This picture looks like a person curled up in a narrow pipe. He doesn’t do yoga, nor does he fix something in the pipe – here’s a diagram of a body as it was found. This pipe is the toilet bowl in a women’s restroom.
This case happened in Japan more than thirty years ago, after a simple investigation, the police quickly came to the conclusion that “accidental death”. However, the local people did not accept this result and protested that the police closed the case too hastily, even they co-signed a letter requesting a re-investigation of the case, but it was still useless. Perhaps the reason why the police do not want to restart the investigation of the case has to do with the strangeness of this case, and the truth behind it that has thus been hidden for the past few decades.
The incident happened on February 28, 1989 in Toro village, Japan, Toro village in Tamura prefecture, Fukushima prefecture, and is a peaceful village.
The location of the incident was a dormitory for teachers of a local elementary school. At 6pm, a 23-year-old female elementary school teacher Yumi Tanaka after finishing her lesson, as usual after returning to the dormitory, she will go to the restroom to wash her face and clean herself. However, as she was about to go to the bathroom, she vaguely noticed something floating in the toilet bowl, and when she took a closer look, it turned out to be a leather shoe.
At that time in Japan, the type of toilet used in female teachers’ dormitories was a dry toilet (squat toilet system), which is still more common today than in Japan. rural, remote areas of Vietnam and China (however it is becoming less and less with economic development).
After Yumi discovered the strange leather shoes, she went straight outside to check if anyone had accidentally opened the manhole cover but didn’t see anything unusual, so she stepped inside and looked inside. toilet bowl to check one more time. Tanaka then collapsed to the ground calling for help, at this time the male colleague who lived next door rushed over, but under the black winter night, they could not see clearly what was inside and only knew that someone was there. inside the toilet.
Another male colleague immediately chose to call the police. After arriving at the scene, the local police informed the Sanharu town police station, Fukushima prefecture, to cooperate with the investigation. The police department quickly dispatched police and rushed to the scene along with three village firefighters.
They sealed off the scene and confirmed it was a human foot, although they had never seen a strange case like this, they still boldly tried to pull this person out of the pipeline. But because the toilet pipe was too small, they couldn’t pull the body out. The next day, police called an excavator and a crane, first digging the entire pipe out of the ground, then using a crane to lift it up.
The police then tried many other methods, but still could not get the person out of the pipeline. In the end, they had to use a tool to destroy the entire pipe to get the person out. The person hiding in the pipe must have been dead for a long time, after the police used clean water to clean the scene, they discovered a strange thing that this person was shirtless, holding a neatly folded coat in his hand. And his posture was very strange, his whole body curled up, completely stuck in the pipe, with almost no room to move.
The body was found of a man, this person died in a very strange position. The time of the incident was in February, the weather was very cold, but this man was not wearing a shirt but was holding a neatly folded shirt in front of his chest, the bottom part was still wearing pants, knees bent, face slightly tilted To the left.
Because the body was in the septic tank for a long time, when it was brought out, the body was covered with stains. Immediately after revealing the face, someone recognized the victim.
The victim’s name is Naoyuki Sugano, 26 years old, he joined the band as a guitarist in high school and was a member of the local soccer team. Naoyuki is 1.7m tall and lives in a village 10 minutes away from an elementary school.
He is currently working in a nuclear power plant maintenance company in a neighboring town, and is also the chairman of the youth association in the village. This youth association is essentially an organization founded spontaneously by young people in the village, and often organizes entertainment activities for young people, as the president, so to speak, Naoyuki Sugano is one of the most promising members.
After the police cleaned up, the body was taken to the Sanchun Police Station for an autopsy. The medical examiner first examined the body’s external markings and found no other injuries except light scratches on the elbows and knees. Kanno’s cause of death was a circulatory disorder in his thoracic respiratory system or in other words, he was suffocated to death in this narrow and dirty tube.
The coroner also estimated that Naoyuki Sugano’s death was around the 26th, which is two days before it was discovered. And now new questions arise. Since he was in the pipeline for at least two days, why wasn’t he discovered until the 28th? The reason is because Yumi Tanaka returned to her hometown on the 24th, and did not return until the 27th.
It is worth noting that before the police dug in, no one remembered to take pictures for evidence or to protect the scene from being broken into, in fact a lot of policemen, firefighters and residents went for a walk. Around the scene, the first traces of the scene, including the footprints, were destroyed. Prior to the autopsy, the police and medical examiners cleaned the body three times, and evidence including hair, fingerprints and skin were also washed with a stream of water – these are not measures. professional handling, leading to a serious lack of material evidence in this case, and at the same time making the investigation of the case difficult.
After confirming the identity of the deceased, the police immediately contacted the victim’s family. His home was only a 10-minute drive from the crime scene, the victim’s parents told police that their son had gone to a farewell party for a senior in the youth union on the 23rd and did not return home until the 23rd. one o’clock in the morning. Around 10 a.m. on the 24th, Naoyuki’s father heard his son say, “Dad, I’m going out for a moment” from the hallway while he was watching TV in the living room, and heard the door close and leave. In other words, since the 24th, Naoyuki’s whereabouts are still unknown.
On the evening of the 25th, Naoyuki’s parents saw that their son had not returned home and they were very worried. The next morning, they called some of Naoyuki’s friends and asked if they had seen him, but no one knew. Until the 27th, the day before Naoyuki’s body was found, someone found his car in the parking lot of the Agricultural Cooperative.
When the police found Naoyuki’s car, they discovered that the car didn’t even have the key removed. However, it did not arouse too much police attention. They experimented with reconstructing crime scenes, and assumed that it would be difficult for an adult male to enter the pipeline under duress. Because the diameter of the urinary tube was only 36 cm, and the average shoulder width of an adult male in Japan at that time was 40 cm, the police assumed that the victim had voluntarily entered the road. tube.
So what will he do when he gets in? Since no evidence of outsider entry was found at the scene (actually lost by the police themselves), the police could only judge that he intended to peek at Ms. Tanaka going to the toilet, and the The narrowness of the pipe was beyond his imagination, leaving him trapped in it, unable to move, and eventually suffocated at the scene. After the cause of death was confirmed, the police quickly closed the case with the excuse of “accidental death”.
However, the victim’s family and villagers did not accept the results of this investigation. From their point of view, since Naoyuki was an outstanding young man, with outstanding skills and abilities, there was no reason to follow women in this way. Furthermore, he and Yumi Tanaka were acquaintances so there would be every reason to know that she wasn’t home for a few days.
A month after the incident, the villagers gathered the opinions of more than 4,300 villagers, and together filed a petition with the Sanchun Police Department asking for further investigation. Given that the entire village has a population of less than 10,000, it means that at least half of the villagers doubt the conclusion of accidental death. However, the police said that no new evidence was found in this case (police negligence led to a lack of evidence), and the existing evidence could not prove this was a murder, so they dismissed the application. of people. To this day, the official conclusion of this case remains an accidental death.
.