ever take place.
Tien-chih's murder was the first truly random killing of the 21st century in Taiwan.
On November 10, the Luzhou Intermediate People’s Court of Sichuan Province handed down the first-instance judgment in the "Flower Bed Body Concealment Case".
The defendant Chen Shifen was convicted of intentional homicide, forging identity documents, using forged identity documents, and illegally crossing the national border. Combined punishment for multiple crimes was applied. She was sentenced to death, deprived of political rights for life, and fined 27,000 yuan.
The defendant Yang Yonggen was convicted of intentional homicide and sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, deprived of political rights for life.
The 1992 murder of Kenyatta Bush remained unsolved until September 17, 1996, when the police received a tip-off from Barb Olson that Sheets's friend, Adam Barnett, had told her son-in-law, Jason LaNoue, that he and Sheets were involved in Kenyatta's murder. The police then obtained statements from Olson, her daughter, Richelle LaNoue, and Jason LaNoue. As part of the investigation, Richelle LaNoue agreed to wear a wire and to secretly tape a conversation between herself and Barnett regarding the murder. During the conversation, Barnett confessed that he and Sheets were responsible for the murder, which he said was racially motivated. Barnett said he didn't participate in the murder, but had driven the car.
Barnett was arrested on September 27. Once in custody, the police read Barnett his Miranda warnings and interviewed him for about one hour regarding the events surrounding Kenyatta's disappearance and murder. During questioning, Barnett denied any involvement in the murder and said Sheets had murdered Kenyatta. Barnett then asked for an attorney and questioning ceased.
The following day, Barnett made a second statement to the police. He said Kenyatta had willingly entered the car to smoke marijuana and drive around with them. Barnett said he briefly left, but when he returned, Sheets had pinned Kenyatta to the ground and was stabbing her. Shortly after saying this, Barnett began to cry, and his attorney terminated the interview.
Following the second interview, Barnett's attorney negotiated a plea agreement with the county attorney on Barnett's behalf.
According to a letter setting out the terms, Barnett agreed to give truthful testimony against Sheets in exchange for being allowed to plead guilty to second degree murder. That night, Barnett made a full and graphic confession to his involvement in Kenyatta's murder. Barnett said he and Sheets kidnapped Kenyatta and that he held her down as Sheets raped her and then stabbed her to death.
"And I was holding her down and he was beating her, he didn't stop, he kept beating her. Finally I stood up and I took about three steps back. (Lets out a breath) That's when he took out-that's when he took the open blade of the knife out, stabbed her in the upper torso. I just stood there and did nothing. The reason I didn't do nothing is... (lets out a breath) is 'cause she was black. If it would have been a white girl I probably would have stopped him, but I didn't. I just seen faces of other people and I thought she deserved it."
While in jail, Barnett recanted his statements on several occasions to a family member, his girlfriend, a cellmate, and Sheets' wife. However, Barnett was provided several details about the murder that were not known to the public. He also privately confessed to his uncle that he helped Sheets get Bush to the car, that he drug her down the lane, and that he held her down while Sheets raped her. Barnett hanged himself in his cell on November 13, 1996. In 1997, Sheets was tried alone. Taking the stand in his own defense, he denied any role in the murder.
The prosecution presented Barnett's confession as evidence.
Sheets testified that he didn't hate black people. The prosecution impeached his testimony with that of several witnesses, who testified that Sheets had threatened a black neighbor and had a fascination with Nazism. Barnett's mother testified that Sheets and Barnett had talked about Hitler, shaven their heads, and sometimes drawn swastikas.
Sheets testified that he didn't own the silver Camaro that Barnett said was used during the kidnapping of Kenyatta until the day after. The prosecution impeached his testimony with that of a traffic ticket showing that Sheets had received citations for driving a silver Camaro without proof of registration at least two days before the murder.
The jury was allowed to hear Barnett's confession in its entirety, over Sheets's objections. Other evidence was adduced at trial concerning the nature of the friendship between Sheets and Barnett at the time the confession was made. Some evidence indicated that the two were as close as ever. Other evidence indicated that the relationship had become strained. Evidence was also provided about a sexual encounter between Sheets and Barnett's girlfriend and Barnett's later recantations.
Regarding Barnett's credibility issues, the prosecution argued that his statements were a process toward the truth that ended with his final confession to the police: "The process really started September 23. 1992, when Adam Barnett and Jeremy Sheets abducted, beat, humiliated and raped Kenyatta, Bush. Out of loyalty to his best friend, Adam held the secret in for four years. Adam Barnett couldn't hold it in any longer. He had to tell someone."
On May 7, 1997, an all-white jury found Sheets guilty of first degree murder after four hours of deliberation. On September 26, a three-judge panel sentenced Sheets to death by electrocution.
On September 15, 2000, the Nebraska Supreme Court unanimously overturned Sheets's conviction on the grounds that he had not been allowed to cross-examine his dead accomplice, which violated the Confrontation Clause.
Unable to make a case without the confession, prosecutor Jim Jansen dismissed the charges. Jansen said he had no doubt that Sheets was guilty: "It's painful to have to do this. I'm convinced we tried and convicted the appropriate person." The lead investigator, Jimmy Wilson Sr., expressed a similar opinion: "It's a travesty that we can't do anything about this."
Jeremy Sheets was released from the Nebraska State Penitentiary on June 13, 2001. He was the first person to walk from Nebraska's death row a free man in 88 years.
