#334: Japan’s Twitter Killer Sleeps With 9 SEVERED HEADS In His Tiny Tokyo Apartment
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at iXL.com/audio. Visit iXL.com/audio to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. - Taka Hiro woke up and his head is pounding. He can feel it in his ears. He slouched over the bathtub, his head is resting on his arm and he's thinking, "Maybe I drank too much last night." That would explain why he's in the restroom. But then there's this unpleasant smell.

I mean, he's a 27-year-old bachelor. Maybe he left some food out. Maybe he forgot to flush the toilet. That wouldn't be the first time. But all he remembers is that he got home really late last night. He ate something that upset his stomach a little bit. Some spaghetti and steamed chicken that probably went bad. And the next thing he knew, he's knocked out.

And when Takahiro falls asleep, he sleeps hard. It's like an explosion could occur and he wouldn't even wake up. Complete blackout. He doesn't even remember when he fell asleep.

but he had been woken up by the smell. In Tokyo, the apartments are tiny, so any small thing can stench up the entire place. His apartment was only 150 square feet. So it's like New York City, tiny boxes. Probably a little smaller. And this was not the smell of vomit that he's sniffing. I mean, which would make more sense, probably. It was so much worse than vomit, and it was everywhere. It's like rotting meat that's mixed with rotting bananas. He

He's focusing his eyes on what's in front of him in the bathtub, floating in a pool of cold, reddish water are body pieces that have been cut up. There is a head with long tangled hair that's completely severed off and is laying there in a bucket of kitty litter. The arms are cut off from the body. The hands are cut off from the arms. Blood is spilling out of the bathtub onto the walls, onto the tiled floors. It's seeping into the grout.

Blood, organs, they're all sectioned off into different groups. Like someone was prepping a dinner, they prep different ingredients. They're sectioned off and they're just kind of floating in different sections of the bathtub. If Takahiro wasn't awake earlier, he definitely was awake now.

There was no way that he could just leave this sitting in his bathroom. The neighbors are going to get suspicious. They're going to smell the smell. The smell is eye-watering. He starts panicking, hyperventilating from the scent. Takahiro goes into fight or flight mode. I mean, he has no doubt that if he calls the police, he's going to be suspect number one because there's dismembered body parts in his own apartment bathroom. Who else is going to be the suspect? How is he going to explain this away? And he absolutely could not report this.

He was already on probation. One little mess up and he would be thrown in prison for a very, very long time. His eyes are watering and Takahiro desperately just like wants to go back to sleep. But instead he grabs his rain jacket, puts on a mask, snaps on a pair of goggles. How is he going to dispose of his little friend? Or the eight other severed heads in his living room?

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As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. We had our wonderful Japanese-speaking researchers gather the data for this case, which included poring over books, documents, documentaries, and providing cultural context for us to better understand everything. Now, as always, with any case, but especially the international ones, please let us know if there was anything lost in translation, miscommunicated, or if there is any additional information that you have, please let us know down in the comments.

Now, before we get started, a quick disclaimer. The victims' families in the story today wish to remain anonymous. Their names and background have been leaked online. We want to remain respectful of their wishes, and we have decided to exclude all of that information from today's episode. All the victim names have been changed to aliases.

Additionally, this case deals heavily with mentions of self-exits and essay against one of the more vulnerable groups of the population as well as necrophilia. So if that is something that you are not comfortable listening to or perhaps you're not in the right headspace for, go make your favorite meal, settle down with your favorite comfort movie, and we can see you in the next one.

Mr. Ono is a very accomplished author and he's sitting across from Takahiro. Takahiro is rolling his head from side to side and he always keeps his eyes closed. That's what he notices. Mr. Ono, do you play shogi? Japanese chess, which focuses heavily on strategy. Do you know how to play, Mr. Ono? I do, but I don't play often. Do you play, Mr. Takahiro?

I've been studying shogi, but I can't play against anyone, so I write on a piece of paper and I play shogi by myself. I discovered that there's techniques that you can't master even though you understand them. By the way, Mr. Ono, I read your book, The Logic of Murder. You know, you're really skilled at creating a narrative. I've been trying to finish your other book, Serial Killers. I've been reading it all the time. Sometimes my hands feel heavy when I have to read it, but I push through and I flip the pages.

I thought it would be impolite to not finish the book, so I kept turning. Mr. Ono was not here to talk about his own books. He was here to talk about Takahiro and the past two months of Takahiro's life. So he grabs his pen and paper and he asks, Takahiro, was it an unforgettable experience? He closes his eyes again and rolls his head. And he waits. Or rather, he makes Mr. Ono wait. I remember it well. Looking back now, I can say one thing.

The smell of all nine people when you open them up is so interesting. They all smell different from one another. There are a few games in this world that you should just never play. The price you have to pay to play is just way too high. Have you ever heard of the blackout challenge?

The blackout challenge is, I wouldn't call it a game, but some people do. It's a game that a lot of kids often play where one person in some way or another restricts another person's breathing for just enough time where they pass out for a few minutes. But that's really hard to gauge. And

It sounds crazy, but it's very similar to kids sucking helium out of balloons for the same effect. They say it gives them a state of euphoria, which it doesn't. And on top of that, it gives anyone who's watching that person passed out, it gives them a rush of adrenaline. What are they going to experience when they blackout? How is it going to feel for that person? How long are they going to be knocked out for? So for some people, they never make their way back. More recently, 15 children have died from playing the blackout challenge and all of them were younger than 12 years old.

That's what I'm saying. How is this normalized? Takahiro used to play the blackout challenge when he was 12 years old. To him, it was just a fun little game that he and his friends would indulge in. And when they would come back from blacking out, they would tell each other what it was like, what they saw, what they remembered, everything. And sometimes they would even have these mild symptoms or side effects while playing the game. They're temporary, they're short term, but it's scary. Difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, breathing.

Some of them have even noticed small red or purple dots on their face, or the whites of their eyes would go blood red from the blood vessels bursting in their eyeballs. And that's just what you can see. Even if you play the game once and you survive it as a kid, that doesn't necessarily mean that you've escaped its effects. I mean, since your brain is no longer receiving oxygen, you may experience memory loss.

So what if one innocent game of blackout changes your entire brain chemistry? It does something to your brain. What if it scars you for the rest of your life? 30 forensic experts were crammed into a tiny 150 square foot apartment in Tokyo. They're back to back rubbing shoulders. Everything has to be done carefully and meticulously. I mean, they had never seen anything like this before. Check the box over there.

One of the forensic specialists walks over, opens the lid of a storage box next to the couch. It's filled with cat litter. They start using their brush to scrape away some of the cat litter and a few inches down. I found one. They see a forehead. They brush away more cat litter. A severed head is staring up at them. This was the ninth one.

The experts went through all the boxes stacked neatly on just one side of this lofted studio apartment. And each time they opened a box, they found more evidence. The evidence was logged and listed as box one, two heads, discolored pale green with protruding eyeballs. Both eyes open and eyes are cloudy.

Box 2, two heads, one leathery and slightly brown on some parts and greenish-yellow on other parts. The other head, reddish-brown with closed eyelids. Box 3, six human bones and eight pieces of meat that appear to be internal organs. Box 4, 31 human bones, one head has dried and turned brown. Eyes could not be identified.

Box 5: 77 pieces of human remains. Box 6: 32 pieces of human remains, 3 heads, of which one has tape on the lip area. Box 7: Human bones, one head brown in color, in the process of quote "drying", covered with adhesive tape. The bones were stacked into the boxes neatly, like a game of Tetris, to maximize space. And in total, the police found 9 severed heads in a 27-year-old's Tokyo apartment.

Did you test the blender? Yes. Positive for blood. Two months before this, Allison was given very clear instructions and she was all in. It's the middle of summer in 2017 and to her, this was going to be a very pivotal moment. She's got everything that she needs.

or rather she's got everything that she needs to get rid of. She is about to make an irreversible life-changing moment and she's feeling doki doki. So that term means extremely nervous, but it has two connotations. You can use it in a negative way, like when you get called into the principal's office and you feel kind of nervous because you're like, I don't know what's going to happen. Or you can use it in a positive light because you're waiting for your crush to text you back. Allison is feeling both of those things. She's feeling doki doki in every way.

