Post by hi224 on Dec 13, 2020 10:07:31 GMT
Noriko Tsujide, a Journalist from Mie prefecture in Japan who was then 24 years old, went missing after leaving her work on November 24th, in 1998.
Ise police contacted her parents after her car, a Nissan March, was left in front of her workplace for some time and was getting ready to be towed. Investigators took a look at the car, and noticed that the drivers’ seat was pushed back a lot further than when she would have driven it, indicating that someone a lot taller than her had driven it.
Some other odd things they discovered was that the stereo system had been disconnected entirely, and that the car had been parked haphazardly over the parking lines, something that she would never have done, as she was a very meticulous and careful driver. There was also a cigarette butt found on the floor, when she was not known to be a smoker.
Despite the suspicious evidence that was found, police amazingly determined that Noriko had just decided to run away from home and start a new life somewhere else. Her parents insisted that that would be unlikely, since she was happy at home and at her job, but police did not take them seriously.
Noriko’s parents nonetheless decided to not give up and petition for the police to investigate. It took them a month but they finally listened to reason and began to look into the disappearance then.
Upon looking into Noriko’s phone records, police found that a certain man had called her 4 times on the day of her disappearance and had contacted her after her she had left her job.
He (unnamed, due to his never being charged for any crime) told investigators that he had met her while she was interviewing leads, and that he had called her to arrange a meeting the day of her disappearance because he wanted to apologize to her in person for some misunderstandings they had had during the interview. The man said that they met at the parking lot and talked for an hour or two in his car, after which he dropped her off nearby (which is odd — didn’t she park at the same lot?)
Because he did not have an alibi, police questioned him extensively and the people around him, but there were no concrete leads or evidence and the trail went cold.
Amazingly, in February of 1999, he was arrested for a completely different crime (which occurred a year before Noriko’s disappearance) — a woman in Tokyo had been held against her will in an apartment, and had reported that it had been the man. However, it had become a case of he-said, she-said with zero actual evidence, again, and ultimately he did not end up being charged for the crime. He sued the police department and the woman, and while he did not win, he became uncooperative to further investigations about Noriko’s disappearance.
There are now two major theories that exist regarding her disappearance, which may be rather out there…or not.
Theory one involves her having been taken away to North Korea. In Mie, there is a large port which connects the two countries, and many people have actually disappeared from there and are suspected to be held in North Korea. She was added to the official list of potential detainees in NK for that reason, but due to the fact that there is no real proof, and (less reliably) Kim Jong Il had reported that no kidnappings had occurred from Japan after 1985, some think that this is unlikely.
Theory two has to do with her running into trouble while she was investigating her latest article.
When she went missing, she had supposedly been reporting about an area called Watakano Island, an island off the coast of Mie where the mob apparently kept young women and men they had abducted or “bought” due to their inability to pay back loans, and forced them into sexual slavery.
Reading about the conditions victims were forced to endure on the island, it sounds harrowing and terrifying. Many of the people brought there were threatened into work there, told that the only alternative was to sell their organs on the black market.
Once on the island, they were unable to leave. The small boats that transported people and goods once or twice a day were all paid to watch out for people trying to escape, and there were cameras in all the rooms watching their every move.
The theory is that Noriko had been made to “disappear” by the yakuza or other major players who were running the operations on the island. There is very little information about this, but I suppose it is possible.
Nowadays, Watakano Island has said to have gone through a major overhaul, but it seems there are still a few brothels still in business.
Ise police contacted her parents after her car, a Nissan March, was left in front of her workplace for some time and was getting ready to be towed. Investigators took a look at the car, and noticed that the drivers’ seat was pushed back a lot further than when she would have driven it, indicating that someone a lot taller than her had driven it.
Some other odd things they discovered was that the stereo system had been disconnected entirely, and that the car had been parked haphazardly over the parking lines, something that she would never have done, as she was a very meticulous and careful driver. There was also a cigarette butt found on the floor, when she was not known to be a smoker.
Despite the suspicious evidence that was found, police amazingly determined that Noriko had just decided to run away from home and start a new life somewhere else. Her parents insisted that that would be unlikely, since she was happy at home and at her job, but police did not take them seriously.
Noriko’s parents nonetheless decided to not give up and petition for the police to investigate. It took them a month but they finally listened to reason and began to look into the disappearance then.
Upon looking into Noriko’s phone records, police found that a certain man had called her 4 times on the day of her disappearance and had contacted her after her she had left her job.
He (unnamed, due to his never being charged for any crime) told investigators that he had met her while she was interviewing leads, and that he had called her to arrange a meeting the day of her disappearance because he wanted to apologize to her in person for some misunderstandings they had had during the interview. The man said that they met at the parking lot and talked for an hour or two in his car, after which he dropped her off nearby (which is odd — didn’t she park at the same lot?)
Because he did not have an alibi, police questioned him extensively and the people around him, but there were no concrete leads or evidence and the trail went cold.
Amazingly, in February of 1999, he was arrested for a completely different crime (which occurred a year before Noriko’s disappearance) — a woman in Tokyo had been held against her will in an apartment, and had reported that it had been the man. However, it had become a case of he-said, she-said with zero actual evidence, again, and ultimately he did not end up being charged for the crime. He sued the police department and the woman, and while he did not win, he became uncooperative to further investigations about Noriko’s disappearance.
There are now two major theories that exist regarding her disappearance, which may be rather out there…or not.
Theory one involves her having been taken away to North Korea. In Mie, there is a large port which connects the two countries, and many people have actually disappeared from there and are suspected to be held in North Korea. She was added to the official list of potential detainees in NK for that reason, but due to the fact that there is no real proof, and (less reliably) Kim Jong Il had reported that no kidnappings had occurred from Japan after 1985, some think that this is unlikely.
Theory two has to do with her running into trouble while she was investigating her latest article.
When she went missing, she had supposedly been reporting about an area called Watakano Island, an island off the coast of Mie where the mob apparently kept young women and men they had abducted or “bought” due to their inability to pay back loans, and forced them into sexual slavery.
Reading about the conditions victims were forced to endure on the island, it sounds harrowing and terrifying. Many of the people brought there were threatened into work there, told that the only alternative was to sell their organs on the black market.
Once on the island, they were unable to leave. The small boats that transported people and goods once or twice a day were all paid to watch out for people trying to escape, and there were cameras in all the rooms watching their every move.
The theory is that Noriko had been made to “disappear” by the yakuza or other major players who were running the operations on the island. There is very little information about this, but I suppose it is possible.
Nowadays, Watakano Island has said to have gone through a major overhaul, but it seems there are still a few brothels still in business.