In 2003, Sheets sued the Omaha Police Department and several police officers involved in his case for malicious prosecution. He alleged that the officers had coerced Barnett using methods to "railroad one innocent man into a false confession that implicated another innocent man." A federal judge dismissed the suit, finding that the police had probable cause to suspect Sheets and the allegations that Barnett was coerced into confessing were unfounded.
In 2004, the dismissal of the lawsuit was upheld on appeal.
In 2009, Sheets was charged with felony menacing for threatening a 16-year-old Hispanic girl with a knife in Colorado. The girl said he brought the knife within inches of her face. In 2010, he was convicted of misdemeanor menacing and sentenced to probation. Sheets's trial attorney from the murder case, William Gallup, remarked that he was surprised that the judge didn't throw the book at him: "You worry that a judge will think, 'You didn't get what you deserved in Nebraska, so we'll we see what we can do here.'"
In 2011, Sheets demanded $1 million in compensation for the four years he spent on death row. Kenyatta's mother, Barbara Stennis, strongly opposed any attempt to compensate him: "The law is meant to protect those wrongly convicted, not those who manage to get away on a lack of sufficient evidence. I do not believe Jeremy Sheets was wrongly convicted. I believe had Adam Barnett lived, there would have been a strong conviction with his testimony."
Sheets did not receive any compensation.
Under Nebraska law, for a defendant to be eligible for compensation, they must provide clear and convincing evidence of their factual innocence, AND that they did not commit or suborn perjury, fabricate evidence, or otherwise make a false statement to contributed to their conviction.
Because Sheets had made demonstrably false statements under oath regarding his racial animus and his timeline with the silver Camaro, which destroyed his credibility and undoubtedly contributed to his conviction, that alone barred him from any compensation.
Sheets gave several speeches for Witness To Innocence in the early 2010s.
It has been over 11 years since Sheets was released from jail. His life has never returned to the way it once was; people run away from him and his time in jail follows him like a shadow everyday. "It's still on my record. It says first degree murder, use of weapon to commit a felony and in little tiny letters on the side it says dismissed," Sheets informed.
The article has 23 comments, nearly all of which lambast Sheets as a liar and a murderer.
I wanted to bring attention to a case that doesn’t get nearly enough discussion: the murder of 23-month-old Aaden Lee Batista.
Aaden was born on 2 May 2008 in Melbourne, Florida, to Whitney E. Flower and Jeffrey Batista.
His family knew him by affectionate nicknames—“Pumpkin,” “Chubba,” “Mister,” and “Buddy.” He was a happy, loving little boy with his whole life ahead of him.
On the evening of 7 April 2010, while his mother worked her shift as a medical assistant, her live-in boyfriend, Jason Padgett Sr., was left alone with Aaden at their Palm Bay apartment. When Whitney returned home later that night, she found her son unresponsive. She rushed him to the hospital. Aaden was transferred to Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children in Orlando, where he died the following day, 8 April 2010, from catastrophic injuries.
Padgett initially told investigators that Aaden had fallen accidentally while he was changing the toddler’s diaper—landing on the back of his head after slipping off the toilet,he claimed he then washed the boy, changed him, and put him to bed rather than calling for help. In his recorded police interview, which became central to the prosecution’s case, Padgett later admitted he had shaken Aaden and repeatedly slammed the child’s head against the hard bathroom floor. He said he wanted the toddler to stop crying because he “hadn’t meant to drop him.” In the recording, Padgett described Aaden as still moving and responsive after the assault.
The injuries documented by medical examiners were devastating:
Severe skull fractures and deep brain bleeding from violent shaking and repeated impacts against the floor.
A lacerated liver consistent with a heavy blunt-force blow or stomping to the abdomen.
Fresh tearing, severe bruising, and physical trauma to the genitals and perianal area, which the medical examiner determined were caused by acute physical force.
Contemporary reporting, including from the Orlando Sentinel, noted that Palm Bay police said Aaden showed signs of severe sexual abuse. In the interview, officers confronted Padgett with the extensive bruising to the child’s penis and tearing of the anus. Padgett denied any involvement and offered no explanation.
Perhaps most heartbreaking is that this was not the first time Padgett had been seen mistreating Aaden. Investigators spoke with witnesses who described violent behavior in the weeks leading up to the toddler’s death.
Reported incidents included punching Aaden in the face and head, slapping him around the head and throat, striking him with a scooter, dragging him by his shirt across an apartment parking lot, and shouting at him while calling him “worthless.”
One neighbor described Padgett taking a scooter away from Aaden and hitting the child with it. These accounts were reported by Florida Today in April 2010. Palm Bay Police Detective Greg Guillette noted that some witnesses had been frightened of Padgett, who had a reputation for aggression in the neighborhood.
None of these earlier incidents appear to have been reported to police or child-protection authorities before Aaden’s fatal injuries.
Padgett was no stranger to the justice system. He had previously served prison time for robbery, grand theft, forgery, and fleeing law enforcement. Police also referenced prior arrests involving domestic violence, child abuse, aggravated battery, and drug offenses. Records later showed he had been arrested roughly 22 times and had a history of violence toward partners and others.
Just 10 days before Aaden’s death, the Florida Department of Children and Families received a report alleging drug use in the home (not physical abuse). DCF required Whitney to sign a safety plan promising no drug use around the child. DCF never did the appropriate background checks on padgett either. Grandparents had also expressed concerns about Padgett being left alone with Aaden. The case later drew scrutiny in public child-welfare reviews because neither the family nor investigators fully acted on Padgett’s extensive violent criminal background.