She put in her notice at work. She worked at an office job that she really didn't care much for, so she just sent in an email. "Today's gonna be my last day." Once that was done, she shuts her laptop, pulls out a blank sheet of paper, and writes a note for her family. This was probably the hardest part, but the instructions were very clear. This step was so important. She was supposed to tell her family, "Do not by any means come looking for me because I don't want to be found."

Allison's hand is shaking as she's writing it and she's holding back the tears trying not to get emotional. She decides maybe the shorter the better. I want to live alone so I'm running away from home. She sits there holding back her tears staring at the words on her paper. I mean at least part of it is true. She folds up the note and leaves it on her desk. This is where her mom is gonna find it.

And she keeps talking herself into it. This is the thing that makes the most sense. This is what I need to do, right? What I was told to do. And now it's almost complete. She's walking around sunny afternoon in Tokyo waiting for the next instruction. She's scrolling on her phone, passing the time with all these funny, cute little animal videos. And she's checking her friend's group chat. And she catches herself smiling at the group chat until she realizes...

I will never be able to respond to them ever again. And for a second, she questions, am I really doing this right now? If I do this, there's no turning back. Am I a thousand percent sure that this is what I want? No, yeah, of course it is. And plus, she's not alone. The person giving her all these instructions has done this so many times in the past and they know what they're doing. And Allison gives him her full trust back.

She gets another message on her phone. Meet me at the train station. Before you do, throw your phone into the ocean. The ocean? She's already near the train station. She's not going to leave and go to the ocean, throw her phone away. I mean, it's an expensive phone. That's kind of extreme. So she walks into the train station, looks around, spots a restroom, and she's thinking, I'm just going to hide my phone in here. She pushes in the door, and she's staring at herself in the mirror, and she's thinking...

Yeah, this makes sense. The ocean's too permanent. If I leave my phone in here, at least it's convenient as a backup plan if I have to come back and get it. Allison hid her phone in one of the stalls just in case. Eventually, somebody would come back for that phone. It just would not be Allison. Takahiro wakes up in the restroom with the body in the tub.

He had fallen asleep and his muscles are aching and he just feels purely exhausted. His mind is clearing up and all the memories of last night are just coming flooding back. He runs out of the bathroom. He sees a purse laying on the ground. He snatches it up and in it is an ID. Allison, 21 years old. He remembered. I mean, of course he did. How could he forget? He killed Allison and he remembered every last joyous second of it. All of it.

He had contemplated for five whole days on whether or not he wanted to kill Allison. Ultimately, he didn't want to, but it was necessary. Takahiro was on Twitter with the sole purpose of finding someone that he could scam out of money. He thought about the typical ways to scam. Pretend to have some sort of business that someone can invest in. Another opportunity. But all of that seemed like so much work. You had to forge papers. You had to create like a company logo. So the plan was...

You know what? I'm just going to find a vulnerable population of women, scam them out of their money by pretending to be interested in them, pretending to be their boyfriend. Takahiro went online specifically looking for girls with Twitter accounts where they expressed very deep negative emotions, dark thoughts about wanting to exit.

He meets Allison and he starts messaging her on Twitter. And he pretends to be this great listening ear that just, I just want to help you. I feel like I can relate to your feelings. I went through the same things as you. But in reality, he thought this was his ticket out. Get her to believe that he was interested in her, then ask her for her money. I mean, he just had this obsession of wanting to move into his own place. He was so sick of living with his parents. He wanted his own studio apartment with a loft. It had to have a loft.

After bonding with Allison and telling her everything that she wants to hear, he starts telling her about his life dreams. "I want a room with a loft. Even if it's small, I think it'll be good." "Ooh, then you'd have to work really hard from now on. But you know, I heard lofts get really hot in the summer and it's surprisingly inconvenient, I heard, to have a loft because you gotta go up and down."

No, I want a loft. I want to put my stuff in the loft. Takahiro absolutely had to have a loft, apparently. But he was unemployed with no income and no savings. And that's where Allison comes in. He convinces her to let him borrow $4,500, which he would use as proof of funds to get the apartment lease for his loft studio.

Which side note, the loft that he got wasn't even that luxurious. He didn't want a loft because it made him feel like he's living the life. The place was actually quite small. 150 square feet. You walk in. On the left is the door to the bathroom. You walk a few steps further. That's the studio. You're in the main room. It's like a studio apartment unit. There's a tiny little, I don't even know if I can call it a kitchen. It's more like a kitchenette. It's a tiny sink, maybe the size of a bathroom sink, a mini fridge, and a singular stovetop.

That's it. Then next to the kitchen is the ladder up the loft, which does make the place feel a little bit bigger, but it's still really small. But to him, this loft was perfect. Room 205 was going to be his. Are you sure you don't want to just wait a few more weeks?

The realtor is staring at Takahiro like he's lost his freaking mind. Are you sure you're understanding what I'm telling you right now? We've got a one month free rent promotion going on. You would get the most bang for your buck if you waited until the beginning of the next month to sign the contract. Because if you move in now, you only get a week off of rent instead of the entire month off. So just wait three weeks and then you could have a full month of free rent. Like I said, no, thank you. I want the room now, even if I don't get any discount.

The realtor looked at him like he's kind of crazy, but okay. He lets him sign the papers and gives him the keys. Now, Takahiro is standing in the main living area, staring up at the loft that's six and a half feet above, staring at the railing. It was perfect.

Allison was gonna die here. I mean, that wasn't the original plan. The original plan was to keep Allison around so that she could finance his whole life. His original plan was, and I quote, "'I wanted to get as much as I could get. "'I wanted it all. "'Her money, that is.'"

But he felt like he had no choice now. Allison was starting to pull away from him and he had this suspicion that she was seeing a new boyfriend, which that only means one thing. If Allison has a new boyfriend, she's going to want her money back and she's going to ask Takahiro to pay her back the $4,500 and he can't. He said, I thought about how I could avoid paying her back and I decided I just had to kill her. Takahiro would commit his first murder over $4,500. Once he was set on his plan, he started searching online.

How to kill. How to dismember a human. How to dismember a cow. How to dispose of a body. How to destroy the evidence. Takahiro went out and he bought a saw. He invited Allison over to visit his new apartment that she paid for. And side note, Takahiro was searching online how to dismember a body while he was waiting for Allison to arrive. He hears a knock on the door. He quickly exits out of the browser on his phone. Come in, come in.

She walks in. She's looking around. I mean, it's a small space, but it's kind of cozy. She's looking around. No, it's really nice. Very nice. Takahiro nods and is like, sit, sit. She sits down on the main room couch. So this is the first floor, not in the loft. And he pours her a glass of alcohol. Mid-conversation, he just gets up.

She has no idea what's going on. He just gets up mid-conversation, walks to the front door of the apartment, locks it, chain locks it, immediately U-turns, takes like five big steps towards Allison and just starts groping her chest out of nowhere. Takahiro said he always wanted to surprise a Tak like this. But when she resisted his advances, that's just when something came over him.

He liked that she was resisting. So he fully attacked her. He pushed her down completely, wrapped his hands around her neck and started choking her. Allison was fighting back hard. It took Takahiro five long minutes before Allison lost consciousness. He essayed her unconscious body and he said, I originally did it because I haven't been active in a while. But he said he ended up surprisingly really loving it to the point where the idea of regular consensual relations was never going to do it for him again.

He then proceeded to tie her arms and legs together with long cords that he prepared. He wrapped a rope around Allison and then the other end he had in his hand as he went up the ladder, wrapped it around the railing and started playing tug of war. He climbed up and he pulled until Allison was in a standing position and eventually a floating position.

She was still alive at this point. But with that action, her airflow was gradually being cut off. Takahiro, when he secured the rope, he ran down to the main floor and he just watched from below. He saw her convulse.

Then she urinated on herself, which typically lack of oxygen to the brain makes it unable to control the muscles that are normally holding in the urine. And he sat there for 30 minutes until her body became cold to the touch. He sat and watched all 30 minutes of it. It was like a mini performance in his own apartment. He said for those 30 minutes, just watching. I have to admit, my heart was beating very fast, even though I wasn't even exercising.

