Article: Unsolved Japanese 1984–1985 extortion case
The , also known by its official designation Metropolitan Designated Case 114 Keisatsuchō kōiki jūyō shitei dai-hyakujūyongō jiken , was a famous extortion case from 1984 to 1985 in Japan, primarily directed at the Japanese industrial confectioneries Ezaki Glico and Morinaga, and currently remains unsolved. The entire case spanned 17 months from the initial kidnapping of the president of Glico to the last known communication from the prime suspect, a person or group known only as "The Monster with 21 Faces".
Kidnapping
At around 9:00pm on March 18, 1984, two masked men armed with a pistol and rifle forcefully entered the Nishinomiya home of then-Ezaki Glico president Katsuhisa Ezaki. The home next door belonged to Katsuhisa's 70-year-old mother, Yoshie, and was located on the same property. The criminals broke into her home first and demanded the key to her son's home.
After entering the home of Katsuhisa Ezaki, the two masked men tied up his wife Mikieko (35 years old) and his eldest daughter Mariko (8) before locking them inside a bathroom. The family's two other children, daughter Yukiko (4) and son Etsuro (11), were asleep in another room and left unharmed. The men then located Ezaki himself, who was bathing, and abducted the still-naked man from his home. Ezaki was taken to a small warehouse in Ibaraki, Osaka.
At around midnight, the kidnappers directed a director of the company to a ransom note in a public phone booth, demanding 1 billion yen (about US$4.5 million at then-current exchange rates) and 100 kilograms of gold bullion. However, three days later, on 21 March, Ezaki managed to escape from the warehouse.
Glico blackmailing
This is a letter sent by The Monster with 21 Faces that was received on April 8, 1984:
To the police fools,
Are you all stupid? What the hell are you doing with all that manpower? If you're professionals then come on, catch us! We'll give you a hint since you're so handicapped: there are none of us among Ezaki's relatives, there are none of us among the Nishinomiya police, there are none of us among the Flood Prevention Corps. The car I bought was gray, and the food I bought was from Daei. If you want more information, ask us for it in the newspapers. After telling you all this, you should be able to catch us. If you can't, then you're just tax leeches. Shall we kidnap the head of the prefectural police, too?
The extortion attempts against Glico did not end with the escape of Ezaki. On April 10, vehicles in the parking lot of the Ezaki Glico headquarters' trial production building were set on fire. Then, on April 16, a plastic container containing hydrochloric acid and a threatening letter to Glico were found in Ibaraki.
On May 10, Glico began to receive letters from a person or group calling itself "The Monster with 21 Faces" (かい人21面相, kaijin nijūichi mensō), named after the villain of Edogawa Rampo's detective novels and also translated as "The Fiend with the Twenty Faces" or "The Phantom with 20 Faces". The Monster claimed to have laced Glico candies with a potassium cyanide soda. When Glico pulled its products off the shelves at great expense, resulting in a loss of more than $21 million and the laying off of 450 part-time workers, The Monster with 21 Faces threatened to place the tampered products in stores. Following these threats, a man wearing a Yomiuri Giants baseball cap was caught placing Glico chocolate on a store shelf by a security camera. A security camera photo was made public after this incident.
Meanwhile, the Monster with 21 Faces sent letters to the media, taunting police efforts to capture the culprit(s) behind the scare. An excerpt from one such letter, written in hiragana and with an Osaka dialect, reads,
Dear dumb police officers. Don't tell a lie. All crimes begin with a lie as we say in Japan. Don't you know that?
This is a letter sent by The Monster with 21 Faces gang that was received on April 23, 1984. It was sent to both Sankei and Mainichi newspapers as well as the Koshien police station. It read:
"To police fools. You shouldn’t lie. If you lie, you steal. I also sent this to the Koshien police. Why are you lying. Don’t hide things. Why are you complaining? You guys are having such a hard time, so I will give you a hint. I entered the factory from the side staff entrance. The typewriter we used is PAN-writer. The plastic container used was a piece of street garbage.