At trial in 2013, the jury watched Padgett’s recorded confession describing the drop, the shaking, and the repeated blows to Aaden’s head against the floor.
On 19 March 2013, Jason Padgett was found guilty of third-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.
Aaden was only 23 months old.
He never got the chance to grow up. His obituary, published in Florida Today on 15 April 2010, remembered him by the loving nicknames his family used and described a happy little boy who was deeply loved.
What makes this case especially painful is the presence of warning signs—prior violence witnessed by others, a recent DCF report, a long criminal record—that were not enough to protect him. Aaden was completely dependent on the adults around him, and those systems and individuals failed him.
Rest in peace, little Aaden. You deserved so much better. link 1link 2
I watched the Netflix series of natalee holloway case went to see the conversation on this case and I am beyond disgusted.
People are talking about Natalees friends and “how could they allow her to leave with 3 men”. Why are we blaming the friends rather than the actual perpetrator?
I understand that nowadays no woman would let their friend leave with three men in a strange country at night.
But it was 2005. The girls were drinking. They thought it was a taxi. What they could have done? Started to run after the car? Call the police that their friend left with these men willingly?
I am so disappointed with how the blame and discussion is on the friends actions rather than the murderers.
I've recently found the 48 hours podcast after working my way through the Dateline podcast. I'm not American, so I've never actually seen either show - I've only ever listened to them as podcasts.
I'm curious to know how both of these shows are perceived. Are they on par with each other, particularly in terms of journalistic integrity? Or would one be considered as better than the other? At the moment I prefer Dateline, but I'm not sure if that's because I can follow the format better or if it's a better quality show.
Chiho Anjitsu was 20 years old and lived with her family in Mattō, near Kanazawa, Japan. The middle of three sisters, she was remembered by her friends as a cheerful, bright young woman.
Swimming had always been a familiar part of life in the Anjitsu family. Her father was vice president of the local swimming association, and Chiho had become involved in the sport during her school years.
After graduation, she began working at a swim school herself. Her black Mitsubishi made the short trip from home in about ten minutes.
In the months before her death, her family had noticed small changes in her routine. She was eating out more often, and the calls letting them know she’d be home late had become less regular. Sometimes, she went out without mentioning her plans at all.
On September 30, 1992, nothing about her workday seemed unusual. She’d brought homemade spaghetti to eat during a break, but when the staff had lunch together, she put it aside for later.
That evening, a coworker noticed how hurriedly she ate in the staff room. It seemed as though she had somewhere else to be. A little before 7:15, she got into her car and drove away.
Usually, she took the west exit toward home. This time, a coworker watched her leave through the east exit instead.
It was the last confirmed sighting of Chiho alive.
By 11 p.m., she still hadn’t come home, and there’d been no call. Worried, her mother set out with Chiho’s older sister to look for her. Their search eventually brought them to the swim school, where they spotted her familiar black car.
It was sitting at an awkward angle across the white parking lines. The front had struck the concrete block at the end of her usual space.
They hurried over and peered through the window. In the dark, Chiho was difficult to make out, lying on the passenger seat with the backrest lowered all the way.
At first, they thought she was asleep.
The passenger door was locked, so they went around to the driver’s side and opened that door. They called to her and tried to wake her, but she gave no response. When they touched her, she felt cold.
Then her mother switched on the interior light.
There was dirt on Chiho’s clothes and a dark band of marks around her neck. She wasn’t breathing. What had looked like sleep through the window was something far worse.
Her mother ran to a small bar nearby, one of the few places still open, and desperately asked someone to call the police.
Officers arrived soon afterward, and the examination of the car continued into the early morning. The engine was off, but the key was still in the ignition and the gearshift remained in drive.
Together with the crooked parking, it suggested someone had abandoned the car in a hurry.
Chiho’s bag lay on the back seat with her money and valuables still inside. Nothing obvious appeared to have been stolen.
Mud clung to the tires, and her clothes were filthy, especially across her back. Her right shoe was missing.
Chiho had been strangled.
A coworker later remembered seeing her car in the lot around 9 p.m. While her family was still waiting for her to come home, the Mitsubishi had already been brought back to the place she’d left that evening.
The first useful clue to where she’d been was something small enough to overlook.
A single leaf was caught in her hair.
It came from a dawn redwood, a tree that isn’t native to Japan. Investigators began searching nearby places where the trees had been planted, eventually reaching an isolated agricultural research facility.
On the grounds, they found tire tracks consistent with Chiho’s car. A short distance from the entrance lay her missing shoe.
There were drag marks in the dirt, too. These suggested she’d been pulled across the ground toward the car, which would explain the heavy dirt on the back of her clothes. The evidence pointed to Chiho having been killed there before someone placed her in the passenger seat and drove her back to work.
Her family’s home was only a few hundred meters away.
That strange return trip became central to the investigation. Whoever had brought Chiho back had left the car almost exactly in her usual space. It seemed they knew where she worked and where she parked.
Her hurried meal and unexpected departure in the opposite direction from home also took on new significance. Perhaps she’d arranged to meet someone she knew.
But the investigation soon ran into problems of its own. Senior police officials were so afraid of information reaching the press that they kept important clues from detectives working on the case. Some were left pursuing leads without knowing all the evidence that had already been found.
By the time certain details were shared, their work had stalled.
One investigator, Torao Nishimura, became deeply suspicious of a particular man. Years later, when he wrote about the case, he gave him the pseudonym “Yamada.”
Yamada reportedly worked at the same swim school as Chiho. He’d been among twenty people singled out for closer investigation, but his alibi initially seemed solid. In May 1993, police stopped pursuing him.
