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Twenty Days in the House: How a Brother Became a Killer · Scary Paranormal Stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: On December tenth, two thousand six, a young woman walked
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: off a film set for the last time she had
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: played a nurse. She smiled for the camera, gathered her things,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and went home. Twenty days later, her parents returned from
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: a trip and found her in garbage bags. That detail
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: has stayed with me since the first time I read
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: this case, not because it is the most violent thing
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: in it, but because of the twenty days between. What
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: happened in that house during those twenty days is something
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the record only partially answers. This is the story of
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Azumi Muto and the night her brother decided a failed
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: exam was worth more than her life. Azumi Muto was
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: born on June thirteenth, nineteen eighty six, in Tokyo. She
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: was the youngest child in the Muto family and the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: only daughter from the outside. The Mutos were exactly the
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: kind of family that does not produce stories like this one.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: The grandfather had opened a dental clinic in the nineteen fifties.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: By the time Azumi was born, the family operated multiple
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: clinics across the city and had expanded into real estate.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: There was money, there was structure, There was a name
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: worth protecting. Azumi grew up inside that name, and at
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: eighteen she left it. In two thousand four, she walked
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: out of the family home after a conflict with her
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: parents and into something into attire different. Under the stage
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: name Caucuwero Takamine. She began working as a pin up
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: model and took small acting roles. In two thousand five
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: and two thousand six, she appeared in a low budget
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: film called Cream Lemon. It was a comedy drama just
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: over an hour long, and it received mediocre reviews, but
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: she was in it. She had built something from nothing
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: entirely on her own. By two thousand six, she had
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: returned to the family home. The reason is not fully documented.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: The Muto residence was not a small apartment. It was
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the kind of house that comes with history attached, where
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: every room holds the weight of decisions made by people
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: who came before you, the dental legacy, the property holdings,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the expectation that children would continue where the grandfather started.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: The oldest son was already working in the family clinics.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: That was the blueprint. Yuki Muto, the middle child, one
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: year older than Azumi, did not fit it. He had
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: failed the university entrance examination for dentistry three times. People
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: who knew him described him with words that recur across
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: different accounts. Strange, solitary, cold, a gaze that felt wrong
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: before you could say why. There is no documented history
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: of physical violence between him and Azumi, and the family's
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: own father would later stand in court and say he
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: had not believed the relationship was fractured enough to end
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: this way. That detail matters because of what it implies.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: The fracture was not visible from the outside, not to
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: parents living in the same house, not to a father who,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: by every indication, was paying attention. Azumi's friends were paying
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: a different kind of attention. Several of them later said
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: she had described Yuki as unsettling, that she avoided being
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: alone with him, that she had mentioned feeling watched in
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: ways she could not fully explain. One friend said she
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: had described his gaze as something she could feel on
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: her even when she was not looking at him. The
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: police would later note those accounts. They would also note
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: that no one had called anyone. There is aticular silence
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: that exists inside wealthy families, a silence that wears the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: shape of privacy and discretion. What happens inside this house
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: stays inside this house. It is not malice, it is
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: not indifference. It is something older than both, and in
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: the Muto house in the winter of two thousand and six,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: that silence had been growing for years. Azumi's last confirmed
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: professional appearance was December tenth, two thousand and six, a
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: nursing role, a costume, a set a final frame. Twenty
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: days after that, on or around December thirtieth, something was
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: said between two siblings in that house, a conversation, according
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: to Yuki's own account, that began quietly. That last word
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: quietly is the detail that does not let go because
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: what came after it was not an accident, and it
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: was not sudden, and the fact that it began without
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: raised voices is perhaps the most disturbing thing Yuki Muto
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: ever admitted. The last time anyone outside the Muto household
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: saw Azumi, she was on a small film set, playing
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a nurse. The date was December tenth, two thousand six.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: She had a roll, a stage name, a life that
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: was finally starting to take shape after the turbulence of
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: leaving home two years earlier. Twenty days later, she was dead,
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  Speaker 1: and the person who killed her had been sleeping down
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  Speaker 1: the hall the entire time. Yuki Muto was one year
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  Speaker 1: older than his sister. By December of two thousand six,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: he had failed the dental school entrance examination three times.
