Yasuo Takeda

 VICTIMS: 4

I should begin by saying that I really love the Japanese. They make the best films (Kitano and Miike are easily the best directors currently working), their TV shows are just pure insanity, and if any of you readers have ever seen Japanese wrestling, or even just read about some of the crap that goes on over there, you will have witnessed true barbarity. So whenever I read about a Japanese murder I always pay special attention, because even though they rarely equal the numbers of the Americans, they do have a certain 'wackiness' that a lot of killers from other countries can only dream of. Which leads me to Yasuo Takeda.

Mr. Takeda was, until last year, a relatively successful 52 year old guy that had owned a bar in central Tokyo. Unfortunately for him though his bar had slowly lost money, and before he knew it he was out of business and looking at debts totalling 25 million yen ($US 230,000). So what's a guy to do in this position?

I mean he can't let his family live with the shame of knowing that he has failed, can he?

I guess this was his logic as when he arrived at the Gifu-Minami police station in Gifu city, 170 miles west of Tokyo on the morning of Monday, February 07, 2000, he had the bodies of his family in his van. He confessed straight away. Takeda said he killed his 80-year-old mother, a 6-year-old son, a 4-year-old daughter and his 38-year-old wife in that order in the van while parked alongside a river on Saturday night.

When the van was searched the bodies were found to be showing signs of having been strangled with some kind of rope or string. So I guess it may be fair to assume that's how they went out. But more importantly, I want to know if they had signs of being tied up. The articles that I have read make absolutely no mention of this, so I'm assuming that the victims met their death willingly.

After the family was taken care of, Takeda slashed his left wrist, but it seems his heart just wasn't in it and he was left still breathing come sunrise. Not really sure what to do he decided to turn himself into police.

And that is where this story ends as I've had no updates since his arrest.
 

MY OPINION

I know that a lot of you will be completely bored by this one, but I find it really interesting. The fact no newspapers made mention of Takeda tying up his family really does make it sound as if they were quite aware, and willing, to go along with his plan. And the method of strangling makes it so personal. It takes a really strong (physically) individual to choke anyone to death, let alone four people, and unless there was some help I doubt he could have got it all done in one night. If the family wanted to escape I doubt that he could have kept them all in the van anyway. And that's why I'm really interested in this case. Hope you can see what I'm talking about, because that does make for a pretty interesting story.