Akira Nishiguchi

Akira Nishiguchi
Born	Akira Nishiguchi December 14, 1925 Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan
Died	December 11, 1970(1970-12-11) (aged 44) Fukuoka Detention House, Sawara-ku, Fukuoka, Japan
Cause of death	Execution by hanging
Other names	Black Gold Medalist
Criminal status	Executed
Conviction(s)	Murder (5 counts)
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Victims	5
Span of crimes	October 18, 1963 – December 29, 1963
Country	Japan
State(s)	Fukuoka, Shizuoka, Tokyo
Date apprehended	January 3, 1964

Akira Nishiguchi (西口 彰, Nishiguchi Akira, December 14, 1925 – December 11, 1970) was a Japanese serial killer and fraudster who killed five people between 1963 and 1964. While engaging in confidence scams, Akira murdered two people, was put on the most wanted list, and killed three others while escaping. The police also regretted that they didn't find Akira, who was found by an 11-year-old girl. A prosecutor called him "the Black Gold Medalist in history". Ryuzo Saki published a book about Akira, which became the basis for the film Vengeance Is Mine. His crimes were the direct catalyst for the creation of the Japanese "Metropolitan Designated Case" system

Early life

Akira Nishiguchi was born on 14 December 1925 in Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. His parents, both devout Catholics, were the proprietors of a fishing business on the Gotō Islands, off the western coast of Kyūshū. Because of his family's religious beliefs, Nishiguchi was pressured by his father to enter the priesthood when he came of age and was sent to a Catholic mission school in Fukuoka Prefecture for his secondary education. Unable to deal with the school's strict discipline, he dropped out during the second semester of his third year and ran away from home. To support himself, he embarked on a life of crime.

Criminal history

In 1942, five months after dropping out of the mission school, Nishiguchi was arrested in Beppu for robbery. While he was able to avoid a criminal charge, he was placed in an institution for juvenile offenders. Upon being given a temporary release in 1945, following the end of World War II, Nishiguchi returned to Osaka and studied English at a training school in the hopes of becoming an interpreter for Allied servicemen. As he continued his incarceration, he married a 20-year-old woman from Fukuoka; the woman gave birth to a son soon after his release from prison in 1947.

Nishiguchi soon resumed his criminal activity and, taking advantage of his education in English, began extorting local businesses while claiming to be affiliated with the U.S. occupation forces. He was soon caught by police and sentenced to two years' imprisonment for his offense. Following his release in 1950, he partnered with a U.S. serviceman and opened a bar in Beppu, becoming the sole owner when the serviceman was deployed to Korea. The following year, shortly before the birth of his second son, Nishiguchi was caught in possession of U.S. currency, which was illegal under certain conditions during the occupation. He was spared prison but fined ¥4,000.

In 1952, Nishiguchi, having acquired an American military uniform and cap, posed as a Japanese-American and began luring people into a building under the pretense of selling them foreign cars, making an excuse and slipping out a rear entrance after he was handed money. He was caught once again and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. After he was imprisoned a third time for fraud in 1959, Nishiguchi's wife divorced him; however, due to the Catholic Church's rules on divorce, Nishiguchi persuaded the woman to re-marry him. Nishiguchi was released in 1963, living separately from his wife and working as a delivery driver in Yukuhashi.

Murders

Ikuo Murata and Goro Mori

In 1963, Nishiguchi learned that Ikuo Murata, an employee for the Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation, was using his employers' delivery vehicles to collect large sums of money along with tobacco products. On 18 October 1963, Nishiguchi approached Murata and another Japan Tobacco employee, Goro Mori, offering to help them with their deliveries and claiming he could show them tobacco fields. The three men traveled by car to an isolated mountain road west of Kanda railway station. There, Nishiguchi lured Murata to a secluded area, beat him to death with a hammer, and stole his money bag containing ¥260,000. He then proceeded to walk back to the car and kill Gori, abandoning both vehicle and body two kilometers away at the Chuai Mountain Pass.

Despite being married, Nishiguchi was seeing a second woman. Immediately following the murders of Murata and Gori, he went to the barbershop where she worked and impressed her with the money he had stolen. To celebrate, the pair lodged at a hotel in Shinyanagi that night. However, upon picking up a newspaper the following morning, Nishiguchi learned that police had already linked him to the murders and that he was now the focus of a nationwide manhunt. Hearing over the radio that police had believed he had fled to Kansai, Nishiguchi instead fled to the small rural city of Karatsu, Saga Prefecture. There, he gambled on boat races and won ¥210,000, almost doubling the amount of cash he had on hand.

To throw off the authorities, Nishguchi wrote a letter addressed to Yukuhashi police expressing remorse for the murders and announcing his intention to commit suicide. Afterward, Nishiguchi boarded a ferry bound for Tokyo and discarded several personal items on the deck, including a signed will, to give the impression that he had jumped into the Seto Inland Sea. However this plan was foiled when Nishiguchi was sighted near where the ferry had been docked.

Yuki and Harue Fujimi

Over the next few days, Nishiguchi moved constantly between the Kansai and Chūbu regions of Japan. On 28 October 1963, he rented a room in Shizuoka using the alias "Masaoka", claiming to be a professor from Kyoto University. To keep up the ruse that he was a teacher, Nishiguchi employed thick glasses and a formal suit as a disguise. From his first night in Shizuoka, Nishiguchi frequently called young women and geisha to his room. The landlady, Yuki Fujimi, having been deceived by his performance as a professor, developed feelings for him and suggested that they spent the night together. Nishiguchi agreed but to left his room early the following morning over Yuki's protests.

Having extravagantly spent most of his money, Nishiguchi returned to fraud to recoup his losses. He traveled to Hiroshima and purchased five television sets under the pretense of donating them to a local orphanage, stiffing the electronics supplier and leaving the orphanage with the bill. He then pawned the television sets, netting ¥80,000.

On 14 November 1963, Nishiguchi returned to his rented room in Shizuoka, much to the delight of the landlady Yuki. Instead of lodging him in his usual room, Yuki arranged to host Nishiguchi in her own room. After staying there for four nights, however, Nishiguchi strangled both Yuki and her mother, Harue Fujimi, with a rope. He quickly cleared their residence of all of their cash and valuables and pawned off these items for ¥40,000. The following day, posing as a representative for the Fujimis, he sold their telephone line for an extra ¥100,000 before fleeing Shizuoka.

When the bodies of Yuki and Harue were discovered on 22 November, authorities quickly found evidence pointing to Nishiguchi and doubled their efforts to capture him. Police forces around the country were put on high alert, and investigators traveled to Beppu to have Nishiguchi's family members write letters urging his surrender that were then printed in national newspapers.

Undeterred by the efforts of the police, Nishiguchi turned on in Chiba on 3 December and, pretending to either be a lawyer or an accountant for the Chiba District Court, swindled a total of ¥56,000 from two middle-aged women. After stealing a lawyer's lapel badge in Fukushima, Nishiguchi made his way to Hokkaido and extorted ¥50,000 from a local business owner. He then traveled south to Tokyo, where he swindled ¥40,000 out of a victim who thought they were securing bail money for an imprisoned relative. Hearing about these crimes, authorities printed 5,000 wanted posters bearing Nishiguchi's photo and distributed them across the country.

See also

• List of serial killers by country

External links

• (in Japanese) Article on the serial murders