And he had this brief moment when he realized, oh, she's dead. He thought, oh my gosh, I've done something very bad. But it quickly turned into, how do I not get caught?

So he took her body down, moved her into the bathroom to, quote, dismantle her because he knew it wouldn't be good to wait any longer. He read online articles that bodies decompose faster than you would think. So he wanted to get to work immediately. He felt like it was only natural to, quote, cut off her head and drain the blood. So he put her on her back, stared at her face as he got to work, and he got really descriptive with it. But he said the process of that, he said, you know, when you shake a Coke bottle and you open it and it comes gushing out,

That's how the blood came out of the neck. Like you turn on a faucet upward and let the water just come up. At that moment, the side of that is making Takahiro dizzy. He's starting to get this raging migraine, but he's like, I got to continue. He said, quote, the image, the smell, just wow. Still, I knew I had to do it or else I would get caught.

He parted the head from the neck and started draining the blood. He stated he cut off the shoulders. Then he severed the wrist and the hands from the rest of the arm. He parted the rest of the arm in half at the elbows. He filled the tub with water and added fresh bath salts and, quote, left all the body parts floating in there. He was about to start on the legs, but he said that he reached his limit mentally and he knocked out.

And he describes it as, quote, sleeping like a log. He woke up in front of Allison's dead body. And even now, staring at the floating corpse in the bathtub, he thought all of it was worth it. When he wakes up, he immediately starts working on the lower half of her body. And he said he kept thinking to himself, motivating himself to keep going. I just have to do this today. I just have to do this today.

He finished up dismembering the lower half and started to, quote, cut the skin and remove the meat from the bones. He placed all the meat, organs, and smaller bones into pee-pee pads, like the ones that you would get for your pet. He wrapped them up, shoved them into a Ziploc bag. Then he got the Ziploc bag, wrapped that in newspaper, and then threw them away in a black trash bag in his apartment building's trash can. That was the method he used? But that's just for the organs and a lot of the big chunks of flesh. And that worked for him?

- Wow. - Most of the bigger bones of the body were left over, including the head. He wasn't entirely sure what to do with those parts yet, but the main problem that Takahiro had at this point, he said, was the smell. It was getting worse by the hour.

First, he did some research on his phone about odor elimination and he looks up just quote rotting smell and he ends up getting a ton of results for bleach cat litter. So he starts trying them all. Takahiro even tries to buy this sterilizer that's typically known to sterilize kitchen utensils and cutting boards. It's I believe it's restaurant grade and the sight of dismembering a body living with a corpse. None of that was as annoying as the smell, he said.

But the smell is just so strong. I mean, it was overpowering. It wouldn't leave. Takahiro said the smell was actually the worst from the internal organs. That when you cut open the stomach, that's when the smell is the strongest. And it comes out immediately. And he stated each one of his victims smelled differently. He said he's never smelled anything like that in his entire life.

With Allison, it took him two days to, quote, dismantle her body. He said he had to take a lot of breaks to just get away from the smell and then come back to it. He said it was such an overwhelming scent, but even that, it didn't compare to the fear of getting caught, so he kept going. He purchased a single-sided saw, two kitchen knives, a knife sharpener, a pair of scissors. He used the scissors to cut the skin, and he said, I didn't know this until I did it myself, but human skin is unexpectedly hard. He said, I didn't know this until I did it myself, but human skin is unexpectedly hard.

So these are all from him telling this to who?

Mr. Ono the author and some of it he told the judge during his trial later. It's like so detached. No remorse. No, this is just the beginning. Just you wait. He said I scraped the meat off the bones. I boiled the bones in a pot and then I added some kimchi hot pot stock. I thought I would deodorize it, you know?

Sometimes he cooked a Japanese curry into it to mask the smell some more, or other times it was a Chinese stew. He would later state that it was just to help mask the smell. But Takahiro's phone would show results for precautions when eating human flesh? Oh my goodness.

After boiling the bones to be able to strip them of the flesh, he added the bones to kitty litter and then played Tetris with them. He would buy these boxes. He talked in depth about how he was focused on limiting the amount of boxes in his apartment building. So he wanted to Tetris the bones so it could be a smaller box for all of Allison's bones. So he's doing all of that for his first victim? Yes. He's like cooking and doing all of that first time? First time. Wow. For $4,500. $4,500.

Yeah, but I don't think $4,500 has anything to do with it, right? Like, come on.

Worried about letting someone else pick out the perfect avocado for your perfect impress them on the third date guacamole? Well, good thing Instacart shoppers are as picky as you are. They find ripe avocados like it's their guac on the line. They are milk expiration date detectives. They bag eggs like the 12 precious pieces of cargo they are. So let Instacart shoppers overthink your groceries so that you can overthink...

Well, we got a minute. I'm going to buy that truck I've been wanting.

Wait, don't you need, like, weeks to shop for a car? I don't. Carvana makes it super convenient to find exactly what I want. Hold up. You're buying a car on your phone? Isn't that more of a laptop thing? You can shop wherever you want. I like to do my research, read reviews, compare models. Plus, Carvana has thousands of options. How'd you decide on that truck? Because I like it. Oh, that is a great reason. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way.

Takahiro said, you'd be surprised at how light the bones are once the meat and fat are removed. He stated they're very, very light. But since the meat and fat have nowhere to go, he would again grab some pee pee pads, wrap them in newspaper and then throw them away in the downstairs apartment building dumpster. And once he's through with Allison's two day dismemberment process, he just had one big question. I mean, is he going to keep the box of bones? Is he going to keep the severed head in his tiny little loft forever?

He starts googling how to dump bodies, but he realized that the highest risk of bodies being discovered, he's studying all these other killers. And it's usually when killers are on their way to dump the body that they get caught. Or they're actively digging a hole with the shovel and the police show up. I mean, how is he going to talk his way out of why he needs a human-sized hole in the ground? But Takahiro's biggest tear was, he's very nervous that a dog would come sniffing in the mountains and dig up the buried body that he worked so hard to bury.

The best choice to get the body out of his apartment, he decided, was to rent a storage unit and keep the body there. But he never got around to it because there were things higher on his priority list. Like Allison's best friend, Charlie. When Takahiro asked Allison to finally meet up with him in person before he bought the loft, before Allison ever gave him any money, they were just Twitter friends.

Allison was really hesitant. I mean, they're hitting it off. Yeah, they're bonding. He seems nice. He seems relatable. They seem to have shared life experiences. But at the end of the day, this is a complete stranger. So she brings her best friend, Charlie, and he's there to make sure nothing's going to happen to Allison. He's going to get a good gauge on Takahiro as a person. Charlie was incredibly protective over Allison. Charlie, too, was struggling with a lot of dark emotions. And Allison, to him, was almost this symbol of hope.

Even though she was experiencing it. Allison was always the giver. That's her love language. She would give gifts. She would give her time, her energy. If she didn't have the money, she would give money. She would give everything. She would give so much of herself to the point that she would have nothing left for her own individual. Same with love. She always gave out love, never saved any for herself.

Which is why Allison was struggling a lot with mental health. And it didn't help that she was bullied a lot growing up. And she just had all this lingering trauma and emotions and insecurities. And Charlie was there to make sure that Takahiro was not going to take advantage of Allison. So all three of them, they meet up at a park. They actually get along very well. Charlie felt comfortable with Allison being friends with Takahiro. Takahiro was just, he seemed, I wouldn't say charismatic, but...

But it's almost, you know, when you meet someone and you have so many things in common with them, you're like, how did we not know each other before this? We're like twins. Like, how do we have the same life experiences to the dot? It's kind of crazy. I'm like looking into a mirror right now. But that's not true though, right? No, Takahiro would mirror every single one of his victims. Oh.

He would just relate to every single thing he said and fake stories that were the basic principles of what they are talking about, just in a different way.

But now Charlie's best friend, Allison, has not been picking up her phone and Charlie's been worried sick. Allison's mom is blowing up his phone and he gets a text message from Takahiro and then another and then another text message. And Takahiro is randomly just like convincing him that things are never going to get better, especially because Allison is missing. And Charlie is getting influence. He started having negative thoughts again and he had always struggled with them before, but it was only getting worse now. And Takahiro texted him, do you want to hang out?

