Ok, so first let’s get one thing straight.
Count Dracula wasn’t a real person, he was the creation of writer Bram Stoker in his
1897 novel “Dracula.”
But Stoker didn’t pull Dracula out of thin air.
The myth of the vampire had been circulating around mostly Eastern Europe for centuries,
sometimes leading to accusations of vampirism in the public, and a few brave but perhaps
demented people digging up corpses and plunging a stake into a stopped heart.
There are reports of people doing this in Serbia in the early 1700s, but tales of soul-destroying,
blood-sucking dudes with a fine set of shiny incisors are thought to have originated in
antiquity.
If you type “Vampire Arrested” into Google, you’ll quickly see that the vampiric age
is not dead, but today we’re going to focus on a real devil, in this episode of the Infographics
Show, Tsutomu Miyazaki: The Human Dracula.
Miyazaki is also sometimes referred to as “The Girl Killer”, which explains clearly
how he entered the serial killer hall of infamy.
You could say he’s almost a Japanese version of Jeffrey Dahmer, if you switch teenage boys
for very young girls.
Like Dahmer, Miyazaki had a thing for expressing a twisted adoration of dead bodies.
This is our way of describing necrophilia without veering too much into the realm of
X-Rated content.
He also ate parts of them for dinner.
Yes, he was a cannibal.
But how did this maniac transform from cute little Japanese boy to wretched killer of
kids?
Let’s take a brief look at his past.
If you’ve seen our other serial killer shows, you can bet he didn’t have the best start
in life.
His rotten luck started the moment he took his first breath, but if you want to be more
precise, it started while he was still in the womb.
He was born on August 21st 1962, which makes him a Leo.
We actually looked up famous serial killers and their star signs, and Gemini had the most,
so if you are a Gemini, you are in some bad company.
Ok, sorry about the digression.
So, this guy was born with very deformed hands.
Not only was it hard for him to use them, but they looked like the hands of Nosferatu,
long and thin and gnarled and utterly creepy-looking.
As you might imagine, this didn’t go down well with the girls, and it was an endless
stream of amusement for young boys that liked to bully him.
It’s said Miyazaki soon learned it was best to stay alone.
That he did, while reading fantasy comics and watching slasher films.
Only he soon graduated from comics and horror movies to watching Japanese pornography.
It was later discovered he had amassed over 5,763 of these screamadelic videos, and as
weird as they can be, it wasn’t enough, and soon he was into anime and illegal films
whose victims were children.
He once said about normal Japanese pornography, “They black out the most important part.”
They weren’t good enough for him, and aside from searching for and finding illegal videos,
he filmed girls’ underwear when he managed to get shots while they were playing tennis
at a nearby court.
The things is, this was a kid with opportunities.
His dad owned a newspaper, but Miyazaki wasn’t interested in taking it over.
He was a black sheep as well as a lonely cripple.
He watched videos all the time rather than work, and its said the two sisters that lived
with him didn’t like him at all.
His dad never listened to him and his mother wasn’t exactly doting.
The one person he did have was his grandfather, whom he loved so much he ate part of his ashes
after he died so he could stay with him forever.
Things went downhill after the death of grandpa.
On one occasion, Miyazaki was caught spying on one of his sisters as she showered.
She expressed her concern, and rather than apologize, he beat her up.
His mother admonished him for crime one and crime two, and so he beat her up, too.
You get the picture, this is one unhappy kid.
As is the case with so many abused kids who attempt to gain power and control in their
lives, he soon turned to murder.
And so, on August 22, 1988, Miyazaki abducted a 4-year old from a park in Tokyo.
He took her to a quiet spot under a bridge, and the two chatted for around 30 minutes.
He then strangled her and proceeded to engage in sexual acts with her corpse.
He stripped her and took home her clothes.
Only a few days later, he had a change of mind and went back to the decomposing body.
He chopped off her hands and feet, which would later be discovered in his closet.
He took the rest of the body, burned it, and ground the bones into powder.
He then sent some of this powder to the girl’s parents, along with a few of her teeth and
some photos of her clothes.
