was a Japanese serial killer who murdered four young girls in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture between August 1988 and June 1989. He abducted and killed the girls, aged from 4 to 7, in his car before dismembering them and molesting their corpses. He also engaged in cannibalism, preserved body parts as trophies, and taunted the families of his victims.
Miyazaki was arrested in Hachiōji in July 1989 after being confronted while taking nude photographs of a young girl. He was diagnosed as having one or more personality disorders, but was determined by authorities to be sane and aware of his crimes and their consequences. Miyazaki was sentenced to death in 1997 and was executed by hanging in 2008.
Miyazaki was dubbed the "Otaku Murderer" due to his extensive collection of pornography and horror videotapes, which was misrepresented by the media as being primarily anime and manga. This triggered a widespread moral panic against otaku in Japan.
Early life
Tsutomu Miyazaki was born on 21 August 1962 in Itsukaichi, Tokyo, the son of a wealthy family. He was born premature and had a rare birth defect that caused his hand joints to be fused together, preventing him from being able to bend his wrists upwards. Miyazaki's family operated a regional newspaper company and were well known in Itsukaichi, where his grandfather and great-grandfather had served on the town council. Due to his parents being busy, he was mainly raised by his grandfather and an intellectually disabled man the family hired as a nanny.
Miyazaki was ostracized when he attended elementary school due to his deformity, and consequently kept to himself. He attended Meidai Nakano High School in Nakano, a prestigious high school associated with Meiji University, and was a star student until his grades began to drop dramatically. He was ranked 40 out of 56 in his class and did not receive the customary admission to Meiji University for students of the school. Instead of studying English and becoming a teacher as he originally intended, Miyazaki attended a local junior college and studied to become a photography technician.
In the mid-1980s, Miyazaki moved back into his parents' house in Itsukaichi, sharing a room with his elder sister. Although his family was highly influential in Itsukaichi, he expressed no desire to take over their business. After his arrest, Miyazaki would say that what he really craved was "being listened to about his problems" but believed that his parents, more worried about the material than the sentimental, "would have not heard [him]; [he] would've been ignored". In the same confession, he said that by this period in his life he had begun to consider suicide. Miyazaki felt he only received support from his grandfather, to whom he was close, and was rejected by his two younger sisters.
In May 1988, Miyazaki's grandfather died, which served to deepen his depression and isolate him even further. In an attempt to "retain something from him", Miyazaki ate part of his grandfather's ashes. A few weeks later, one of Miyazaki's sisters caught him watching her while she was taking a shower; he attacked her when she told him to leave. When his mother learned of the incident and demanded that he spend more time working and less time with his videotapes, he attacked her as well.
Murders
Between August 1988 and June 1989, Miyazaki mutilated and murdered four girls between the ages of 4 and 7, and sexually molested their corpses. He drank the blood of one victim and ate a part of her hand. These crimes—which prior to Miyazaki's apprehension were named the "Little Girl Murders" and later the —shocked Saitama Prefecture, which had few crimes against children.
On 22 August 1988, one day after Miyazaki's 26th birthday, Mari Konno, aged 4, vanished while playing at a friend's house. Miyazaki had led Konno into his black Nissan Langley, then drove westward of Tokyo and parked the car under a bridge in a wooded area. There, he sat alongside Konno for half an hour before murdering her and molesting her corpse. He dumped her body in the hills near his home, departing with her clothes, then allowed the body to decompose before returning to remove her hands and feet, which he kept in his closet. Miyazaki burned Konno's remaining bones in his furnace, ground them into powder, and sent them to her family in a box along with several of her teeth, photos of her clothes, and a postcard which read, ("Mari. Bones. Cremated. Investigate. Prove.") Konno's hands and feet were found in Miyazaki's closet after his arrest almost a year later.