"Meet me at the train station, but throw your phone in the ocean first." Just like Allison, Charlie wanted to find comfort in Takahiro, but he also wanted a backup plan. So he tweeted, this was his very last tweet, "For a brief moment in this shitty life, I experienced something happy." Then he threw his phone in a train station locker before heading out to meet Takahiro at his loft apartment. And just like Allison, his phone would be found in the train station, just not by Charlie.

The speakers in Takahiro's apartment were playing a new Nirvana song. But Takahiro was barely listening to the lyrics. It goes, I am my own worst parasite.

But Takahiro is busy. His arms are straining as he's trying to drag this heavy lump across the floor, a lot heavier than anything that he's ever moved across this apartment before. Takahiro grabs the rope from underneath his kitchen cabinet, makes a loop with one end of the rope, goes back to the body, and he's thinking, a woman is a lot easier to move than a man.

and his muscles are telling him like, "Don't do it, don't do it, it's so painful!" Takahiro grabs the other end of the rope and climbs up the ladder, and he's now standing over the railing of his loft, pulling as hard as he can, playing tug-of-war.

He's trying to lift Charlie up into a standing position. His arms feel like they're about to pop off. And it doesn't help once he feels Charlie starting to struggle on the other end of the rope. He's awake. Once Charlie is at least standing, he hooks the rope to the railing and Takahiro climbs back down the ladder and is staring excitedly.

Charlie has duct tape over his mouth and nose and he's flinging his body around and he's floating in the apartment trying to break free. His arms are tied together and even though this wasn't his typical choice, Takahiro was enjoying it. It would take a full 30 minutes for him to become cold to the touch. Once he is, Takahiro checks Charlie's pockets, pulling out the little cash that he had and pockets it. He also checks to see that Charlie has no phone.

Perfect. It's probably in the ocean. Now there's going to be no way for anyone to connect Takahiro to him or Takahiro to Allison. After all of this, Takahiro was starving. So with Charlie now in the bathroom waiting for the dismantling ritual, if you will, Takahiro sat down with a bowl of spaghetti and steamed chicken from the convenience store. And eventually he would pass out sleeping like a baby.

Honestly, he was quite proud of himself. People would assume that Allison either joined a brothel or if they knew both Allison and Charlie and they're both missing, they might even start suspecting that Charlie did something to Allison. It was genius. A week and a half later, Takahiro is bent over another body in his bathtub. Not Charlie, but a woman named Diane. When he hears a knock on the door, he freezes.

He quickly backs up from the bathtub, inches closer to the door. He holds his breath as he looks through the peephole. Oh, thank God. It's just Katie. Katie is a woman that he's been seeing for the past week. I mean, I guess you could say that they're dating very casually. Katie had slept over the past four nights at Takahiro's house and they were briefly intimate. It was a little awkward because Takahiro could not make it to the finish line and was not really enjoying it.

So they just both enjoyed each other's company instead of that. And she thought it was going well. But out of nowhere, Takahiro is pushing Katie out the door, talking about how he needs to help some girl named Diane from Twitter because she's struggling with negative thoughts. Which, I mean, Katie's like, I guess it's fine because I'm going to go home, check on my mom anyway. And I mean, I guess it's nice that he's a considerate person, right? Trying to help out his friends.

But he calls her later and is like, you can come back over. And now she's stepping in through his apartment door to his loft. And it's so interesting how our bodies get used to things. The way our eyes get used to the dark and the way our noses block out scents that were always lingering. Well, when Katie walks back in, she's hit with the smell. She's like, has it always smelled this pungent in here? Like, what is this smell?

Takahiro apologizes for keeping her waiting, hurries her inside, she steps in, takes off her shoes, follows him in, "Sorry, just let me quickly freshen up." "No, don't go to the bathroom. You cannot go into the bathroom." Takahiro looks like he's ready to jump in front of the bathroom door to fight her if she tries to open the door and it's so strange. She's looking at him like, "Hello? What are you talking about?" And he closes his eyes. I might have helped the person from Twitter self-exit and I started dismembering their body afterwards.

You what? What? Katie was terrified. What are you talking about? Dismantling a body? Is that what you said? I don't get it. She knew that he liked helping people and that he had a community on Twitter that he was very fond of, but she never thought it would be like this.

After nearly five days with Takahiro, Katie decides to go home and she cheerfully tells him, I'll send you some money when I get home, okay? He says, okay, closes the door and she practically sprints to the train station. When she gets home, she does not send him the money, but she also does not report him to the police.

Before Diane, there was Allison and Charlie, but also Bella in the span of a single month. Takahiro had now four severed heads covered in kitty litter sitting in cardboard boxes in his 150 square foot apartment in a month. And with the exception of Charlie, Takahiro hunted his victims. He knew exactly what he was looking for. He would later say they need to at least be high school or older. If they're at least of high school age, the police don't take it seriously. More often than not, missing high school girls end up at a friend's house or at a brothel.

which honestly should be alarming enough for the authorities to want to do something about it but i digress but takahiro was certain the police are not going to look hard for them and they need to be they need to be vulnerable mentally vulnerable was the best for takahiro there was allison who struggled with being bullied as a kid who gave takahiro the money for his loft apartment charlie allison's best friend who struggled with feeling positive and me even more so when his best friend vanished one day

Then Bella, a 15-year-old girl that Takahiro met on Twitter, she was a freshman in high school that was putting a lot of pressure on herself to get good grades. Takahiro reached out to her and after bonding with her, mirroring her, making her feel safe, he graciously offered her, hey, if you ever need a place to stay to get away from all this pressure in school, you're welcome to stay at my loft apartment for a while.

Then Diane, a 19-year-old college student who is supposed to have her coming-of-age ceremony soon. So every year on the second Monday of January, everyone who becomes an adult last year in Japan, they participate in this huge nationwide ceremony. It's a public holiday to celebrate adulthood. Often people will go out for their very first drinks on that day. A lot of the young girls will wear kimonos, the ones with the sleeves that hang almost down to their feet. It's a huge deal. The kimonos are rented monthly.

months in advance. It's a big day. I mean, it's a big day that every person looks forward to. Diane was going to go to that ceremony, but instead Takahiro lured her out to his apartment.

Ella was a 26-year-old mother and the only one of the victims to be married. Ella became a mom when she was 19, and she thought it would get easier, and it never did. Ella already struggled a lot mentally, and her daughter had a developmental disability. Ella had postpartum, and with all these new responsibilities and not feeling like a great mom, her self-esteem is getting lower. She feels like a disappointment. Her and her husband are constantly arguing about finances. They have a lot of love for each other, and they're trying to make it work, and they're

It's just so hard. Ella was on Twitter looking for someone that she could relate to. She would be lured to Takahiro's apartment.

Fiona was a 17-year-old junior in high school. She took a 24-hour train just to meet up with Takahiro. She met him on Twitter, and she was so excited to have someone to talk to. She paid for Takahiro's meals that day, paid for all the cab rides, all their activities. Fiona would sheepishly talk to him about all of her problems, like how she felt so insecure about her appearance. And he would bluntly reassure her, "'We're not ugly by any means.'"

Meeting with Takahiro was actually making Fiona feel so much better. Near the end of their date, she was going on about how, "You know, maybe we can go to an arcade and get some dessert. I think I feel really good." She would end up in his bathtub. Gia was a 17-year-old student that struggled with feeling good about herself. Her classmates thought she was one of the most considerate ones in their entire grade. Like if there was a task that no other kid wanted to do, Gia would do it for everyone. She was lured to Takahiro's apartment.

Takahiro would later be seen carrying a bag of her organs to a convenience store dumpster. Helen was a 25-year-old who had severe social anxiety, and for a while she didn't even leave her room most days, but she was getting better. She got a part-time job at a convenience store, and all of her family said she just seemed so much more enthusiastic about life.

She was lured to Takahiro's apartment. This is all within the span of two months. Takahiro was very quickly evolving and creating a method. The process was almost the same. And like, just to give you context of how quickly he was evolving, the dismantling process, that's what he called it. The first time, it took two full days. He said he got it down to two hours.