He sent a postcard, too, which cryptically read, “Mari.
Cremated.
Bones.
Investigate.
Prove.”
Soon after he did the same with a 7-year old girl who he had seen walking around by herself.
Again, he engaged in necrophilia and he did that at the exact same spot where he had done
it before.
He kept the clothes again, presumably for later gratification.
He took his third victim, another 4-year old, just a couple of months after.
He drove her to the prefecture of Saitama to a parking lot and took photos of her while
she was alive.
He dumped her body there and left her clothes close by in a green area.
Again, he sent the parents a postcard, but this time he used letters cut out from magazines.
The postcard cryptically read, “Erika.
Cold.
Cough.
Throat.
Rest.
Death.”
It’s said that a passing driver saw the two together, and if he’d have done something,
he could have stopped the murder, but he drove on.
Soon after the girl was strangled.
It’s also said that his car got stuck in a gutter where he had stopped and then taken
the dead girl from the car.
After he had dumped her a bunch of guys helped him get his car out.
Because of all the things that went wrong, he waited a while before he next struck, but
about 6-months later he took a wandering 5-year old girl from a park.
He took her to his car, killed her, then covered her in a sheet and took her home with him.
There he spent two days molesting the dead girl, and he took photos and videos of this.
The videos were later found in his room.
When decomposition made it impossible for him to further exploit her body, he chopped
her up.
He dumped the torso and head in separate locations and kept the hands.
He admitted to eating part of these hands and drinking blood from her.
But he got paranoid and soon dumped what was left of the hands.
He got caught soon after this when he was attempting to insert a zoom lens of a camera
inside a young girl’s vagina, or according to another report just in between her legs.
He was trying this in a park, it’s said.
But the girl’s dad turned up, hit Miyazaki, and he ran off, absolutely naked.
The dad reported him of course and when cops went to Miyazaki’s house to confront him,
they found his stash of terrible homemade videos as well as all the other sexual videos.
Police also later found some girl’s hands.
It’s said during his trial he showed no remorse whatsoever, and even once said that
he had “done a good job.”
He said he was a Japanese hero, and during the trial he thought he was on stage.
He refused to apologize for what he had done, compelling some people to think he was insane.
Court-appointed psychiatrists had two different opinions, one that he had a personality disorder
but knew exactly what he was doing, and another that his mind was not working correctly during
his reign of terror.
In Japan, that’s called having a “feeble mind,” and if the judge agreed with that,
the sentence would be more lenient.
But the judge believed the first diagnosis, and he was sentenced to death.
“Considering the cruelty of his crimes, their social impact, and the sentiments of
the victims’ kin, capital punishment is unavoidable,” said the judge.
This was in spite of Miyazaki saying he had felt as though he was dreaming when he committed
the murders and that he had been hallucinating about something he called the “Rat People”.
One psychiatrist said, “He may not have an incapacitating personality disorder such
as paranoia or schizophrenia, but I think he may be borderline.”
His rich father didn’t offer any money to help with his son’s defense, as he said
it would have been an insult to the victims’ families.
In fact, in true Japanese style, the father took his own life a few years later after
this huge loss of honor.
It’s said after his arrest, Miyazaki wrote a letter to his dad, blaming him for everything.
To his mum he simply wrote, “Mother, I've caused you much heartache.
Don't forget to change the oil in my car, or it will get so you can't drive it.”
Before he was executed he told more of his story, saying how being hated or just ignored
by his parents and his sisters made his life miserable.
It turned out he hurt animals, as many serial killers do before they turn their attention
to human flesh.
He strangled his pet dog to death and killed two cats, one of which he watched boil to
death.
After some retrials relating to the man’s sanity, his death sentence was upheld, and
Miyazaki was hanged on June 17, 2008.
So, what are some of your thoughts?
Was that the right decision by the court?
Could a man that mad have been rehabilitated?
What do you think should happen to criminals that commit such vile crimes?
Also, be sure to check out our other video called America's Strangest Serial Killer - Ed
Gein.
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!