A little over a year later, they had reason to look again.
Saliva found on Chiho’s upper body had been linked to a man with blood type B or AB. Yamada had type B blood, making him the only one of those twenty people whose blood type matched.
The sample hadn’t been stored properly, and investigators couldn’t conclusively connect it to him. A matching blood type wasn’t proof, but it was enough to make them revisit his account of that evening.
This time, his alibi began to unravel.
Police couldn’t confirm where he’d been during the crucial stretch between Chiho’s departure from work and the return of her car.
Nishimura began piecing together a possible explanation. He believed Chiho had met Yamada in a restaurant parking lot north of the swim school, where Yamada’s car had been seen.
A witness had also reported seeing a young man behind the wheel of Chiho’s car.
That sighting had been reported early in the investigation. The witness had even remembered two digits of the license plate that matched hers.
Yet police had brushed it aside because the location was in the opposite direction from the suspected murder scene.
To Nishimura, it now seemed significant. Perhaps the two had met in the restaurant lot, then continued together in Chiho’s car, with Yamada driving.
The witness hadn’t established that the young man was Yamada, but the possibility fit Nishimura’s developing theory.
In his reconstruction, Yamada had wanted Chiho to go with him to one of the nearby motels. When she refused, he’d turned onto the secluded research grounds and attempted to sexually assault her.
Nishimura believed she’d resisted and escaped from the car, only to be caught and strangled with a strap from her own overalls. The strap’s fasteners were consistent with the distinctive marks on her neck.
He also thought he understood why someone would make the unsettling decision to drive her body back to the swim school.
Out on the isolated grounds at night, Yamada would have needed a way to get back into town. Chiho’s car provided one. But leaving her at work, where someone might recognize the car and look inside, could have served another purpose.
Nishimura suspected Yamada had wanted her body discovered quickly. He might have hoped that being seen elsewhere at the time of the discovery would draw suspicion away from him.
There was another witness who reportedly saw the driver returning to the swim school. Her account, too, had been dismissed. Police considered her unreliable because she worked as a fortune teller.
For Nishimura, these details formed a convincing picture of what might have happened that night. But his certainty couldn’t fill the gaps in the evidence.
Yamada was never charged.
In 2007, fifteen years after Chiho’s death, the statute of limitations expired. The investigation team was disbanded, leaving her family without an answer.
Japan abolished the statute of limitations for murder in 2010.
For Chiho, the change came too late.
Her death continued to weigh on Nishimura long after the official investigation ended. In 2022, thirty years after the murder, he played himself in Torao, a film blending fact and fiction about the case he’d never been able to solve.
In his book, he wrote about the mistakes, the unfinished investigation, and the regret he still carried. Its title translates roughly as
At 4:30 p.m. on June 6, 1919, a milk delivery worker returning home after his rounds in Okawazu, a village in the Niigata Prefecture of Japan, found a red leather trunk on the shore of the Shinano River. Curious, he pulled it up out of the water, finding it much heavier than expected.
But even more alarming, he hadn't even opened the trunk yet, and it was emitting a foul odour. He didn't even need to open it; it was already slightly ajar, and he caught a small enough glimpse of its contents to go running for the nearest police box to summon some officers.
The responce was enormous. Officers from two seperate police stations, an inspector from the Niigata Prefectural Police aided by several of his detectives, a magistrate and a prosecutor all arrived at the scene, with the local villagers volunteering to keep any intrusive onlookers away.
The trunk measured approximately 73 centimetres in length, 42 centimetres wide, and 22 centimetres deep. Inside was a headless, legless torso, although curiously the arms were still attached.
The torso was also fully clothed, with the victim wearing a high-quality foreign-made fabric shirt and silk trousers that were not available to any locals, making clear that the victim was an outsider, and likely a well-off one at that.
The trunk was packed with old cotton wadding and drenched in naphthalene in a futile attempt to staunch the smell of decomposition. Finally, in the police's first lead, the engravings "KY" were visible on both sides of the trunk.
The remains were brought to the Niigata Medical College, where the attending physician determined that the victim was a male and, based on the gray pubic hairs, likely 50 or older. As indicated by his clothing, the victim was also likely a wealthy man, as he showed no signs of prolonged physical labour.
The time of death was placed at approximately 10 days earlier, and the dismemberment occurred around 1-2 days after rigor mortis set in, with the instrument in question likely being a saw or large knife. Other than the dismemberment, there were no signs of any violence on the recovered remains.
The local area was small enough that the police were both able to quickly rule out any local missing persons being their victim and small enough that any other outsiders would be remembered, especially if they behaved suspiciously.
Porters employed at the nearby Nagaoka Station recalled two well-dressed men getting off the train from Tokyo with unusually heavy trunks. They also aggressively shouted at the station master when he touched the trunks while they were outside the Yanagiya tea. The two men also summoned a rickshaw, and the rickshaw drivers remembered the route.
The police also discovered that somebody had sent a telegram from the Nagaoka Post Office in the name of a Tokyo resident, Yamada Ken, to his half-brother in the region, also on June 3. The police spoke to Ken's half-brother, who told the police that he had no idea Ken was in town or why he was sent such a telegram. In response, the Niigata Prefectural Police sent a telegram to the police in Tokyo asking them to detain Ken.
The Yokohama police also received a missing persons report from the family of a 65-year-old merchant named Suzuki Benzou, who often went by the nickname "Suzuben".
