"The School Killer" : On May 27, 1997, a school janitor found the head of Jun Hase, an 11-year-old retarded boy who had been missing since May 24. Hase, a student at Tainohata Elementary School, had been decapitated with a sharp instrument, and in his mouth the killer stuffed a taunting message for the police. Later that day the boy's headless body was found under a house in the woods near the school. Hase's killing is the second in that area since mid-March, when an unidentified assailant bludgeoned to death a elementary school girl. Another girl was seriously wounded when she was stabbed the same day.

In the note the killer warned: "This is the beginning of the game... You police guys stop me if you can... I desperately want to see people die, it is a thrill for me to commit murder. A bloody judgment is needed for my years of great bitterness." It ended with words in English, "shooll (sic) kill" and was signed in a mysterious combination of Japanese characters meaning rice wine, rose and sacred master, followed by "the school killer."

The killer also used a cross-like symbol remenicent to the one used by San Francisco's infamous "Zodiac" killer. Similar slogans were found painted on walls near the elementary school where the head was found. Two mutilated cats were also found outside the main gate of the junior high school where the boy's head was found before he vanished. Police sources said that mutilated cat carcasses were also found near the two other crime scenes before the attacks occurred.

On June 6 a person claiming responsibility for the beheading of the schoolboy in Kobe threatened to kill three people a week in a letter sent to a local newspaper. Authorities confirmed that the handwriting of the letter sent to the Kobe Shimbun newspaper appears to match the note found in the mouth of the 11-year-old mentally retarded boy.

"I am putting my life at stake for the sake of this game,'' said the rambling 1,400-word letter, "If I'm caught, I'll probably be hanged ... police should be angrier and more tenacious in pursuing me... It's only when I kill that I am liberated from the constant hatred that I suffer and that I am able to attain peace. It is only when I give pain to people that I can ease my own pain." In broad strokes the letter also lashed out at, among other things, Japan's "compulsory education which formed me, an invisible person."

The killer signed the letter "Seito Sakakibara" (Apostle Sake Devil Rose). Strangely, the writer claimed that it was his real name, and was angered that the name "devil's rose" in his first note was interpreted as an alias. "From now on, if you misread my name or spoil my mood I will kill three vegetables a week... If you think I can only kill children you are greatly mistaken."

Shinichirou Azuma "Seito Sakakibara"