Episode 17: Sakamoto Family Murder

Black Torii — Japanese True Crime · Jul 18, 2026 · 15m

November 1989. A lawyer in Yokohama goes to sleep with his wife and their fourteen-month-old son. He is thirty-three years old, working to help families who have lost relatives to a religious cult. By morning, all three of them are gone — and no one will know what happened for six years. Their bodies will not be found in one place. They will be found in three separate mountain ranges, in three separate prefectures, sealed inside metal drums. And their teeth will have been smashed to prevent identification. This is the story of the Sakamoto family murder — the crime that Japan's deadliest cult…