Thinking Sideways: The Monster with 21 Faces

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking sideways. I don't know, you never know. The story
is of things we simply don't know the answer too. Hey,
everyone thinking excited was podcast as always. I'm Devin, joined

(00:25):
by Joe, Steve and Steve and Steve and Steve and
Joe and Joe and Den you know the trio the Scoobies.
If you can tell, we're already trying to pad this
episode up. It's going to be a quick one. We
I hope. I mean every time we say it's going

(00:46):
to be a quick one, it ends up being actually
like much longer than we think it's going to be
because you guys ramble on endlessly. Listen. Sorry everyone, Okay,
let's Joe won't stop talking and get shocking. So we're
going to talk a little bit about the monster with
twenty one faces. It's got a bunch of different like
a k s. But we're just going to call it
the monster with twenty one faces. YEA cool, cool cool.

(01:08):
So our mystery starts mysteriously like, but we are going
to do a little background first. Have you ever have
you guys ever had pocky? You know, I never have,
I've seen it one of my favorite snacks actually at work,
Sometimes people are like, hey, we're gonna get pocky and
I'm like for me, and they're like, no to sell,
and I'm like, ah, but I want to eat it. All.

(01:30):
That's the worst. So it's um. For those of you
who don't know what pockey is, google it probably is
the best way. UM. But it's these like kind of
biscuit sticks that are dipped in chocolate, the best way
I can describe them. Sometimes they have sprinkles and other
little silly or they're dipped in like you know, creamy

(01:51):
caramel or or strawberry flavors or you know whatever. It's
a confection in what country? Yeah, Japan and made in Japan.
Um and the company that makes it is called Isakai
Glico Leko is how I would say that word? My
Japanese is not on point, I will be honest with you.

(02:12):
So I'm going to be mispronouncing a lot of these words.
I apologize in advance, and I can't remember how we
decided we were going to pronounce. This is marian Ghana
more Naga is another large confectionery producer and Japan, And
I'm not I couldn't tell if they actually export to
America or not. A lot of their stuff was labeled

(02:34):
in English, but I couldn't. I would imagine if they're
putting it in English, they're probably selling it in this country,
but I can't totally, so I couldn't tell. I mean,
I've been to huge there's huge Asian markets store supermarkets
here in in our city, and I see a lot
of this stuff there. So I've got to imagine that

(02:55):
it's probably labeled in both for export for those kind
of situations. Sure, sure, um. And as an other side note, um,
the monster with twenty one faces has never been identified,
so for for all we know, it could just be
one person. Um. But I'm I'm going to go ahead
and just for the purposes of this story, I'm and

(03:16):
assume that it was more than one person and use
plural pronouns just to like throw that out. That makes sense, Okay,
So here we go, mysterious start every already? All right,
March eighteenth, night four at nine am, two masked men,
one armed with a pistol, the other armed with a rifle.

(03:38):
Enter Cotson, how do you say that? How would you say?
They tied Ezekai's wife and daughter up. Believing the two
men were just like regular robbers. Isazekai's wife tried to
negotiate them for her freedom and her daughter's freedom and

(03:59):
its change for money, but they said, no, that's not
what we want. They cut the telephone lines and stormed
into the bathroom where Eazakai and his other two children
were hiding. The two men abducted Eazakai only and held
him captive in a warehouse. And I know I didn't
mention this before, but Eazakai is of Easakai Glico Fame.
He is the president of at least he was then.

(04:24):
He's the dude. He's the owner, the CEO, the grand pa,
the candy man. He is the candy man. So the
next morning, the director of Glico was contacted, and the
people who contacted him, presumably the kidnappers, demanded a ransom
of one billion yen and a hundred kilograms um. That's

(04:47):
just over two and twenty pounds for our American listeners
of gold Bouleon. And let's just go ahead and say,
I not yeah, you can't make soup out of it, fair, um.
And I'm gonna go ahead and say that, like there
are a lot of places around the Internet that say
it was ten pounds or noms um, but Wikipedia says

(05:13):
it was a hundred and as we all know, Wikipedia is,
so we're just going to say it was What the
hell doesn't matter. Obviously, the director could not act immediately
because that's a whole mess of everything. He couldn't just
like in a day produce all those things. So it
took him a couple of days. She would like to
have just like hanging out would be awesome, It would

(05:34):
be pretty awesome. Yeah, the foundation of my house blow away?
Oh man, where do you live again? Some other place? Okay,
So because it took the director so long, um three
days later, on the twenty one of March, Isazekai actually escaped.
And actually it turns out that perhaps he could have
escaped the whole time because he was literally just sitting