Suzuben had last been seen alive at his Fukagawa branch office on the evening of May 31, heading toward the direction of Ken's home.
In the few short days between his disappearance and the discovery of the body, the police searched the city for him, believing he was kidnapped for ransom as he was a wealthy businessman, and an aging one who likely couldn't venture far.
On June 8, before the telegram even reached Tokyo, Ken appeared in person at the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, accompanied by his 27-year-old junior colleague and houseguest, Watanabe Sozo.
Ken then asked to see one of the inspectors at the building, a former classmate of Ken's. The man he asked to see was a rising star in the police department and the future founder of the Yomiuri Giants and Nippon Television, Matsutarou Shouriki.
Ken's face was pale as he spoke to Shouriki and told the following story. He had read in that morning's newspaper that a trunk with a dismembered body had been found in the Shinano River. He had recognized the description of the trunk and victim and said that Sozo, after killing Suzuben, who was the victim in a street fight, after walking him to the station, had used the trunk from his home without his knowledge to dispose of the body.
He said that he considered helping Sozo flee to Manchuria but later had second thoughts and encouraged him to turn himself in, and that he was accompanying him to the station for support. Shouriki was skeptical.
The body's discovery wasn't even widely known yet outside of a few police officers, and the few articles that were written did not contain enough information for Ken to conclude that the victim was Suzuben and where specifically the body was found could not have been deduced from the scant information released. Suffice it to say, Ken was now a suspect, but rather than alerting him, Shouriki took Sozo into custody and told Ken that his cooperation was "noted".
With Ken gone, Sozo was interrogated alone, where he confessed and told the police the same story as Ken. However, they began pressing him for details such as how exactly the murder and dismemberment occurred. Just like that, Sozo began tripping over his words and found himself unable to explain how he killed Suzuben or dismembered and disposed of his body, even though he was supposedly confessing to his murder. It looked as if Sozo was trying to take the fall for the real killer.
During Sozo's interrogation, the telegram from Niigata finally arrived, and with that telegram in hand, Ken was summoned right back to the police station and this time detained for questioning. At the same time, the police also arrested his 38-year-old cousin, Yamada Shohei
Ken was at first defiant and said he was innocent and was, in fact, offended that he was being questioned at all.
He told his interrogators: "I am a high official of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. What possible reason could I have to commit such a crime?" Ken was indeed a high-ranking government official and frequently invoked that position and his social status, essentially pulling the "Do you know who I am" tactic. Additionally, he also invoked his friendship with Shouriki as another reason why the police were out of line for questioning him in the first place.
However, his title had no sway here, and the police kept pressing, pushing him on all the inconsistencies: that they had already arrested Shohei, and that Sozo was clearly lying. Furthermore, the police confronted him with the telegram sent to his half-brother in Niigata, which left him at a loss for words.
The interrogation lasted the entire day until, late into the night of June 8, Ken finally confessed. So what happened? Well, to understand this murder, a little history lesson is needed.
While they didn't see much action, losing only around 300 soldiers to combat, Japan was a member of the Allies in World War 1 from practically the start of the war, and although they avoided the bulk of the action, mostly relegated to seizing German possessions in the Pacific, WW1 still had some devastating effects on the island nation.
At first, the war actually had a positive effect on Japan's economy. Since the war was actually occurring in Europe, most factories and manufacturing plants on the continent were contracted by their respective governments to produce supplies and arms to help the war effort. With a shortage of the products they normally made, Europe had to source supplies elsewhere, with Japan as one option.
Japan experienced an export boom as its factories expanded to meet demand from both the domestic market and the now-lucrative European market. At first, the Japanese economy soared, and workers even had their wages increase, but sadly not fast enough to keep up with prices and soon inflation followed.
One such product that fell victim to inflation and artificial price gouging was rice, a commodity and staple for every household in Japan. The Japanese government did little to bring rice prices down; instead, it accelerated their rise by buying up massive amounts of rice to feed troops deployed to Siberia, single-handedly doubling the market price.
Rice merchants and landlords then hoarded grain to wait for higher prices and possibly to have the government buy even more of their supplies to feed the military, which essentially made rice unaffordable for the average citizen, workers and farmers.
Naturally, the public weren't particularly pleased by this arrangement. Especially not when they poured salt on the wounds by importing grain and rice from other countries just to justify raising the prices even further. Soon, the average citizen would call these people "Kanshou/奸商," roughly translating to "Shady Merchant".
In April 1918, the government had passed the Foreign Rice Management Order, which placed the importation of foreign rice directly under the government's control. Under this system, the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce would select a small number of enterprises to handle foreign rice on a fixed-price basis. The government would set the price, pay the designated merchants a handling fee of 30 sen per 60 kilograms of rice, and compensate them for any losses.
This backfired immensely and only encouraged more Kanshou to act the way they were or for others to start behaving that way. While there were originally just four designated merchants, others realized that if they could be among their company, they'd have a guaranteed, government-backed business in one of Japan's most essential commodities, with virtually no downside.
Therefore, the Japanese government found itself lobbied to be included, with bribery of course used to grease the wheels when necessary. Corruption was now more rife than it had ever been before.
On July 22, 1918, in what was then a small fishing town in the Toyama Prefecture named Uozu, a group of fishermen's wives gathered to demand lower rice prices. Newspapers covered this peaceful petition extensively, and it spread across Japan: 1 to 2 million people, including urban workers, miners, and tenant farmers, soon joined the protests, which reached nearly 500 locations, including 49 cities, 217 towns, and 231 villages.
