Seito Sakakibara — Kobe School Killer
The crucial case of Seito Sakakibara, a 14 years old serial killer from Japan
In 1997, Japan drew exceptional attention caused of a young serial killer, but it was not the murders that were so shocking. Instead, the killer's age combined with the cruel execution of his deeds.
Seito Sakakibara (酒鬼薔薇聖斗, a self-given alias of the serial killer) was only 14 years young at the time when he injured three students and killed two others.
His last murder on 27 May 1997 of Jun Hase (土師 淳), an 11-year-old mentally disabled boy who had gone missing a few days earlier, attracted international attention.
The caretaker later found his head in the early morning hours in front of Tomogaoka Junior High School (Google Maps) before students arrived for their classes.
Hase had been beheaded with a hand saw. The eye sockets were empty, and each had x-shaped cut marks. The mouth was cut open to the ears, and there was a note on the tongue.
The note read:
This is the beginning of the game…
Try to stop me if you can you stupid police…
I desperately want to see people die,
it is a thrill for me to commit murder.
A bloody judgment is needed for
my years of great bitterness.
Hase's body was later found near a water tank on a hill inside the city better known as "Tank Mountain" (タンク山, Google Maps), where he got lured by Seito, telling him that he had seen a giant turtle up there. Seito killed Hase next to the water tank.
He then left Hase's remains to pick up a hand saw from his grandfather's house. After he beheaded Jun Hase, he washed and prepared the head at his grandfather's home before he finally placed it in front of the gates of his school at night.
Second murdered victim: Ayaka Yamashita
He had already attacked two schoolgirls with a hammer on 10 February 1997. Both survived with injuries, indicating that the attacker must have been a student for the first time.
On 15 March 1997, he hit the 10-year-old Ayaka Yamashita on the head from behind with a hammer.
On the same day, about 200 meters away, he attacked another girl with a knife, stabbing her in the stomach once, but managed to escape unrecognized. Twelve days after the attack, Ayaka Yamashita died of head injuries.
Shortly before, two strange animal corpses were found in the region. A headless bird and a pawless cat. Seito Sakakibara enjoyed the hullabaloo surrounding the murders, he even started writing letters anonymously to the local newspapers. Probably inspired by the infamous Zodiac Killer.
Seito Sakakibara admitted to the murders in the letters and explained that he felt inner satisfaction when he killed, teased the police looking for him, and his god was protecting him. Along with the first letter, the local newspaper incorrectly gave the murderer's self-given name to the public.
You know, many Japanese kanjis have multiple readings. He threatened three murders a week with the second letter if the newspaper misrepresented his name again.
On 28 June 1997, at about 7 pm, Seito Sakakibara was arrested. The police had been targeting him as the main suspect for quite some time. They were able to convict him with the help of the girl who had survived the knife attack and handwriting comparisons. They found his diary in his room, in which he recounted his murders in writing.
He then showed the police the murder site of Jun Hase. He lured him about 500 meters west of the school to the so-called Tank Mountain (タンク山), where he strangled him until Jun Hase died. He then hid the body and returned with a hand saw and a rubbish bag the next day. He used the saw to cut off the head and took it home.
At home, he drank the blood that had collected in the bag. He played with the head before ejaculating on it. Afterward, he cleaned the head and began to disfigure it.
However, according to Japanese law, Seito Sakakibara could not be convicted as he was too young. He would have faced a certain death sentence at that time, but the law protected him.
Therefore, he was sent to a juvenile detention and reformatory center in Tokyo. On 11 March 2004, it was announced by the Japanese Ministry of Justice that the notorious Kobe killer had been released sane and with a new identity. At that time, he was 21 years old.
Who is Seito Sakakibara?
The young serial killer's name was Shinichiro Azuma (東真一郎), and he was born on 7 July 1982. He had already been noticed negatively in his neighborhood very early. He first became interested in death in 1993 when his grandmother died.
According to his statement, he wanted to understand death, so he first dissected frogs and snails. Relatively quickly, he realized that he liked killing. Once, he lined up frogs in a row, only to run them over with his bicycle. In junior high, his actions escalated when, as mentioned above, he attacked two girls with a hammer.
To understand death even better, Shinichiro Azuma thought he had to kill himself to cause human death. His unusual behavior made him distance himself and isolate himself in his world, which he later reflected in his letters. He blamed the education system and others for his isolation.
At the same time, he began to believe in a god called Bamoidooki (バモイドオキ), who, according to him, protected him. The scene at the school gate was supposedly a sacrificial ritual. However, I can't quite figure out the exact nature of this god, whether Shinichiro Azuma invented it or whether it has existed in faith for a long time.
Known Victims
- 10 February 1997: Two unnamed girls (both bludgeoned with a hammer; survived)
- 16 March 1997: Ayaka Yamashita, 10 (bludgeoned with a steel pipe; survived, but died on 23 March), Kasumi Ishikawa, 9 (stabbed in the abdomen; survived)
- 24 May 1997: Jun Hase, 11 (fatally strangled, decapitated, and mutilated post-mortem with a hand-saw; left a note in his mouth)
Where is Shinichiro Azuma now?
Today, 25 years later, Shinichiro Azuma is 39 years old and, allegedly, he's living in Adachi-ku, Tokyo (Google Maps), where he works as a mechanic worker.
He's still under observation by the police.
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