That is chilling. The process was almost always the same. He would meet people on Twitter, then try to arrange an in-person meeting where he would state he was going to help himself exit. He would meet with them at the train station. They would never approach him. Once they spotted him, they were to call him and over the phone, he was going to give them instructions on how to follow him home. Okay, now 10 steps to the left.

He gave them directions on how to follow him out the station. So if anybody looked at them, it looks like these two strangers are just on the phone with different people and headed in the same direction coincidentally.

They'll continue this until they make it back to his loft unit where everything is prepped and ready. Rope, saws, air freshener, cat litter, pee pee pads. Everything is set up for the perfect night. It's almost like a ritual of sorts. Usually the minute that they step into his apartment, he's already so excited that he can't even he can hardly contain himself. But he's like, no, I can't rush this process.

So he offers a seat to all of his victims and he talks to them. Sometimes it's an hour, sometimes it's two, sometimes it's 30 minutes. He doesn't even listen to a single thing that they're saying. He just keeps topping off their whiskey glass that's mixed with whiskey and crushed up sleeping pills and tranquilizers. And he just waits. He sips on his tranquilizer-less whiskey and this is the worst part for him. This is the part where he has to pretend like he cares.

He has to sit there and act like he's interested in their lives and he goes through the same problems. He doesn't even remember a single one of their names. Just their Twitter handles. He doesn't even know half their ages. He forgot. He's sure they mentioned it. You feel like nobody understands you and you're all alone. Same. Me too.

Mm-hmm, anxiety does suck, doesn't it? I have so much anxiety as well. Yep. Yeah, I agree. I feel like there's a lack of love and compassion in this world. Everyone's just out for themselves. Yeah. No, it's rough. Most of the victims would pass out from the drugs that he slipped into their drinks. And then his sixth ceremony would commence.

Sometimes he would fall asleep with them and then wake up to see them still knocked out because he drugged them. He would either essay them right then and there or he would tie them up first and then essay them. He would tie them up in a way that if they woke up during the attack, he could easily pull on one end and they would be forced into a standing, then eventually a floating position in the middle of his apartment. Sometimes he would have them half suspended while he essayed them. Most times he was there for the performance watching.

He really liked watching them convulse while they were floating and swaying from side to side. That's what he was there for. But with each victim, he did start adding some small changes. With Jia, he cut open her blouse with scissors and during the 30-minute ceremony, quote "ceremony," he stared at her chest for a quote "considerable amount of time" while she was swaying in the middle of his apartment.

But these ceremonies, they would be over so quick and at this point he was doing one a week. He was killing someone once a week and it wasn't enough. The other days when he was looking for a victim, he said that he was very busy watching violent SA illegal videos that he would find on the internet. Because after his first murder, Takahiro said he was obsessed with SA and resistance. He was addicted and he wanted to experience it over and over again.

So he would go back to Twitter and scout for the perfect victim. And this time, he was going to try something different. As his latest victim was suspended, he noticed his attraction was developing. So he started taking pictures of her private parts as she was still floating in his apartment. And when she was cold to the touch, when he confirmed that she was dead, he laid her down and engaged in necrophilia. Naru's phone rang. Hi, is this Naru? Have you seen your sister Ivy? Naru's stomach dropped.

This was a call from the psychiatric group home where his sister was staying at. He left work as soon as he could. I mean, just a few days ago, it looked like his sister Ivy was doing well. The group home was an improvement for her. So what do you mean, have I seen my sister? She's supposed to be at the group home. She's working through the grief of their mother that passed away four months ago. She was finally making some progress.

Na-Ru rushes over to the group home and he's confused. I mean, they're supposed to be monitoring her heavily and making sure that she's communicating when she's not mentally stable. So what do you mean you're calling to say that she's missing? He hoped that it was just some big misunderstanding and maybe they checked the wrong room. He made it to the psychiatric center and Ivy would be sitting in her room eating a coquette. That's what he's thinking. She was not.

The room was empty, the bed was made, and her desk was perfectly in order. Everything was in its place except for one singular note left next to her computer that was still plugged in. "I'm sorry everyone. My brother, I'm sorry. Thank you for everything." Nayo's hand shook as he held onto the note and he used his other hand to call the police. "My sister is missing. Please, it's urgent. She's probably gonna hurt herself."

But this isn't the police's top priority. They've gotten eight calls like this in the past two months, just like this one. They even mentioned Inaru. Girls run away all the time. She'll be back.

Naru didn't even know who else to talk to. They're not close with the rest of their family. Both of their parents are gone. It's just the two of them most days, Naru and Ivy. Ivy doesn't have a boyfriend. She doesn't have friends that she would go see. Most of the time, Ivy never left the house. The inside of their home was her entire world before she moved into this group home. All he had was her Twitter password. Naru knew that she kept the same password for every single thing, which used to stress him out. Please, can you be more careful, Ivy? You're gonna get hacked.

But now, now he's kind of grateful that she was predictable. Twitter.com, username ilovecroquettes. He enters in the password and he was in. The very last post Ivy made was, I want to leave, but I'm afraid to do it alone. If anyone else wants to leave with me, please DM me. I'm a 23-year-old from Tokyo. It'd be ideal if you had a car. In Japan, it's pretty common for one person to have multiple Twitter accounts depending on the topic.

There is one for a real account and there's words for these. There's another one for a private account. So I guess the equivalent would be like a finsta. There's another account that you just follow your idols or anime. It's like a fan account. And then you have a yamiyaka, which is for deep, dark and negative thoughts.

Most people will post on there so that they can feel a sense of purpose. They can find a community that they can relate to and express how they truly feel without feeling ashamed about it. Users of Yamiaka at the core of it, they just want someone to talk to and they were going missing.

Nine young adults, all between the ages of 15 to 29, have been reported missing in the Zama, Japan area in the past two months. All nine individuals would have a Yamiaka Twitter account, and all nine of them would have been in contact with two specific Twitter accounts, Suspension Pro and Shinitai, which translates to Want to Die. Naimu's hand was gripping the mouse so hard his knuckles are white.

He reads his sister's last post. I want to leave, but I'm afraid to do it alone. Nara knew that Ivy was having these thoughts, but he didn't know she was using this account to talk about them. He doesn't want to believe it. I mean, they were supposed to... They had plans to get drinks together next month when she got out. They were planning to go all out for Christmas this year to... That was something that they were looking forward to. He promised to make her the fried shrimp that she was craving. What?

Naru made a post on her account. This is the brother of the person who made this account. The last time I was in contact with my sister was October 23rd. We talk every single day without fail, but she has stopped responding. Just a week ago, she was looking for people to leave with through this account. I didn't know this until now. Can anybody help me?

He waited for any responses, but in the meantime, he kept investigating. In Ivy's previous threads, he saw user Shinitai replying to Ivy, his little sister, saying that they could leave together. There were some private DMs where Shinitai wrote, "'Suspension is the best option, since there is a smaller likelihood of failure.'"

Now keeps digging and he finds more. Another account that replied to her suspension pro. It looked like he discovered a secret life of his sisters. Like why would she not talk to him about these feelings? Ivy had always been one that didn't want to burden her family, but now I thought that they were on the same page. And who are these people that are reaching out to her?

Ivy sent a message to Shinitai. "I'm excited. I mean, it's not that I want to leave, but I just want someone to listen to my story, to support me. Maybe I just want a friend." Naru was putting the pieces together. His baby sister and this random guy on the internet were making a pact to leave together. He quickly messages them, privately begging them, "If you see this message, do not do it. This is Ivy's brother. Please stop everything. Pause!"

Naru keeps refreshing the messages until a blue checkmark pops up under it, signifying Shinitai had read his message. He's anxiously waiting for a response, but instead, the blue checkmark turns gray, which can only mean one thing. The user read his message, then went to his settings, and turned off read receipts.

Why would he do that? Yeah. And the brother saw all of that. Yes. And that was the signal that he needed to investigate this guy. Yes. Because this guy is very much alive, but he cannot get in contact with his sister. Another tweet popped up on a girl, Yumi's phone. She was not familiar with the I love croquettes user, but a friend of hers was tagged in it.