Monster with 21 faces"
Eventually, the Monster stopped contacting Glico and, on June 26, issued a letter saying "We Forgive Glico!". However, the Monster then turned its extortion campaign on Morinaga and the food companies Marudai Ham and House Foods Corporation.
Morinaga blackmailing
A threatening letter arrived at the Tokyo home of Morinaga Dairy vice president, Mitsuo Yamada on November 1, 1984. This was one in a long line of extortion and harassment letters sent to various Japanese food companies by a criminal gang calling themselves "Monster with 21 Faces".
To President, you saw our power didn’t you? If you disobey us we will destroy your company. You will get killed. Decide whether you want to give us money or do you want to see your company destroyed? Tell us in the Mainichi Newspaper on either the 5th or 6th of November. Use the missing persons. Use these words in the reply: Jiro, Morinaga, Mother, Police, Bad friend, Money, Meal. As we said before we want two hundred million yen.
Monster with 21 faces"
On November 6, Morinaga responded to the criminals by placing the missing persons advertisement in the Mainichi Newspapers Morning Edition.
"Dear Jiro, Bad friend disappeared. Come back. Warm meal is waiting. Mother Chiyoko."
Two letters were sent to House Foods on November 7, 1984. Also on November 7, 1984, Morinaga & Company whose food products had been poisoned by the criminal gang was forced to reduce its current production by 90%.
Fox-Eyed Man
Police did get close to the suspected mastermind of the "Monster with 21 Faces", however. On 28 June, two days after agreeing to stop harassing Marudai in exchange for 50 million yen (about US$210,000), the "Monster" arranged for a Marudai employee to toss the ransom money onto a local train heading toward Kyoto when a white flag was displayed. An investigator disguised as a Marudai employee and following the drop instructions of the "Monster" spotted a suspicious man observing him when he was riding a train to the drop point. The man was described as a large, well-built man wearing sunglasses, his hair cut short and permed, with "eyes like those of a fox."
When the white flag was not displayed, the undercover policeman and the "Fox-Eyed Man" (キツネ目の男, kitsune-me no otoko) both disembarked from the train at Kyoto station, and while the investigator waited on a bench, the "Fox-Eyed Man" continued to observe him. The investigator later headed back to Osaka, and the "Fox-Eyed Man" boarded another car in the same train. When the investigator then disembarked at Takatsuki station, the "Fox-Eyed Man" boarded a Kyoto-bound train and another undercover investigator tailed him from Kyoto, but the "Fox-Eyed Man" eventually lost him.
Shiga Prefecture incident
Police got a second chance at the "Fox-Eyed Man" on 14 November, when the "Monster" group attempted to rob the House Food Corporation of 100 million yen (about US$410,000) in another secret deal. At a rest stop on the Meishin Expressway, near Otsu, investigators saw the Fox-Eyed Man, wearing a golf cap and dark glasses, but again he evaded capture. The cash delivery van they were tailing continued to head toward the drop point, where they were to drop the money in a can under a white piece of cloth. When the delivery van reached the drop point, the white cloth was there but the can was missing. As a result, the investigative team was ordered to withdraw, believing that the drop was an evaluation by the "Monster" of police response.
However, an hour earlier, a patrol car from the local Shiga prefecture police had spotted a station wagon with its engine running and its headlights off. The station wagon was also sitting less than 50 meters from a white cloth suspended from a fence. Unaware of the secret ransom drop, the police officer drove up to the station wagon and shone his flashlight on the driver, revealing a thin-cheeked man in his forties, wearing a golf cap over his eyes and, more telling, a wireless receiver with headphones. Surprised by the policeman, the driver sped off, with the police car following in pursuit until the station wagon lost him.
The station wagon was later found abandoned near the Kusatsu Station and had been discovered to have been stolen earlier in Nagaokakyo in Kyoto prefecture. Inside the abandoned car was a radio transceiver that had been eavesdropping in on radio communications between the police officers of six prefectures, including Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe, the prefectures of the drop point. Also recovered was a vacuum cleaner, although no evidence could be traced back to the "Monster" group.
