Post by hi224 on Nov 22, 2020 21:44:42 GMT
In Japan, there still is a sizable population of younger people -- teens and pre-teens, who leave home for a variety of reasons and try to make it on their own. Many of them end up trying to make money however they can, by under the table jobs and physical labor, but the girls often end up getting taken advantage of and prostituted to adult men.
Back in July 13th, 2003, three grade 6 girls who had recently left home was hanging around Shibuya station in Tokyo, next to the Moai statue which was nearby. Kotaro Yoshizato approached them, with a kind expression on his face. He asked them if they would help in cleaning his apartment for 10000 yen (approx. $100), which was a lot of money for the girls. They agreed, and along with another unknown man, they all headed via taxi to the apartment in Akasaka.
Once they arrived, Yoshizato's demeanor changed entirely and he threatened the girls with a tazer, telling them that they "must have known why they had agreed to." He then proceeded to handcuff all of them and take them each to separate rooms, where they were chained to full 20L gas tanks.
---
Yoshizato was born in the 70s and grew up in a wealthy household. He later on was accepted to Tokyo University of the Arts, a prestigious university, but there he apparently was known for being a playboy with multiple girlfriends. Despite having a rich family, his father and brother committed suicide in the 90s, and his mother was depressed and said to have attempted suicide as well. I'm sure having such a background didn't help as he ended up in a life of crime.
After graduation, he worked at host clubs for a couple of years, and then started some illegal "date clubs" (prostitution rings), one of them being the "Petit Angel" club, trafficking and prostituting underage girls. This club was so successful that he gained enormous wealth in a short amount of time, and it quickly became infamous.
He hired several high school aged girls to lure in victims and distribute flyers, promising girls "5000 yen for karaoke with a client, 10000 yen for underwear, and 10000 yen for nude modeling". Despite being on parole, having been caught for operating the illegal prostitution rings, he was still able to expand his business, selling child exploitation videos and other materials.
---
But something was different this time.
Before the girls were kidnapped, on the 11th, Yoshizato had sold off his two Ferraris, and someone other than him took over the lease for his apartment. And on the following day, the 12th, he purchased the gas tanks used to hold the girls in their rooms, along with charcoal and some compact grills.
On the morning of the 16th, while the police started investigating the girls' disappearances, Yoshizato committed suicide through carbon monoxide inhalation after he made a tent out of poly vinyl, sealed himself and the grills inside, and lit the charcoal.
One of the girls noticed that everything had gone quiet, and managed to free herself. She attempted to free the other girls, but couldn't break off their handcuffs, so she decided to get out and seek help. She ran out bare-footed onto the street and into a flower shop, where the shopkeeper called the police. The three girls were rescued right away and reunited with their parents.
---
There are several very bizarre and unanswered things about this case that still have people talking about it to this day.
- Upon committing suicide, Yoshizato was very meticulous in his setup, making sure that there were no holes or gaps in the vinyl and that no smoke could escape. He was found sitting on a chair in the middle of the room and his death was ruled a suicide through carbon monoxide poisoning by the police. However, with the grills (called shichirin grills, which are open-top charcoal grills used in cooking) on in close proximity to him, it was thought that it would leave burn marks on his body, but none were supposedly found. There aren't any details I could find regarding an autopsy, though, and that could all just be speculation.
- Despite the girls mentioning that they encountered several people who were involved in Yoshizato's scheme, and therefore suggesting that it was a much bigger enterprise than it seemed, the identity of those accomplices were never looked into and the case was closed by the police, with the blame placed solely on Yoshizato.
- Upon his death, many awful details about the "dating club" were revealed -- that it was a members-only club, with memberships costing 600000 yen and every "date" with a minor costing 50000 yen. There was a large client list of over 2000 names (all aliases), and with that many clients, it was assumed that hundreds of girls had been exploited.
People who are/were following the case were very curious about who were on the client list, but the police never released the contents of it, and have not moved forward with investigating it. It's all the more bizarre since along with the list, some 1000 video recordings were found of sex acts, presumably of clients as well as the exploited girls.
There are many, many rumors and speculations about who was on the client list and none of them are proven to be true. They range from prominent politicians, judges, movie and TV producers, actors, doctors, and even members of the Imperial House of Japan.
---
One of the only journalists who were investigating this case, Satoru Someya, was a reporter who covered the seedy underbelly of Japanese society, writing about drug issues, the Yakuza, and trafficking. He wrote for many Vice-like publications, and was extensively researching the Petit Angel case.
On September 12th of 2003, he was found dead.
A truck driver found his body floating in Tokyo bay, near a cliffside. He had been stabbed 8 times in the back, and blunt force trauma wounds were on his skull. He had been wrapped in chains and a weighted belt used for scuba diving was on his hips.
The last time anyone had talked to him was on the 5th, when he talked to an editor about his most recent piece, and on the 6th, his camera was found abandoned on the street in Tokyo.
Three men were arrested for his murder; all career criminals, they were thought to have committed the act since Someya had exposed them in other books and articles he had written in the past. This is certainly plausible and it could be unrelated to the Petit Angel case, but some seem to think that this was another coverup by the police since Someya had been looking into the contents of the client list at the time of his death. Without any concrete evidence it's hard to say.
---
The identities of the girls are unknown due to them being underaged at the time of the incident, but their names and photos were apparently posted on 2chan, the Japanese imageboard. The post was swiftly deleted, but they can still be found if you go digging enough.
Due to the fact that there wasn't a ton of reporting about this since the incident and the fact that there are a lot of sketchy elements to the case, there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding this, with people calling it "Japan's Epstein" and such. And it's very similar in some ways, where there very well could be a ton of darker things being covered up, but without much in terms of actual facts being disclosed, all we can do is speculate.