Can anyone help me find my sister? I think she was last seen with this Twitter user, at Shinatai. Yumi stared at her phone. That's the guy. Or at least she thinks that's the guy. The guy that Yumi has been messaging. The guy that she went to dinner with. But she knew him as Suspension Pro.

Two different usernames, but reading the tweet, Yumi was certain that they're the same person. I mean, just thinking about that dinner was giving her the chills. Yumi went to this dinner with this guy thinking that they're meeting up to talk about leaving together because, well, she wanted to leave and he was going to help her do it. The whole point was you almost want someone to guide you to the other side and be there for you in your last moments. And as strange or as twisted as it sounds, Yumi just wanted someone to relate to and relate.

Maybe Cindy claimed that he had helped so many people leave and she felt like she could trust him. Maybe he could just understand what she was going through to begin with. But that dinner was weird. He didn't seem like he cared in any sense. He was just so excited about the fact of...

suspending someone. That's it. Not only that, after the dinner, Yumi discovered something really bizarre. There was another account trying to talk to Yumi, Shinitai, who is encouraging her to go see Suspension Pro for her, quote, needs. Suspension Pro wanted to help her successfully complete the action, whereas Shinitai said on their Twitter account that they were looking to leave with other people.

But reading their messages, their cadence and everything, Yumi felt like they're the same person. Like she knew, no, she was certain they're the same person. Yumi immediately messages Naru, Ivy's brother. I've met with the same man that your sister was talking to. Yumi and Naru get into touch and Yumi was determined to do whatever she can to help him and his sister. And she told him the guy had really weird instructions he would give, like leave a note for your family, tell them not to come find you, throw your phone in the ocean, meet me at the train station, don't say hi, follow me at a distance.

I didn't want to do any of that. It was just, everything was so weird. He was really creepy. He also kept asking me how much money I make and how much money I had saved up. And he kept bragging about how he's helped so many other people. She was super weirded out by the conversation. During dinner, she told Nariu that she just paid for the meal and got out of there, made an excuse and left. But he kept messaging her, please, let's meet up again. And Yumi would.

Halloween night, five police officers were cramped in a small hallway in front of Unit 205. They're silently shuffling their way into the atrociously smelling hall and they're glancing at each other and they're like giving each other the go-ahead hand signals. They're knocking.

They hear footsteps on the other side of the door. The handle is turning. The door slowly opens. The smell is intensifying. And in front of them is 27-year-old Takahiro. His hair is parted. It's slicked back. He's wearing a simple gray crew neck and black eyeglasses. He looks like one of the countless college students that you would just walk by on the streets of Tokyo. He looks nothing special. He doesn't even seem surprised that there's a whole police station standing outside his door.

Do you know where Ivy is? Police knew immediately that Takahiro knew exactly what they were asking him. His demeanor immediately shifted. He started looking nervous, clamming up. He went through a whole rollercoaster of emotions. And then he went to calm, expressionless, completely blank. And he opens the door wider, sticks his finger out, and points at one of the nine large boxes stacked on top of each other. She's in there.

Ivy was Takahiro's last victim. He pauses for a second and he tells the authorities, I murdered nine people. He literally didn't skip a beat and neither did the officers. Five police officers rush into the cramped space, grab Takahiro, putting him into handcuffs. They force his hands onto the wall to keep him subdued while they call for backup. Eventually, 20 to 30 forensic and backup policemen come into this 150 square foot apartment and they would find what some netizens now call the house of bones.

Aside from the bones and the severed heads that we mentioned, they found debit cards, IDs, women's purses, cell phones scattered throughout the room. They recovered two kitchen knife scissors, a saw binding rope and a gimlet, which is like an electric drill that you use to nail holes into the wall and a blender. Every single one of those items were covered in blood and they tested positive for blood.

In the corner of the main room against the walls where all of the boxes and coolers stacked up, all of them contained severed heads, legs, arms, bones. It was like a mini cemetery. They found nine severed heads and 240 bones. And then they found another box. There's another one. Investigators walk over to that box, open it up, and inside is completely empty. Takahiro purchased it for his 10th victim.

They apprehended him before he could fill another box with bones. If it weren't for Yumi, that 10th box would have probably been filled.

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After reaching out to Naru, Yumi agreed to help the police catch Takahiro. She reached back out to Takahiro saying she was ready. They organized to meet up at a local train station. Yumi went, but thankfully she wasn't alone. There were a lot of undercover police officers at that station. They were staking it out. They spot Takahiro walking in and whether Takahiro could feel it or not is unclear, but he texted Yumi, I can't come actually, but it was too late.

Officers already saw him. They start tailing him back to his apartment, to the second floor, unit 205. He led them straight to his lofted apartment. But unfortunately, I don't know if it was the trauma of the incident or of knowing what Takahiro did or how she had trusted him to a degree or just maybe just seeing the dark side of humanity. Yumi would end up leaving soon after. She helped take Takahiro down.

Mr. Ono, the author, sat down in front of Takahiro and they were in the visiting room of the prison. Takahiro was wearing his prison-issued uniform. Peppermint green, short-sleeved top with short pants, and they kind of look like scrubs. They're actually pretty comfortable. That's what he tells Mr. Ono.

Takahiro is sitting in prison waiting to be tried for the murder of nine people. He was nicknamed the Japanese Twitter killer and his case is making the rounds on international news cycles. This was Mr. Ono's second visit to Takahiro. Mr. Ono, after your last visit, I suddenly thought of you. So I drew a portrait of you. He slides over a piece of paper with a drawing. It was extremely detailed. Some people don't really notice the small features in someone else's face, but Takahiro did. It was very unsettling.

So Takahiro, what have you been up to this week in prison? Well, first of all, I drew that portrait of you. Then I played some shogi, Japanese chess. I did some strength training, and other than that, I ate some snacks. There's a snack called ready-made tamago. It's soft-boiled egg with the light soy sauce flavoring. It tastes great. I think it'd go better with some sake.

I'm really into that right now. Side note, Takahiro only did jailhouse interviews with journalists and publishers if they paid him a gratuity, a tip if you will. He would use that money to purchase snacks. He would almost start every single session with Mr. Ono talking about food.

Netizens would be upset about this comment since it's such a blatant, in-your-face reminder that he's living off taxpayer money before the trial.

Takahiro also worried about COVID-19 because the initial wave was happening while he was in prison. But it's not that he cared about human life, but he was concerned that it would affect visiting hours for prisoners and he wanted people to come visit him so that he could get free snacks. He said a lot of controversial stuff to Mr. Ono while awaiting trial. Talking about another case, another serial killer, Takahiro ironically said, "I think that if you can't raise children by yourself, you should leave them with someone else."

I'm someone who wanted to have children, you know? Mr. Ohno, recently, I've been making spicy ramen by adding shichimi, spicy peppers, to my cup noodles. Sometimes I can't even wait for the hot water to arrive, so I just start making the noodles with room temperature water because I don't have to wait for that.

Eating is like my stress relief. There are certain foods that I consider my jackpot. I like noodles. Sometimes they serve tempura soba. Those are good. Mr. Ono tries to guide the conversation back to the impending trial and the crimes to see if this guy has any sort of remorse. He asks, how did it feel? I have to admit, my heart was pounding very fast at the first murder, even though I wasn't exercising. I was just so sexually aroused by...

Not the dead bodies. But later, after I had killed a number of people, that feeling developed and I was aroused by the dead bodies. And I even took pictures. Takahiro told the author that he was kind of shocked that he was arrested because he had no idea that Yumi was involved. When he talks about his arrest, he talks kind of like it's Yumi's fault. He doesn't outright say it, but it's almost in the subtle verbiage. The woman who trapped me...

Called me to the train station and when I went there she wasn't there and I was followed by the police as I returned home. About two hours after I came back the police came in. "When you were arrested, did you think that you had been set up by that woman, Yumi?" "No, I didn't realize until later because the investigators didn't mention the girl to me at the time of the arrest." Takahiro closed his eyes.