(05:56):
in a warehouse. Like he wasn't tied up, he was guarded,
It wasn't locked up by any records that anybody can
kind of. These guys are really terrible at hostage taking. Well,
they're really great at hostage holding. Because it took him
three days to figure out that he wasn't being guarded.
That's that's that's really weird. Yeah, I've got to admit

(06:16):
that's really weird. We're gonna put you in this room.
Do not try the door handle. I know it says exit,
but don't touch that handle. Well, I think most reasonable
human beings, upon being kidnapped right and threatened with guns
and stuff, probably then like thrown into a warehouse, are
just going to assume that they're locked, or assume that

(06:39):
somebody is standing on the other side of the door.
And when you know, three days, you probably don't want
to make your captors angry with you. Yeah, of course,
but well he did. Actually, you know, if I had
been him, though, you know, I wouldn't have wouldn't have
come and said, yeah, yeah, they just left me unguarded.
I would have said, yeah that was I was tied
up and as handcuffed, miraculous, and yeah if I found it,

(07:00):
pin line on the floor and I picked my cuffs
even though there behind my back. But a tok me
a while, and then then I had to clock that
I had to clob or a guard, and I had
to snatch a weapon from another one and hold them
a bay while I made a break. Can you remember
how we were talking about these episodes being really long. Yeah,
I'm just saying she should have made up a better story.
You get kids have to escape, you want to come
up with a better story than that. Yeah. So, actually

(07:23):
the kidnappers were not pleased. So a couple of days later,
on April tenth of the same year, three vehicles were
set on fire at one of Glico's test facilities. Um
and shortly after on the sixteenth, so six days later,
there was a tub plastic tub or I guess kind

(07:43):
of bucket container full of hydrochloric acid that was accompanied
by a threatening note quote unquote was attached to it.
Were left somewhere, it's not totally were it was found
near a Glico test stility. I want to know, what
is a test facility for a candy man? Yeah, I

(08:06):
could think of a munitions company. They have a test
facility where it's concrete walls, so nothing he blows up,
but it's candy. Yeah, but you got to test all
the products. You've got to make sure that it's not toxic.
You want to make sure that like the sugar contents testing.
I imagine they probably have it's like, you know, it's
like it's any testing anything they've got these laboratories that
are filled with kids that are like in cages, this

(08:28):
stuff reping this stuff like you know, massive quantities NonStop,
you know, for you, yet what it does to them,
I thought it was like Willy Wonka's test facility. Yeah,
that's probably it. Yeah, moving on. So anyway, so after that,
what happened on May tenth, so, like you know, a
little less than a month later, Glico began receiving letters

(08:50):
from the Monster with twenty one Faces. And you know,
because it's Japanese and it's can it's a monster with
one faces is sometimes translated as the missed three Man
with twenty one faces or the Phantom with twenty one
faces in that name. They didn't just make that up.
Isn't it from a comic or some series. It's from

(09:11):
a non or from a fiction novel, um. But I
think it's like the way I would compare it is
that like if somebody in America had picked a villain
from a Stephen King novel and decided to take that.
It wasn't like some huge Japanese mythology that everybody would
be like saying, and this letter is signed by the
Tommy Knockers. Yeah, I don't know who. The Tommy Knockers are. Pokemon, Yeah,

(09:34):
something like that. Tommy Knockers are a Stephen King novel
about a group of really creepy aliens. See, apparently that
works out great. They're green, they're mean, they have a spaceship.
Let's keep going. Read that one. You totally read that one.
We've talked about the Tommy Knockers because you know what. Okay,

(09:55):
we're way off topic. Keep going, please have it. So
in the in the letter, the monster with twenty one
faces claimed to have laced certain Glicko products with potassium cyanide.
That's not it's not great. I just like for the
general knowledge of everybody listening, in case you don't know, cyanide.
Both potassium and sodium cyanide essentially render your body unable

(10:21):
to use the oxygen in your blood. It kills you.
It kills you pretty quickly. You suffocate quite quickly. Yeah,
and it's tasteless and odorless and dissolves just like sugar does.
Uh So, Glicko, being at least a mildly decent company,
pull literally all of their product off of the shelves. Um.
This resulted in a twenty one million dollar or yen

(10:44):
I can't, I don't know, really lost and a layoff
of about a hundred four and fifty workers, right because
they lost so much money, they couldn't afford to pay
their people to keep working. And they were all part
time people. I think, yeah, they were all part time people.
I don't know. I mean, you know, it does best
five part time people. I don't think that makes it
any less bad. They probably got hired back. I mean, essentially,

(11:06):
you know, when you pull your products off the shelves,
you're not gonna immediately restocked them. Probably you're gonna you're
gonna suspend production for a little bit un till you
figure out what's going on. And so they probably got
hired back. Maybe UM the Monster with twenty one faces
at about the same time wrote a letter UM threatening
to say that they had more of that tampered product.