Following the blackmail campaign on House Foods, the "Monster" then turned its sights on Fujiya in December 1984. In January 1985, police released the facial composite of the "Fox-Eyed Man" to the public. In August 1985, after continuing harassment by the "Monster with 21 Faces" and the failure to capture the "Fox-Eyed Man", Shiga Prefecture Police Superintendent Yamamoto killed himself by self-immolation.
Final message and aftermath
Five days after the death of Yamamoto, on August 12, the "Monster with 21 Faces" sent its last message to the media:
Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture Police died. How stupid of him! We've got no friends or secret hiding place in Shiga. It's Yoshino or Shikata who should have died. What have they been doing for as long as one year and five months? Don't let bad guys like us get away with it. There are many more fools who want to copy us. No-career Yamamoto died like a man. So we decided to give our condolence. We decided to forget about torturing food-making companies. If anyone blackmails any of the food-making companies, it's not us but someone copying us. We are bad guys. That means we've got more to do other than bullying companies. It's fun to lead a bad man's life. Monster with 21 Faces.
Following this message, the Monster with 21 Faces was not heard from again. In March 1994, the statute of limitations ran out on the kidnapping of Ezaki, followed by the lapses of the statute of limitations on the two remaining charges of attempted murder for the poisoned food products in October 1999 and on Saturday, February 12th 2000.
Prime suspects
Following the release of the identikit in January 1985, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police quickly identified the culprit as Manabu Miyazaki. Labelled as Mr. "M" or Material Witness "M", Miyazaki was suspected of issuing a 1976 tape declaring support of a local union in a labor dispute with Glico that bore similarities to the numerous declarations of the "Monster with 21 Faces". There had been numerous whistleblowing incidents between 1975 and 1976 that were also attributed to Miyazaki, which highlighted Glico's dumping of starches and other industrial waste into the local river and drainage system. Miyazaki was also suspected to have been involved with the resignation of a union leader over accounting irregularities when Glico Ham and Glico Nutritional Foods merged. In addition, his father was the boss of a local yakuza group and Miyazaki himself bore a striking resemblance to the "Fox-Eyed Man". Speculation had gone on for months that Miyazaki was the "Fox-Eyed Man", until the Tokyo Metropolitan Police checked his alibis and cleared him of any wrongdoing. The resulting notoriety caused Miyazaki to become a social commentator, and he wrote a book about his experiences called Toppamono.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police also suspect that various yakuza groups had a hand in the Glico-Morinaga case. The end of the blackmail campaign occurred around the time of the Yama-ichi war, the mob war between the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Ichiwa-kai.
In addition, Japanese National Public Safety Commission investigated extreme left-wing and right-wing groups as possible suspects.
In popular culture
Kaoru Takamura's 1997 novel Redi jōkā (translated as Lady Joker, 2021) was inspired by the case.
In 2002, the character of the Laughing Man in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was inspired by the Glico-Morinaga case.
In 2021, BuzzFeed Unsolved covered the case, providing several theories.
See also List of kidnappings
List of people who disappeared
References |
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Kidnapping, Extortion, and Cyanide-laced Candy: The Strange Case of the Monster With 21 Faces
Posted on February 22, 2015 by Andrew Kincaid Glico’s Osaka Office.
By MASA (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The anime and manga
Ghost in the Shell
is highly regarded as one of the finest ever produced. The show (I will focus on the anime because it is what I am personally familiar with) focuses on the exploits of Section 9, an elite cyber crime unit that is part of Japan’s public security apparatus. GitS is set in the near future, where humans and machines have become one and the Net infiltrates all aspects of life, even more than it does now.
While GitS is, of course, fiction, one story arc eerily echoes a strange case from real life. One of Section 9’s long running cases involved a character known simply as “The Laughing Man.” The case, which is far too complex to go into in depth here, involved a hacker who conducted a spree of cyber terror against high tech medical companies dealing in things called micro-machines. The terrorist’s symbol was that of a laughing face with a cap, with text scrolling around it that read: “I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.” The quote was lifted from J.D Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye,” while the hacker’s pseudonym was taken from the title of another Salinger story.