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  Speaker 1: His older brother had passed on the first attempt and
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: was already working in the family clinics. Their grandfather had
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: built that dental legacy in the nineteen fifties. Yuki was
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: meant to continue it. He had not. People who knew
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  Speaker 1: him described a young man with a cold, flat gaze,
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  Speaker 1: not angry in any visible way, just hollow in a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: manner that made people uncomfortable. Without being able to explain
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: exactly why. Azumi's friends had a word for it. They
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: said she found him unsettling, that she avoided being alone
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: in the same room with him when she could help it.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: One of them said she felt his eyes on her
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: in a way that made her skin prickle. The police
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: would later characterize this testimony as imprecise, and no formal
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: link was ever established between those reported looks and any
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: documented conduct. But the friends remembered, and they said nothing
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: to any one outside their circle, because what could they say.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: He was her brother. It was a family matter. That
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: phrase family matter would follow this case like a shadow.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: December thirtieth, two thousand six, the Muto parents were in
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Fukushima visiting relatives. The house in Tokyo was quiet. Azumi
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: and Yuki were alone together, which almost never happened now
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: that she had moved back in. According to Yuki's own account,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: delivered in a written statement so precise and sequential that
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: it would later become the document used to increase his sentence.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: The evening began with a calm conversation. It escalated. At
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: some point Azumi said something about the upcoming entrance examination,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: a fourth attempt. She told him he would fail it again.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: What she said beyond that, the exact words, was never recorded.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: But what happened next was Yuki picked up a wooden
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Kindo sword and struck her across the head head. Azumi
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: fought back. That detail sits in the record quietly, and
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: it deserves not to be passed over quickly. She was
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: twenty years old, and she fought. Yuki then wrapped a
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: towel around her neck and applied pressure. He counted one
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: hundred eighty seconds three minutes. He had seen the method
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: demonstrated on a television program and remembered the number when
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: he released the towel, Azumi was still alive. The rational
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: explanation for what follows, if one could be called that,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: is that Yuki panicked, that the violence had its own
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: momentum and he could not stop. But his written statement
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: does not read like panic. It reads like a sequence
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: of decisions. He moved her to the bathroom. He filled
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the bathroom, he held under. When it was over, he
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: cleaned the house systematically, every surface that could carry evidence
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: of a struggle. Then he returned to the bathroom with
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: a saw and spent the remainder of that night dismembering
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: his sister's body. He removed specific tissue, his stated reason
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: to make it harder to identify her sex. He placed
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: the remains in garbage bags. He used the family's kitchen
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: food processor for what the bags could not contain. Then
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Yuki Muto left for his university dormitory. He stayed there
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: for four days. On January third, two thousand seven, the
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Muto parents returned from Fukushima. They found their daughter in
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: garbage bags in their own home. Yuki was arrested the
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  Speaker 1: following day, January fourth. When detectives began questioning him, he
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: did not hesitate, He did not ask for a lawyer.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: He did not produce a story about an intruder or
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: an accident. He confessed immediately, voluntarily, and in detail. The
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: written statement he provided was chronological organi internally consistent, every step,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: every object, every decision, from the wooden sword to the
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: food processor. His defense attorney would later argue that Yuki
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: had been in a state of diminished mental capacity during
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the crime and during the mutilation. A psychiatrist testified to
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: that effect. The defense built its entire mitigation around the
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: idea that Yuki's actions were the product of a dissociated mind,
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  Speaker 1: someone not fully present, not fully responsible, not fully aware
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  Speaker 1: of what he was doing, and then the judge read
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  Speaker 1: the statement. Judge Fujimiro, presiding over the Tokyo District Court,
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  Speaker 1: found Yuki guilty of murder on May twenty seventh, two
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  Speaker 1: thousand eight. The court accepted the diminished capacity argument only
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: for the mutilation, reducing culpability for that portion of the act.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: The sentence was seven years. The prosecution had asked for seventeen.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: They appealed immediately the Tokyo High Court reversed the lower ruling.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: The sentence was raised to twelve years. Judge frough, Jimiro's
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: reasoning for the increase was recorded. The written declaration Yuki
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: had provided was too organized, too sequential, too coherent to
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: be the product of a mind that had lost its
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: grip on reality. The document that Yuki believed demonstrated remorse,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: or perhaps simply demonstrated his ability to articulate events, that
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: same document became the evidence that undermined every claim his
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: defense had made. Yuki had written himself into a longer sentence.
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  Speaker 1: There is no version of this story where everything makes sense.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: His friend's accounts described someone cold and remote, but not
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: visibly disturbed. His father testified in court that he had
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: not bel leaved. The relationship between his children was fractured
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: enough to end in tragedy. The tabloid press circulated theories necrophilia,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: incest obsession that the Tokyo District Prosecutor's office explicitly and
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: formally denied. A police spokesposun called those reports inaccurate and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: said there was no evidence of romantic intent toward a Zumi.
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  Speaker 1: What the record does confirm is this Yuki had taken
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: underwear belonging to his sister at some point before her death.
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  Speaker 1: The police never formally connected that fact to a specific
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: charge or established conduct. It sits in the record unresolved
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  Speaker 1: the way certain details do too specific to be irrelevant,
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  Speaker 1: to uninsured to be definitive. Azumi's friends knew something was
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: wrong and said nothing because it was a family matter.