They began as protests, but people's anger soon grew. Starting in August, angry mobs began attacking rice merchants suspected of hoarding or price-gouging and would torch their businesses and even their homes. They'd also loot their supplies and grain storehouses. When they clashed with the police dispatched to put an end to the riots, they'd turn their sights on their local police stations and burn them down as well.
Despite deploying the military to several cities to aid the police in suppressing the riots, the government ultimately capitulated with Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake resigning on September 29, 1918, alongside his entire cabinet.
At the end of the day, Japan deployed up to 100,000 troops nationwide, resulting in roughly 30 deaths, 25,000 arrests and over 8,200 convictions.
Now with the broader context established, it's time to dive into the pasts of the players involved.
Ken was born on May 8, 1890, in Nakajima Village in Niigata Prefecture to a fairly prosperous landowning family. Ken's father was a doctor, though he passed away when Yamada was young, leading him to live with his relatives, who were also successful landowners, meaning Ken lived a life relatively free of difficulty.
Ken enrolled in a prestigious high school in Kanazawa, a school whose alumni typically found themselves graduating to the Tokyo Imperial University, which then produced several politicians or academics.
Ken was no different; he was known to be an outstanding student and a natural leader, having set up and led a steady group of his own. Many of his fellow students would actually look up to Ken. In private,e Ken was still well liked for his laid-back, easygoing personality.
After graduating in 1916, Ken enrolled in the School of Agriculture in Komaba, Tokyo, where he graduated ninth in his class and got a job at the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, making Ken a government official. Ken was also married to the daughter of a member of the National Diet of Japan.
In April 1918, after the Japanese government established the Temporary Foreign Rice Management Division, Ken was appointed its chief technician, the only genuine specialist on foreign rice at the ministry. As part of his job, he was meant to oversee the quality and quantity of foreign rice available for import and to supervise the designated merchants and the process for approving them.
Ken often left the country as part of his inspections, visiting ports such as Yangon and Saigon, and it was during a trip to India that he met Suzuben's second son and had him employed as a consultant, a working relationship that resulted in him meeting Suzuben directly.
Suzuben outwardly was successful, having a large business and family consisting of ten children. But that didn't mean he was respected; Suzuben was known to be one of the aforementioned Kanshou.
He was born in 1854 to a farming family in a village in Kanagawa Prefecture named Jokyo as a third child. Suzuben started out as an apprentice at a rice shop, and after learning the craft, he began climbing to the top, getting a good head start when he inherited the family business in 1876.
It took decades, but he eventually became one of the most prosperous rice merchants in Yokohama, with 1 million yen in assets to his name, which, when adjusted for inflation, is roughly 1.54 billion yen.
The name of Suzuben's business was named "Suzuben Shouten," and it was a rice trading house run out of Yokohama with a branch office in the Koto ward of Tokyo. Suzuben proved to be what most of the public hated: somebody involved in speculation and artificial manipulation of the price of rice. A practice he boldly continued doing in the face of the Rice Riots.
However, ensuring he'd be hated even more, Suzuben also ran a high-interest money-lending "business" which had nothing to do with rice. Despite doing just about everything to pull in as much extra money as possible, no matter who stood in his way.
But at the same time, Suzuben was very stingy to the point of being mean-spirited. He was nicknamed "ズル弁/Zuru-ben," translating to "Sly Ben," and this was an insulting nickname given to him by his fellow merchants.
When Suzuben and Ken finally met face to face, the one thing Ken made clear was that he wanted to be added to the list of designated Merchants and was willing to pay a handsome price for his spot. Given Ken's position in the Foreign Rice Management Division, he had a tremendous say in who got added to the list or not, and as mentioned, Suzuben was determined to sway Ken.
At first, he offered him insider information on all the other merchants and markets, gave Ken advice on who to invest in or buy from, continued to have his son work with him and agreed to several small favours for Ken. Ken actually took his investment advice and started to profit himself off of the tips and information Suzuben supplied. Suzuben also warned Ken that there would be a rice shortage so he made sure to hoard as much as he could
That's how it began anyway, but Suzuben's advice wasn't always sound, and by 1919, Ken had lost approximately several million yen when adjusted for inflation. He had to borrow 3,000 Yen from his family to help cover some of his debts, but it hardly made a dent in the amount he owed, especially as the debts kept mounting and the creditors kept hounding him. So Ken decided it was time to engage in a little corruption himself.
Ken instructed Sozo to accompany him to a meeting with Suzuben, with Sozo instructed to impersonate the Division Head so they could approach Suzuben and say that he needed to pay a "fee" to finally be put on the designated merchants list.
The meeting took place at a restaurant in the Meguro ward in mid-May, and Ken and Sozo's deception worked like a charm. The two walked out of that restaurant with 150 million yen (when adjusted for inflation) now in their pockets.
Ken immideately began spending the money to try and pay off his debts, but with them being so substantial, he only had 4,200 yen remaining a week later and was still in the hole. But worst of all, Suzuben would obviously check and notice he hadn't been added to the list.
Soon, Suzuben became just another man hounding Ken and demanding their money be paid back; however, Suzuben was both more persistent and more dangerous than most. He visited Ken at his house, tracked him down to confront him in person on the street and sent him several letters demanding he pay back the bribe he had been tricked into paying.
Eventually, Suzuben "implied" that if he didn't pay him back or at least get him put on the Designated Merchants list for real, then he would expose him to his superiors. Since such a scenario would lead to the destruction of Ken's career and his incarceration for corruption and fraud, he decided it was time to get rid of Suzuben.