The real life occurrence that, likely as not, at least partially inspired the story in GitS, occurred between 1984 and 1985. During this time, a shadowy figure (or figures) calling themselves “The Monster with 21 Faces”–a reference to a villain in a series of detective novels by Rampo Edogawa–terrorized Japanese food companies and the public at large. Police were helpless to stop the extortionists, whose identities remain unknown to this day.
The crime spree begins
The criminal’s first target was the president of Ezaki Glico, an Osaka-based candy company established in 1922. Named Katsuhisa Ezaki, on the night of May 18, 1984 two gunmen burst into his home and abducted him after terrorizing his family. The extortionists contacted Glico’s director the next day, demanding 1 billion yen (approximately $9.3 million dollars) and 220 pounds of gold bullion in exchange for Ezaki. However, after three days of captivity, the executive managed to escape the warehouse in Ibaraki before the deal could be made.
Their plans frustrated, the extortionists switched tactics. On April 10, three cars in the parking lot of Ezaki Glico’s trial production facility burst into flame. Six days later, police in Ibaraki prefecture discovered a threatening note taped to a jug of hydrochloric acid.
The next month, on May 10, the criminals contacted police directly with a letter signed “the Monster with 21 Faces.” It claimed that Glico candies laced with cyanide had been distributed to stores, prompting the company to enact a massive product recall. The company’s stocks took a beating on the stock exchange, and panic among the public began to mount.
For their part, the police had little to go on. The initial letter was written using hiragana, a writing style unique to Osaka. The criminals seemed to enjoy their growing notoriety, sending the police taunting letters. One such letter read: “You seem to be at a loss. So why not let us help you? We’ll give you a clue. We entered the factory by the front gate. The typewriter we used is Panwriter. The plastic container used was a piece of street garbage. Monster with 21 Faces.”
Even with this unwanted bit of help, the police were no closer to nabbing a suspect. While the police muddled on, the criminals shifted their sights to a new target.
The Monster strikes again
On June 26, police received a note proclaiming “We forgive Glico!” The extortionists began harassing Morinaga & Company, the House Food Coporation, and Marudai Ham with threatening letters. Marudai agreed to pay a ransom of 50 million yen. A policeman disguised as a Marudai employee would make the exchange, and hopefully catch one of the perpetrators in the process.
The extortionists ordered the money be tossed out of a train bound for Kyoto, where a white flag was stuck in the ground by the tracks. The drop was scheduled for June 28.
When the officer boarded his train at the appointed time, he spotted a suspicious man shadowing him. The stranger was a large man with short, permed hair and glasses. His eyes, according to the officer, were like a fox’s.
The white flag never materialized, and the officer and his shadow disembarked in Kyoto, only to board the next train to Osaka. Another officer was waiting back at the station in Osaka, but both managed to somehow lose the suspect when he boarded a train to Kyoto.
“Moms of the Nation”
The extortionists entered a new and even more despicable phase of their crimes in October of 1984. The Monster with 21 Faces sent letters to Osaka news agencies addressed to “Moms of the Nation,” claiming that Morinaga candy had been spiked with cyanide and placed in random stores all over Japan. Amid growing fear, searches lasting until February the following year turned up 21 packages of tainted candy. The criminals had helpfully labeled the suspect packages with warning labels that read: “Danger: Contains Toxins.”
While the search for tainted candy was ongoing, executives with House Food planned a ransom exchange. This time, the Monster asked for 100 million yen. The drop would occur at a rest stop on the Meishin Expressway in Shiga Prefecture. Officers with the local prefectural police spotted a man who they thought was the fox-eyed fellow from the previous drop. Officers attempted to apprehend the suspect, but he managed to elude them yet again. They found his vehicle, which was stolen, dumped at the Kusatsu railroad station. Inside, they found a police radio scanner which the suspect had used to monitor police activity and thus escape his would-be captors.
A break in the case?