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  Speaker 1: Her father believed until it was too late that the
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  Speaker 1: damage was not irreparable. The house in Tokyo held its
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: silence for four days while the parents were in Fukushima,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: and then the door opened. Some things do not require
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a complete explanation to leave a mark. The food processor
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: was a domestic appliance. It sat in the kitchen of
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: a family that had built three generations of professional legacy
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: on care and precision. Yuki used it on the night
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  Speaker 1: of December thirtieth, and then went back to campus as
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: though the semester was simply resuming. He was free before
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: he turned thirty. The Tokyo District Court delivered its verdict
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  Speaker 1: on the twenty seventh of May two thousand eight, guilty
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  Speaker 1: of murder seven years. The mutilation charges were set aside
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: under a finding of diminished capacity during that phase of
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the crime. The prosecution rejected that conclusion immediately and filed
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: an appeal. The same week the appeal went to the
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Tokyo High Court. Judge Fujimiro reviewed the evidence and focused
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: on one specific document, Yuki's own written statement submitted as
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: part of his defense. The statement described the events of
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: December thirtieth and sequential order. It identified each action, noted
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the transitions between them, and moved from the conversation to
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the kendo strike, to the tao to the bathtub with
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the precision of someone who had retained every detail. Judge
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Fujimiro's reasoning was direct. A mind that can produce a coherent,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: organized account of a crime is a mind that was
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: present during that crime. The diminished capacity argument collapsed under
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the weight of Yuki's own words. The sentence was increased
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to twelve years. There is something almost unbearable about that
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: legal finding. Yuki had constructed a defense built on the
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: idea that something in beside him was broken, something beyond
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: his control, and the document that destroyed that defense was
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: the one he wrote himself, describing what he did and
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: how he did it in the order that he did it,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the confession that convicted him twice. The Muto family had
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: built their legacy across three generations. The grandfather opened his
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: first dental practice in Tokyo in the nineteen fifties, The
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: father expanded it. The oldest son continued that lineage that
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: sustained and deliberate construction over decades ended in the bathroom
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: of the family home on an evening that, according to
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: the father's own court testimony, should not have been different
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: from any other. He testified that he did not believe
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the relationship between his children was fractured enough to end
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: in tragedy. He said that under oath in a court room,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: while sitting across a room from the son who had dismayed,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: remembered his daughter and placed her in bags near the door.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Azumi Muto was twenty years old when she died. She
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: had been born on the thirteenth of June nineteen eighty
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: six in Tokyo. Her last confirmed professional appearance was on
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the tenth of December two thousand and six, playing a nurse.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Twenty days later, she was killed in the house where
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: she had grown up. Her friends had known something was wrong.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: They describe Yuki as frightening. They said Azumi actively avoided him,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: that she had mentioned feeling watched in ways that made
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: her uncomfortable, and yet because it was a family matter,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: because the walls of a home are treated differently from
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: the walls of anywhere else. Nothing moved. That boundary, the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: one that says family problems stay inside the family, held
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: until the third of January two thousand seven, when her
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: parents returned from Fukushima and found what Yuki had left behind.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: According to the time line established at trial, Yuki left
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the family home shortly after the prime and returned to
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: his university dormitory. He spent four days there. He attended
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: to his ordinary life while the house held what it held.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: When police questioned him on the fourth of January, he
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: confessed without resistance. He gave them the full account, the argument,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: the kendo's sword, the towel, the one hundred and eighty
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: seconds he counted, the bathtub, the saw, the family food
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: processor sitting in the kitchen of a house that three
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: generations had built, the food processor. That detail does not
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: soften with time or distance. It belongs to the category
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: of things that, once heard, cannot be unheard, not because
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: of what it is, but because of where it was.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: An ordinary appliance in an ordinary kitchen, in a house,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: or a family had eaten meals together for years Yuki
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: would have completed his twelve year sentence sometime around two
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: thousand nineteeneen. He would have been in his early thirties.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Azumi never reached twenty one. There is no version of
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: this story where the math resolves into something acceptable. The
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: prosecution had asked for seventeen years, the district court gave seven.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: The High Court settled on twelve. Every number in that
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: sequence describes what the legal system calculated Azumi's life to
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: be worth against Yuki's remaining years. Her father sat in
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: that court room and said he had not seen this coming.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Her friends had seen enough to be afraid, but not enough,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: or not in time to change what happened. The tabloids
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: invented details that the prosecution formerly denied. The truth was
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: already worse than anything the tabloids needed to invent. What
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: stays after all the testimony and appeals and revised sentences
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: is not the verdict. It is the image of a
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: woman who spent two years building something outside the family home,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: a career, a name, an identity separate from the Muteo legacy,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and then came back and the house was still the house,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: and her brother was still her brother. And on the
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: thirtieth of December, a conversation that had probably happened in
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: some form before became the last one. Her friends called
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: him frightening. She had felt his eyes on her, she
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: had avoided being alone with him. She knew something was
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: wrong in that house long before the night had ended.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: She just didn't know it would end that way. This
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: show is made by Ober Media.