On May 20, Ken approached Sozo once more and told him: "A man like that is no good for the country if left alive. Two people in the ministry have committed suicide because of him. We have no choice but to kill him. Lend me your help." Sozo was actually quite aghast and tried in vain to persuade him otherwise.
But Ken's mind was made up, and because Ken had helped him out immensely before, he felt like Ken was owed his loyalty, so he agreed to the plan. The first part of the plan was for Ken to write Suzuben a letter telling him he was going to repay the yen in full and that he'd like to arrange a meeting to hand the money over.
On May 30, Ken and Sozo took part in a baseball game in Chiba Prefecture attended by agricultural officials. This was a "farewell" game for a colleague who was transferring away. In case anyone was wondering, Ken carried his team to victory, winning 24-3. The day after the game, May 31, was when Ken put his plan into action.
On that day, Ken gave his wife, staff and those staying at his home leave to visit the theatre while he stayed behind. He then instructed Sozo to meet him at Ebisu Station and bring him back to his family home in what is now the Shinagawa Ward in Tokyo.
Suzuben arrived and was brought upstairs to a room on the second floor where Ken served him some Sake. Ken then fell into a dogeza position and begged for three more days to gather up the money, to which an infuriated Suzuben shouted, "That's not what you promised! This is fraud!" while Ken begged for more time.
This display was just an elaborate ploy for Ken to discreetly give Sozo a signal. Suzuben actually calmed down and was in the midst of agreeing to give Ken an extra three days, but by then, Sozo had already acted on Ken's signal.
He moved behind Sozo and, using the same baseball bat he used at the baseball game the day prior, he swung the bat at the back of Suzuben's head, bringing him to the ground.
Then, Ken and Sozo pounced on the merchant, strangling him with a hand towel before Ken brandished a short tanto blade and slit his throat. Suzuben bled out in short order, and after confirming that he was now dead, the two moved his body into the storage room at the rear of the house.
Ken kept Suzuben's body in the storage room overnight and then, on the night of June 1, he once again sent his family and staff away. Now alone, he used a handsaw and a meat cleaver to sever Suzuben's head and legs, placing his body parts into two seperate trunks, one containing his head and legs while the other contained his headless torso.
To mask the odour of decomposition, he packed the two trunks with clothing, cloth wadding, and large quantities of naphthalene. Meanwhile, the blood spilt during the dismemberment was collected in a series of sake bottles and the room thoroughly cleaned.
Ken then contacted his cousin, Yamada Shohei, a rice shop owner in the Azabu area of Tokyo. Ken approched his cousin, telling him that it was Sozo who killed Suzuben in a fight and that he needed his help to dispose of the body and the evidence. The plan was to move Suzuben's body far from Tokyo, and in Ken's eyes, the perfect location wasn't far from home.
Having grown up in Niigata Prefecture, he knew the area well, which was why he chose to dump Ken's remains in the Shimano River. He knew a boatman named Takano Hisazo through his family, who once hosted Ken at a boarding school they owned in Nagaoka.
Ken wrote a letter to Hisazo and had Sozo and Shohei deliver it, saying, "Please transport these trunks to my family home in the countryside." To secure some goodwill, Ken offered his condolences to Hisazo's recently deceased mother and gifted his family 10 yen.
On June 2, Sozo and Shohei loaded the two trunks onto an overnight express train from Ueno Station, leaving for Niigata at 8:13 p.m., with first-class tickets. They arrived at Nagaoka Station at 6:55 a.m. on June 3. At the station, they called for a porter to carry the suitcases for them, telling them to be careful because the contents were "fragile". They then hired three rickshaws: two for themselves and one for the trunks.
They stopped at a tea house near the train station to wait for Hisazo's boat. While waiting, they behaved oddly enough to concern the station master, who approached the trunks and put his hand on one, only for Shohei to scream at him, "You mustn't touch that!!!"
Meanwhile, Sozo went to the Nagaoka Post Office and sent a telegram in Ken's name to his half-brother who lived in Niigata, simply telling him that he "arrived safely." This half-brother wasn't a part of the plan, and Ken hadn't spoken recently, so he was left puzzled, assuming the telegram was for someone else. As it turned out, Sozo did this on his own initiative, thinking it would aid in Ken's cover; it wasn't a part of his plan.
Shohei then visited Hisazo's home. He was not home at the time, but his wife and sister were, and they recognized Ken's name immideately and so they agreed to help without question. They borrowed a cart from their neighbours and transported the trunks from the train station back home, and once Hisazo returned, he said: "Of course, I'll help".
At around 7:00 p.m., Hisazo rowed Shohei and Sozo out with the two trunks aboard, asking to be taken to the deepest point of the river, a stretch named Kurotsubuchi, which was approximately six meters deep and had a strong current. The two then tied the trunks shut with hemp rope, to which they attached three large stones so the suitcases would be weighed down once they threw them overboard.
Obviously, seeing this aroused Hisazo's suspicions, and now he wanted to know what they had gotten him into. They told him that the suitcases contained contraband weapons and explosives that Ken had brought home illegally from his various trips overseas and that he needed them gone. Hisazo then kept silent after hearing this explanation. Hisazo was then paid an equivalent of 8,000 Yen in the modern day not to tell anybody what had happened.
Sozo and Shohei were then brought back to dry land, where they made their way back to the train station and arrived back in Tokyo on June 4, where Ken was waiting for them, and they told him everything that happened in their story, relieving Ken considerably, confident that everything had gone perfectly.