When the police came, there were bones and heads in my apartment. It's very difficult to dismember a person from the neck up. I tried. The face? Hard to break apart. When I looked into it, I found that the bones in the upper half of the face? Especially hard. So I gave up on those before I even started, and I was just planning on throwing all the heads away. Takahiro, it's often shown on TV now that you covered your face with your hands when you were first arrested by the police. Why was that?

Takahiro explains that he instinctively covered his face because there were a lot of journalists present when he was apprehended. But he said that he would have shown his face if one of those reporters had paid him to. Takahiro told Mr. Ono that he had no intention of acting innocent during the trial. He said, "I have no intention of arguing over the facts during the trial. However, my lawyers have done a lot of thinking. It seems like they're willing to fight." But judging by the current situation, I think that even if we fight it out, it's not going to make a difference.

So I'm going to go with Grace. My lawyer is really terrible, though. I mean, I changed lawyers before for the same reason. I asked him if he would proceed without a fight. He said, OK, so I appointed him as my attorney. But then after some time, he turned around and said, Mr. Takahiro, we will fight for you. So I filed a request for a dismissal, but it was unsuccessful. So I'm just going to have him deliver me some snacks. But I think it's very unfair. Do you have any concerns about the death penalty being on the table, Takahiro?

You know, I read a lot of books and I learned about the details of the execution. It looks painful, to be honest. I don't want to be in pain. I don't want to fight through the trial, though. But I also think death by suspension sounds quite painful. Mr. Ono was speechless. This, again, is the same man that ruthlessly killed nine people in the same method, but he's scared of the pain for himself.

September 30th, 2020, Takahiro's trial commenced. He was charged with robbery, forced assay, homicide of eight women, robbery and homicide of a man, mutilation, and abandonment of all nine corpses of his victims. There were a total of 18 very serious charges. Takahiro looked utterly not impressed the whole time during the trial. He looked sluggish. He would take those really exaggerated full body stretches in his seat during the trial.

Where you put your arms back and you lean back and you stretch your legs out. He would shake his whole body at times, not because he was scared or that he was having some sort of anxiety response. He was just bored. He's like, his legs are restless. And then he would loudly crack his joints. When he got bored, he would start doodling or writing stuff in his notebook, which is wild considering this was not an easy trial to get through. Every single day, several people had to leave at several points because the details were so gruesome.

A lot of the times, like the prison interviews with Mr. Ono, Takahiro would just close his eyes, listening like he's meditating or perhaps fantasizing. Nobody knows which one.

But the defense team for Takahiro, they tried to argue that Takahiro was innocent in a sense because all he did was help these girls leave, which is what they wanted according to their Twitter accounts. They wanted this to happen and he helped them. I mean, the most that he could be guilty for really is being a considered helpful citizen.

Which, side note, I made that a way lesser focus in today's episode because I did see some netizens questioning whether or not it was better that he targeted people that already expressed feelings of wanting to leave, which I think is absolutely insane. And I didn't even want that to be a thing. I mean, this guy is a serial killer. He's a sadistic serial killer and he should be presented as one. And it should not be presented from the victim's standpoint of them having certain thoughts or posting about it online. That's not why they died, right?

They died because he's a sadistic serial killer. But during the trial, it was discussed that Takahiro had five accounts on Twitter. They were all focused on negative thoughts and emotions. He would always pose as someone that either wanted to help others leave, where he positioned himself like this compassionate character who knew how disgusting the world was, and he just wanted to be almost like a counselor on their way to leave. Or he would pose as someone who was going through the same exact process and wanted to leave with someone.

This monster was constantly searching for a new victim on Twitter. At one point, he was talking to 37 different Twitter accounts. He would be DMing people while he was in the process of dismembering a previous victim. All the while, he was searching up on his phone, why is assisted leaving illegal? Consensual homicide. How long does one serve for murder? How many people do you have to kill to get the death penalty in Japan? So clearly, he wasn't trying to help anyone but himself.

Takahiro himself did not like the consensual homicide defense, but not for the same reasons as us. He just thought the trial was getting way too long and things would just be faster if his attorneys just were like, yeah, okay, fine, he did it. He thought that the evidence was way too much and this was pointless and it was a waste of his time. He was straight up asked what kind of woman he looked for on Twitter and he said, women who were depressed, I mean, it's easier to seduce women who are troubled and make them do my bidding.

Takahiro would take the stand and answer questions that the prosecutors, so the other side, would ask. And when his own defense attorneys would ask him questions, which defense attorneys will usually ask questions for the jury to hear a very specific answer because it helps their client. So any question a defense attorney typically asks the defendant is going to be favorable for the defendant. But Takahiro would just ignore his attorneys. They would ask him, do you hear me? I hear your question, but I don't intend to answer any of your questions.

So you're not going to answer any of them. I'll answer you because this is a waste of time, but I don't want trouble from my relatives. This is a very long trial. I asked my defense attorneys to proceed with the trial quickly without contesting, and they said they understood, so I appointed them. But suddenly they said they wanted to fight. This is not what we discussed. To be honest, I still hold a grudge.

When the defense attorneys, Takahiro's attorneys, tried to ask another question, Takahiro turned to him and bluntly stated, I'm sorry, but I don't trust you, so I will remain silent. But when the prosecutor, the other side, asked him, after you strangled the victims, why did you decide to suspend them after they stopped moving?

He also mentioned that with some of his victims, he would wrap a towel around their necks before suspending them to make it more confusing for investigators for what their cause of death was. He continued,

Wow, this guy is on another planet. The prosecutors continued, "Why were you researching cannibalism in Japan at the time?" "Because I wanted to find out if there were any other similar cases, what kinds of methods they used, were they caught, why were they caught, and to gain knowledge about body destruction and disposal when dismembering bodies." "Did you consume human meat?" "No, I did not."

At one point in the trial, Takahiro straight up tells the judge, a situation where someone knows they're going to be R-worded, such as a sex worker, which is wild. That's like, I don't even know how to unpack that statement in and of itself. But he continues, in a situation where they know they're going to be R-worded, it's less exciting than to suddenly attack a normal woman who doesn't know that she's going to be R-worded. The judge tries to clarify, as far as you remember, Takahiro, is that what you were motivated by? Is that what you were aroused by?

Suddenly touching a woman's chest when she was in a normal state or licking a fainting woman's chest, to be honest? Yes. The judge interrupts. I don't think a typical R-word situation would cause fainting, so why did you make your victims faint? Because I could foresee that they would scream or become violent. Do you have any interest in relations with a woman who does not resist? Or is it just resisting?

Just resisting. I felt pleasure in relations with a woman who was unconscious or tied up. I was not bound by appearances or age to a certain degree. Takahiro does answer a question from his own attorney. And that was, if you hadn't been arrested, what kind of life would you have had?

Now, I would imagine that most defendants would say something along the lines of, I would have lived in guilt and likely turned myself in. I would have stopped. I would have found religion. I don't know. I would have stopped because it was becoming too much for me to handle mentally and I realized that I was a deplorable human being. But Takahiro closes his eyes and responds, I plan to take the bodies out of my room, bury them in a rental room perhaps or in the mountains, terminate the lease for the loft apartment, move out, move into the room of another woman that I found on Twitter, reset and do it all over again.

Do the killings again? Yeah. He also stated, you know, if I had just killed one person, I might still have a future. I could have become a monk. Offered my prayers, reflected on my actions, but now that I've killed nine people, well, I don't think I can do that anymore, right? Side note, Takahiro does try to defend himself to a degree during the trial. He tries to do mental gymnastics with everyone, trying to get them to believe that it's actually the judge and the government's fault that he killed people.

Prior to this, Takahiro was working as a scout. And like really quick, we've already touched on this quite a bit in the hostess bar case of Yuka Takaoka. But a scout is typically a guy that roams the streets and tries to find women that he thinks would be interested in working at hostess bars or sometimes sex work adjacent cafes.