Frustrated by their lack of progress, in January 1985 police published a composite sketch of the suspect who had twice eluded them. After a few days of circulating the sketch, Tokyo turned up the first tangible suspect so far in the case. Named Miyazaki Manubu, he was a whistle-blower who, in 1975-6, exposed Glico’s dumping of industrial water into rivers in Osaka. Police claimed that an audiotape dating from 1976 echoed wording of letters written by the Monster with 21 Faces. However, after investigating Manubu, police found his alibis checked out for the various crimes and were forced to exonerate him.
Frustration grew among police investigating the case, reaching tragic proportions. On August 7, 1985, Superintendent Yamamoto of the Shiga Prefecture police doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire. Five days later, the Monster sent his last letter:
“Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture Police Died. How stupid of him! We’ve got no friends or secret hiding place in Shiga. It’s Yoshino or Shikata who should have died. What have they been doing for as long as one year and five months? Don’t let bad guys like us get away with it. There are many more fools who want to copy us. No-career Yamamoto died like a man. So we decide to give our condolence. We decided to forget about torturing food-making companies. If anyone blackmails any of the food-making companies, it’s not us but someone copying us. We are bad guys. that means we’ve got more to do than bullying companies. it’s fun to lead a bad man’s life. Monster with 21 Faces.”
The current state of the case
In the nearly thirty years since the Monster with 21 Faces perpetrated his crimes, no new leads have come to light. As the taunting letter foretold, there have been many imitators in the years since. Altogether, there have been a total of 525 cases of extortion attempts against food producers, of which 322 have been solved. The most recent was a case from just last year, when a man identifying himself as Kaijin 28-go (Phantom #28) attempted to extort 50 million yen from Ezaki Glico Co. among other manufacturers. The suspect was captured, and is regarded as a copycat of the original Monster with 21 Faces.
As for the original Monster, he or they are free and clear. The statute of limitations on Ezaki’s kidnapping case ran out in 1995, and the last deadline for the poisonings and other crimes attributed to the Monster ran out in 2000. This despite massive efforts at the time, involving over a million officers who interviewed over 12,000 suspects. The case remains a massive black eye to Japan’s National Police Agency, and an enduring mystery that is subject to as much obsessive study as the fictional Laughing Man was among amateur sleuths in Ghost in the Shell.
Any attempt to establish the true motives and identity of the Monster is pure speculation. Some pin the crimes on the Yakuza crime syndicate, while others suspect North Korean agents attempted to disrupt the Japanese economy. The former theory is more plausible, given the sophistication of the Yakuza’s criminal network. Then again, such a secretive organization is not likely to want to draw attention to itself on a national level.
Another theory is that the whole scheme was an attempt to secure a stock windfall. No doubt, the negative press garnered from the whole affair would make the stocks of the various companies drop. Who is to say that shady investors did not form a cabal and pay off lackeys to commit the crimes, only to buy up stocks when their value sank and then make a healthy profit when they bounced back? Such a scheme would be difficult to track, as it could conceivably be perceived as simply a good investment strategy on the part of savvy business people.
But, again, this is nothing more than speculation. Until the perpetrators behind the crimes come forward, only they will know the true identity of the Monster with 21 Faces.
Sources:
“Arrest made in poisoning threat of Glico products, possible copycat from 30 years ago.” ajw.asahi.com. December 01, 2014. The Asahi Shimbum. February 15, 2015.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201412010052
“Clock ticking on Glico-Morinaga cases.” Japantimes.co.jp. February 24, 1999. The Japan Times. February 15, 2015.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/1999/02/24/national/clock-ticking-on-glico-morinaga-cases/#.VOn3ri4Qk8I
Newton, Michael. “The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes.” Infobase Publishing, 2009. pgs 136-137.
“NPA admits defeat in Glico-Morinaga case.” Japantimes.co.jp. February 10, 2000. The Japan Times. February 15, 2015.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2000/02/10/national/npa-admits-defeat-in-glico-morinaga-case/#.VOn3pi4Qk8I Like this: Like Loading... Related Posts:
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