Serial killer “Nosferatu” mutilated girls and sent remains to parents with cryptic notes

Before the mysterious box arrived at their Tokyo home, Mari Konno’s parents had clung to hope that their four-year-old daughter was still alive.

Five months earlier, on August 22, 1988, the wide-eyed girl had been kidnapped while playing at a friend’s house, and despite a massive police search, there was no sign of her. Until now.

Upon opening the package, they found a container of ashes, teeth, a photo of the outfit in which Mari had disappeared, and a note that read: “Husband. Incinerated. BONE. Investigate. To prove.”

Their worst fears were confirmed – their daughter was dead.

But it wasn’t until 26-year-old Tsutomu Miyazaki was arrested almost a year later that they learned what happened to her after she was strangled to death.

The anime-obsessed loner had stripped her naked, raped her corpse and left her body in the hills.

He returned after she decomposed, dismembered her before cremating her remains, cutting off her hands and feet which were found in a closet in her bedroom.

The terror of Miyazaki’s four young victims must have been multiplied by the sight of his unusually long bony hands, the result of a rare birth defect that prevented him from moving his wrists upward.

Photos taken of the dead-eyed pedophile show alien-like numbers with uncut fingernails, earning him the nickname “vampire slayer” or “real life nosferatu”.

Bullied at school, Miyazaki spent a lot of time with her grandfather and a man with learning difficulties paid to play the role of his nanny.

As a teenager he became more and more reclusive, watching cartoons, bloody horror movies and child pornography, and scaring women in college where he studied photography by taking sneaky photos of their lives. crotch.

When her grandfather died, just months before the murder of Mari Konno, Miyazaki ate some of the old man’s ashes, telling police he wanted to “keep something of him.”

It was the start of a downward spiral to unforgivable depths of depravity.

A few weeks after eating the ashes, Miyazaki became violent when his sister caught him spying on her while she was showering. His mother, furious at her son’s perversions, was also attacked when she demanded that he spend less time watching his precious video tapes.

Two other children were killed in 1988: Masami Yoshizawa, seven, on October 3 and Erika Namba, four, on December 12.

The girls were each lured into her car before being taken to the outskirts of Tokyo to be murdered and sexually assaulted after their deaths.

Japanese police realized they were dealing with a serial killer, and the press was filled with references to the “little girl killer.”

Both of their parents – like those of Mari Konno – were subjected to threatening anonymous phone calls and encrypted messages sent by post. The Nambas received one, spelled out from words cut out of magazines, which read, “Erika. Cold. Cough. Throat. Rest. Death.”

Miyazaki did not kill again until June 6, 1989 when he snatched away five-year-old Ayako Nomoto after persuading her to let him take pictures of her in his car.

When she mentioned his deformed hands, he flew to a beach and strangled her.

Wrapping his corpse in a sheet, he smuggled it into his home where he spent two days defiling it, taking photos and making home videos.

When the child’s remains began to decompose and smell, he drank his blood before starting the dismemberment process, again choosing to keep his hands, which some local news sources claimed he had. also eaten.

Although Miyazaki initially threw the girl’s torso in a cemetery and her head in the nearby hills, after two weeks he returned to find them, keeping the remains hidden in his closet.

Six weeks later, on July 23, Miyazaki was finally apprehended – moments before he killed a fifth child.

When police searched her apartment, they found 5,763 video tapes of hentai, horror, porn – and tapes of her victims. This new development saw Miyazaki earn a new nickname, the “Otaku Murderer,” in reference to his unhealthy (otaku) obsession with the anime.

Miyazaki’s trial began in 1990 and lasted for seven years. Lawyers fought for his mental state at the time of the murders as he sat quietly drawing a strange character he dubbed “Rat Man,” a dark part of his personality that had him hunted down, kill, rape and eat little girls.

Eventually, he was found guilty and sentenced to death, and on June 17, 2008, he was hanged by the Tokyo High Court.