If they're interested, he's going to bring them to whatever cafe he works with. And if they like her, they're going to have her start working there. And Takahiro gets paid a finder's fee, which makes it sound like a mutually beneficial relationship to a degree. He gets her a job. He gets paid. But at the same time, scouts will gaslight, trick, lie to girls about what type of job they're going to work. A big thing is many scouts will pretend to date a girl that he meets on the street and then convinces her that

"Babe, please go work at this hostess bar for us, for our future." He keeps them working and then they'll ask the club for more commission off her earnings if she does well. They will find the girls' vulnerabilities and insecurities and basically exploit them saying things like, "Don't you want to work harder for me, for us, for our future?" Takahiro was a shady scout. He wasn't a very good scout, but he was a shady one. Allegedly, he told a fellow scout that he preferred minors because they were unaccustomed to life, aka they were easier to manipulate.

Takahiro was arrested for scouting and he was on probation when he started killing. He said he only killed, he just wanted to R-word women. But he had to kill them because if he got caught for R-wording, since he's already on probation, he would go to jail. So the only reason he killed them was technically the government's fault. Because if he hadn't been on probation, he wouldn't have killed them. He would have just R-worded them. He said getting caught at that time was a big deal. If I hadn't been caught, I think I would have continued to be a scout without committing any crimes or anything. Which I liked being a scout.

To put it simply, it was a job where you can just lie on the couch and talk to girls. It's fun. It's lucrative. Anyway, I couldn't go back to working as a scout because I was on probation and I didn't feel like working a real job. So I thought theft. But then I couldn't think of a way to steal money. The only thing I could think of was to use a woman for money. So I found them on social media. Then I met Allison and then I wanted to R word her, found out she had money. I killed her. He also blamed Twitter, stating that it was very easy to approach vulnerable people on Twitter to deceive them. And that's why he did what he did.

Takahiro stated that his primary motive was money, but nobody believes that. When asked about the crime itself, Takahiro stated, "My heart was pounding from a guilty conscious, but I felt a thrill of doing something wrong. It felt good to have intimate relations with this type of thrill. The feeling of the R-word turned me on."

When asked if Takahiro felt guilty for what he did, he told Mr. Ono very bluntly, "'To be honest, I don't have feelings for the victims. In other cases, I've seen people apologize to the victims and their families, but in my case, I don't feel anything for the families. Well, maybe I feel a little bit for the victims. Allison was my first victim. We had spent quite a bit of time together, so I kind of maybe feel a little bad there. Ella, because she has a kid, so I feel bad about putting her child, who still has a future ahead of her, in a situation where she doesn't have a firm maternal foundation.'"

Fiona because I honestly could have just used her for her money a bit longer So there really was no reason why I killed her so soon. I don't know why I did that But honestly the other ones

Nothing. As for Ivy, the one that he essayed after her death and engaged in necrophilia with, he said he felt bad and he regretted killing Ivy only because it led to his arrest. Only because Ivy's brother led to his arrest. So he regrets killing her because it got him apprehended. But for the others, nothing. He said he doesn't really know them. He doesn't even know their names. He found out during the trial. He only knew their Twitter accounts. So how could he feel regret for killing them?

As for the death of Charlie, Takahiro said he actually felt proud that he was able to overpower Charlie and kill him, his only male victim. But Takahiro's mom would state, "'My son is too timid to even kill an insect.'"

Which side note, Takahiro mentions he hates bugs because when he was going through the dismantling phase, he briefly thought about maybe he could get rid of the bodies by either buying like 700 liters of acid to dissolve the bodies, but he thought that could actually dissolve the tub itself. So he decided against it. Then he thought maybe he could purchase maggots to eat the bodies, but he just really hated bugs. He was like, I'm so grossed out by bugs. I don't want them in the apartment.

Meanwhile, the boxes of bones are fine. But his mom said he's too timid to even hurt a bug. Perhaps it's because he hates them. It's not because he's gentle. But to Takahiro's mom, he was her everything. I mean, even before he was born, Takahiro's mom had a vision of what her firstborn son would be. She spent hours poring over books on Chinese characters and their meanings, and she decided on Takahiro, which means prosperity, nobility, and vastness.

It's supposed to symbolize wide prosperity, which there's really nothing noble or prosperous about Takahiro. By most accounts, he had a somewhat normal, comfortable childhood. His version of rebelling against his parents was to go to public school rather than private school like his parents wanted. But if his parents weren't babying him enough or giving him enough attention, Takahiro would run away, pretend like he had thoughts of self-exiting, which he never did. He would straight up say, I did it because it made my parents be nicer to me and give me more allowance.

Sometimes he would go as far to leave his laptop open where he was joining exiting communities so that his parents would see. But he had no intention of leaving. Sometimes he would go to sleep with a rope next to him or leave his final notes out in the open saying goodbye. But he, again, had no intention. He said that he did it so that they'd be nicer to him and baby him. So he's manipulating everyone around him. He knows how to get everybody's emotion down.

Yeah, I think that's where he get the idea from. And then he just uses that everywhere. Yeah, and it's crazy because his parents actually never visited him in jail. They cut off all contact, but they really did baby him. I think that maybe they realized that they played a big role in how he became the way he was to a degree. And you know how the shaming culture in Japan is very strong, like family names, right?

Yeah, there's no way they could stick by him. Yeah, something like this. But I do think that they were probably not the best parents, even the way that she would describe her son. It was just giving very babying the son to the point where he would do anything to get what he wanted.

So he had nobody in his life while he's going through this trial. And Takahiro even asked Mr. Ono to publish an article to get him a wife, to tell the world that Takahiro, the Twitter killer, was looking for a partner in marriage. He said, if you're already going through the trouble of publishing an article, I was hoping to use the opportunity to find someone nice.

So blatantly too. Yeah. She's like, yes, I'm going to use her. Yeah. I need her to bring me stuff. Duh. What else would she be around for?

In the final statement in court, Takahiro was asked if he had anything else to say, any final thoughts. He stated, "I have nothing more to say." December 15th, 2020, the judge stated, "The defendant is sentenced to death." Did you hear me? Yes, I heard you. - This was the reaction on court? - Yeah. The judge then read out the sentencing and because there were so many victims involved, it took one and a half hours to read the full sentence out loud. Takahiro was itching in his seat, ready to leave.

He did not seem phased at all. The biggest concern Takahiro had, like I said, was being lonely in prison. That's it.

Now, it is interesting that capital punishment in Japan is carried out via suspension. Some netizens stated that this is poetic justice, that he will endure the same fate that he forced his victims to. But others are concerned that perhaps Takahiro might enjoy it in a sense, considering his fascination with it. Plus, a lot of netizens point out there's an interesting phenomenon called rigor erectus. Due to the method of putting pressure on parts of the brain and spinal cord, many men who are exposed by hanging develop a physiological reaction in their private parts.

Netizens wonder, as a man with a sadist obsession with asphyxiation, would it be so shocking to believe that he might like the way he goes out? The victim's family members gave their final impact statements. Allison's brother stated, "...my sister never wanted to leave. I could see that she was trying her hardest, and I cannot forgive the fact that the perpetrator, who is so unfazed, is the same type of human as all of us. It is my greatest hope that he will be gone from this world as soon as possible."

Diane's mother stated,

Bella's parents stated, "If our daughter was alive today, she'd be in her first year of college. But to us, our daughter is still a freshman in high school. No matter how much we want to see her grow up, time remains stuck in that day. Our daughter's life cannot be compensated with the perpetrator's life. Even if he is sentenced to death, we want him to suffer until the very last end. That is our wish." Diane's parents stated, "At least if we had her whole body in one piece, we could have at least put her in her coming-of-age kimono for the celebration."

but we can't. It is important to note, whatever the victims were going through, each one of them fought back. Every single one of them. Bella even texted Takahiro last minute, "After thinking things over, I think I'm gonna go on living." He ignored her and pressured her into his apartment under the pretense of just being friends, where he murdered her. Each one of them had defensive wounds and they fought for their lives. And now all that's left of this case is to wait for the execution date.

And Unit 205, Takahiro's House of Bones, has a new tenant. The new tenant stated, the rent was low, location is good, so why not? Wow. And that is the case of the Twitter killer. This is really, really bad. Like the speed, the pacing, how quickly it all evolved. Twitter was actually forced to implement a lot of changes because of this case. That's when they had the hard launch of not implementing

not enticing not encouraging leaving those types of verbiage became a lot more sensitive but what are your thoughts and please stay safe and i will see you guys on sunday for the next episode bye