Episode 53: Takarazuka Crossbow Familicide

Black Torii — Japanese True Crime · Aug 24, 2026 · 11m

On a quiet morning in early June 2020, a twenty-three-year-old university student woke up before dawn in his family home in Takarazuka — a city in Hyogo Prefecture best known as the home of Japan's famous all-female theatrical company — and began killing his family with a crossbow. Three people would die that morning. His grandmother. His younger brother. His mother. A fourth, his aunt, survived only because she happened to be wearing a bicycle helmet when she arrived at the house, and managed to run out into the street screaming for a neighbor to call the police. When Hideaki Nozu was…