Japanese Wikipedia article
Source 2
Back in July 13th, 2003, three grade 6 girls who had recently left home was hanging around Shibuya station in Tokyo, next to the Moai statue which was nearby. Kotaro Yoshizato approached them, with a kind expression on his face. He asked them if they would help in cleaning his apartment for 10000 yen (approx. $100), which was a lot of money for the girls. They agreed, and along with another unknown man, they all headed via taxi to the apartment in Akasaka.
Once they arrived, Yoshizato's demeanor changed entirely and he threatened the girls with a tazer, telling them that they "must have known why they had agreed to." He then proceeded to handcuff all of them and take them each to separate rooms, where they were chained to full 20L gas tanks.
---
Yoshizato was born in the 70s and grew up in a wealthy household. He later on was accepted to Tokyo University of the Arts, a prestigious university, but there he apparently was known for being a playboy with multiple girlfriends. Despite having a rich family, his father and brother committed suicide in the 90s, and his mother was depressed and said to have attempted suicide as well. I'm sure having such a background didn't help as he ended up in a life of crime.
After graduation, he worked at host clubs for a couple of years, and then started some illegal "date clubs" (prostitution rings), one of them being the "Petit Angel" club, trafficking and prostituting underage girls. This club was so successful that he gained enormous wealth in a short amount of time, and it quickly became infamous.
He hired several high school aged girls to lure in victims and distribute flyers, promising girls "5000 yen for karaoke with a client, 10000 yen for underwear, and 10000 yen for nude modeling". Despite being on parole, having been caught for operating the illegal prostitution rings, he was still able to expand his business, selling child exploitation videos and other materials.
---
But something was different this time.
Before the girls were kidnapped, on the 11th, Yoshizato had sold off his two Ferraris, and someone other than him took over the lease for his apartment. And on the following day, the 12th, he purchased the gas tanks used to hold the girls in their rooms, along with charcoal and some compact grills.
On the morning of the 16th, while the police started investigating the girls' disappearances, Yoshizato committed suicide through carbon monoxide inhalation after he made a tent out of poly vinyl, sealed himself and the grills inside, and lit the charcoal.
One of the girls noticed that everything had gone quiet, and managed to free herself. She attempted to free the other girls, but couldn't break off their handcuffs, so she decided to get out and seek help. She ran out bare-footed onto the street and into a flower shop, where the shopkeeper called the police. The three girls were rescued right away and reunited with their parents.
---
There are several very bizarre and unanswered things about this case that still have people talking about it to this day.
- Upon committing suicide, Yoshizato was very meticulous in his setup, making sure that there were no holes or gaps in the vinyl and that no smoke could escape. He was found sitting on a chair in the middle of the room and his death was ruled a suicide through carbon monoxide poisoning by the police. However, with the grills (called shichirin grills, which are open-top charcoal grills used in cooking) on in close proximity to him, it was thought that it would leave burn marks on his body, but none were supposedly found. There aren't any details I could find regarding an autopsy, though, and that could all just be speculation.
- Despite the girls mentioning that they encountered several people who were involved in Yoshizato's scheme, and therefore suggesting that it was a much bigger enterprise than it seemed, the identity of those accomplices were never looked into and the case was closed by the police, with the blame placed solely on Yoshizato.
- Upon his death, many awful details about the "dating club" were revealed -- that it was a members-only club, with memberships costing 600000 yen and every "date" with a minor costing 50000 yen. There was a large client list of over 2000 names (all aliases), and with that many clients, it was assumed that hundreds of girls had been exploited.
People who are/were following the case were very curious about who were on the client list, but the police never released the contents of it, and have not moved forward with investigating it. It's all the more bizarre since along with the list, some 1000 video recordings were found of sex acts, presumably of clients as well as the exploited girls.
There are many, many rumors and speculations about who was on the client list and none of them are proven to be true. They range from prominent politicians, judges, movie and TV producers, actors, doctors, and even members of the Imperial House of Japan.
---
One of the only journalists who were investigating this case, Satoru Someya, was a reporter who covered the seedy underbelly of Japanese society, writing about drug issues, the Yakuza, and trafficking. He wrote for many Vice-like publications, and was extensively researching the Petit Angel case.
On September 12th of 2003, he was found dead.
A truck driver found his body floating in Tokyo bay, near a cliffside. He had been stabbed 8 times in the back, and blunt force trauma wounds were on his skull. He had been wrapped in chains and a weighted belt used for scuba diving was on his hips.
The last time anyone had talked to him was on the 5th, when he talked to an editor about his most recent piece, and on the 6th, his camera was found abandoned on the street in Tokyo.
Three men were arrested for his murder; all career criminals, they were thought to have committed the act since Someya had exposed them in other books and articles he had written in the past. This is certainly plausible and it could be unrelated to the Petit Angel case, but some seem to think that this was another coverup by the police since Someya had been looking into the contents of the client list at the time of his death. Without any concrete evidence it's hard to say.
---
The identities of the girls are unknown due to them being underaged at the time of the incident, but their names and photos were apparently posted on 2chan, the Japanese imageboard. The post was swiftly deleted, but they can still be found if you go digging enough.
Due to the fact that there wasn't a ton of reporting about this since the incident and the fact that there are a lot of sketchy elements to the case, there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding this, with people calling it "Japan's Epstein" and such. And it's very similar in some ways, where there very well could be a ton of darker things being covered up, but without much in terms of actual facts being disclosed, all we can do is speculate.
Japanese Wikipedia article
Source 2