However, there was still one more thing Ken had to do. He went to Aomori, the northernmost major city on the island of Honshu, where he sent a telegram to Suzuben's family in Yokohama, using Suzuben's name to tell them he was in Aomori for a trip and was safe.
Little did Ken know, his two accomplices were not very attentive when it came to making sure the remains were never found. The stones tied to the ropes were too loose and light to keep the suitcase down as Suzuben's remains began to decompose, with the buoyant gases produced by the decomposition causing the suitcase to float up to the surface.
With Ken's confession, the Niigata police began their hunt for the second trunk, containing Suzuben's legs and head. Despite their best efforts, they were unable to locate it as it had likely floated downstream, carried by the current. It was eventually discovered in July 1919, downstream in the Shinano River.
After the case became public, it exploded and became a front-page story in just about every newspaper in Japan; a Tokyo newspaper devoted two seperate pages to the case, and some newspapers were even fined for printing information the police hadn't made public yet.
The first sensational detail: this case is often labelled as Modern Japan's first dismemberment murder; it is so old that it even predates the term "バラバラ殺人," with the case instead going by the name "鈴弁殺し事件." But what to name the case paled in comparison to how the public perceived those involved.
By and large, the public and newspapers blamed the government for the murder, arguing that it was their fault for allowing the rice riots to happen and not fixing the issues that led to them in the first place, with one Nationalist Paper saying: "It cannot be said society bears no responsibility." This same newspaper also condemned Ken not for committing the murder but for getting caught, adding that "separating the head and legs was inept"
Even the most critical newspaper, the one that labelled Ken's actions "Equal to the work of a demon or a heretic," showed no sympathy for Suzuben due to his actions during the rice riots. And ultimately, public opinion on this murder was coloured by how they perceived Suzuben.
Suzuben and other Rice Profiteers were so hated that many simply found themselves celebrating his death and applauding Ken. Although Ken expressed similar sentiments to Sozo to get him on board, his motive was ultimately to cover up his own corruption, but the people weren't prepared to let that get in the way of a good story, and Ken was met with a fair amount of praise by people who saw him as a hero doing what the government wouldn't and fighting against corruption.
Ken, Sozo and Shohei were brought to the Tokyo District Court on September 16, 1919, to stand trial, and although the court wouldn't open until 10:00 a.m., a long line of people had been waiting outside the courthouse since 6:00 a.m.
The line eventually reached 2,000 spectators, and when court staff left the building to start handing out a limited number of passes and paper slips to be allowed in, the line of people surged toward them, swarming to get a hold of one of the passes. The crowd ended up knocking two court clerks into an adjacent drainage ditch while the others had to escape inside. Needless to say, the court was quite packed.
As Ken stood in the dock, he came off as articulate, composed, and most of all, unrepentant. The people had handed Ken his greatest defence, so he decided to lean into his newfound public admiration and alter his confession; everything else was the same except for his motive.
In court, Ken spoke without a defence attorney and denied soliciting a bribe from Suzuben and argued that he had misjudged him and that he hoped their business relationship could be used to better the lives of the average or disadvantaged citizen.
Then, when he saw Suzuben's true colours, he was outraged and acted out of righteous fury on behalf of the nation; he described killing Suzuben not as murder but as an act of public service and said that he had "Administered Heaven's punishment"
Among the many citizens packing the courthouse, a majority of them still had first-hand memories of being unable to purchase rice because speculators had essentially locked them out of the supply. So hearing Ken, with his own words, tell that story that many were already printing made the spectators support him even more.
The court was unamused; they still had Ken, Sozo and Shohei's old confessions, as well as Ken's long history of debts, as motive and evidence supporting his initial story. They saw Ken for what he was, an opportunistic rider off the back of his newfound popularity, hoping to encourage the public to pressure the court to treat him leniently.
On December 2, 1919, for the murder of Suzuki Benzou, Yamada Ken was found guilty, and the leniency the public was hoping for did not come to pass. The court sentenced him to death.
For their roles in the murder and subsequent cover-up, Watanabe Sozo and Yamada Shohei were also convicted, with Sozo handed down a sentence of 15 years and Shohei being given 18 months.
All three lodged appeals with the Tokyo Court of Appeals and on May 28, 1920, both Ken and Sozo's sentences were upheld. However, Shohei did catch a lucky break and had his sentence reduced to one year with three years suspended.
Sozo and Shohei ultimately accepted their fates, but Ken made one final attempt to appeal his death sentence. On March 10, 1921, the Japanese Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal, making Ken's impending execution a certainty.
On April 2, 1921, at the age of 30, Ken was woken up from his prison cell and taken to the gallows. As Ken walked up the steps to the noose, he had a calm look on his face, in part because he became a devoted Buddhist while behind bars
In his final moments, he dropped his narrative that he was a hero and took full responsibility. His final words before he was hanged were to express relief that Sozo received a more lenient sentence than he did. In the end, he said, "I will say no more about myself"
In the aftermath of the murder, Suzuben's surviving family received severe harassment and blame for benefiting from Suzuben's corruption and enabling it. The hostility was so great that when the money from Ken's bribe was seized and returned to Suzuben's family, they donated it all to various charities to try to make the backlash stop.
Even after he admitted the truth before his execution, the narrative surrounding Ken killing Suzuben as an act of justice against a profiteer persisted for just a little longer.
After his execution, Ken's brain was removed and preserved at the Faculty of Medicine at Tokyo Imperial University for the public to gawk at. Ken consented to having this happen to him and cited his body "becoming of any use" as part of his remorse.