(11:26):
They had purchased a bunch or however, procured a bunch
of the tampered with products, and that they were going
to place it back on the shelves once Glicko restocked
the shelves. They also sent a letter to the media.
The letters to the media were handwritten and in a
very distinct Osaka dialect, which was different than all of

(11:48):
the letters that Glicko had been receiving. They were all
typewritten on a typewriter. Here's some of the examples of
what we're on the latters. Yeah, they're they're really kind,
they're really beau of full dear dumb police officers. Don't
tell a lie. All crimes begin with a lie, as
we say in Japan. Don't you know that? Other letters
were written two police stations that kind of related similar messages. Uh,

(12:13):
This one that is often quoted says, why don't you
keep it to yourself? You seem to be at a loss,
so why not let us help you. We'll give you
a clue. We entered the factory by the front gate.
The typewriter we used was a pan writer. The plastic
container we used was a piece of street garbage, monster
with twenty one faces, basically taunting. Oh yeah, here's here's

(12:34):
here's how we did part of it. Don't worry about
finding that out now, try and find us. So and
it might have been more than taunting. You might have
you know, it could be somebody who actually is having
a little fun with them because they're so close to them.
Actually working for the company whatever. They're basically telling the truth,
not just taunting them, but actually giving them, giving them

(12:54):
big old clues. Yeah, that turns out the monster eventually
got bored with their extortion of Clicko because they weren't
getting anything. And so that was kind of where I
was going to go. But keep keep going. But so
on June of the same year, so like within the
span of just a couple of months, um, they released
a media statement that said we forgive Glico exclamation point

(13:18):
and turned their attentions elsewhere. And as a side note,
the deeper we at this point really, I mean we've
read a couple of the letters getting the sense of
the monster with twenty one faces. The deeper we get
into this story, the less believable it becomes. You know.
It was kind of like discussing the story with some
people and they were like, Wow, the monster with faces

(13:40):
sounds like it's a five year old. Like some of
the letters that are written to the police, especially as
we continue on, sound like it's like a five year
old or you know, like a teenager that's like, oh,
I see this in the movies. That will be perfect. Yeah. Well,
and and and the thing is is they say we
forgive Glico. That to me indicates that Glicko got some

(14:02):
letters that they didn't spill the beans on and paid
out saying stop screwing with us, stop messing with us,
and we'll pay you money as possible. I actually I
suspect that Glicko Iseka, the president of the company, was
probably behind this whole thing so used to it's just kidnapping,
and he arranged for all the notes everything, because this

(14:26):
gave him a great way after you know, after you
got the forgiveness letter, then he can go harass all
his competitors and cost them huge amounts of money and
also extort lots of lots of money from them fair.
So I also want to go ahead and mention another
thing that happened quickly before we move on. A surveillance
video caught a man wearing a Giants baseball cap. Giants

(14:47):
the baseball team, not a Giant baseball cap. No Giants
is in the baseball team from America. He was wearing that,
and they caught him placing Glico candies onto shelves of
a supermarket. And the I said that letter had threatened
to do call him. The video tape man. Right, do again,
it's this whole like, the whole story just sounds like

(15:09):
a bad anime or something. Right, It's like, oh, you know,
as we go into this more right. The suspects are
the video tape man, the Fox side man, Yugio. I
saw the video tape man down the street. Let's go
get him. It does a little bit sound that way,
the video the video tape man. The first thing I
thought of was I thought about those times when you
go to the store and you pick up something. It's like, oh,

(15:31):
I guess I'll indulge myself, you bag of candy or whatever,
and then the other on you think maybe not, you
go back and you put it back on the shelf.
Could have been well, it was my understanding that he
was putting like a fair amount back on. It wasn't
like just a bag or two that it like he
was pulling it out of his pocket, not out of
his basket. I didn't see the video. I haven't seen

(15:52):
the video. The video we only see stills. Yeah, and
I guess the footage was released at one point. But again,
this is you know, the eighties, so it's not like
we have the internet to like, yeah, yeah, so in
October of the same year, UM the media of Osaka

(16:16):
received a letter addressed to the moms of the nation,
which was of course from the Monster with twenty one faces.
This time it claimed to have laced twenty packages of
Oh my gosh, I've forgotten how Rinaga chocolates with sodium
cyanide instead of you know, they do the same thing. Okay,

(16:38):
they're just as bad. They're both, they're both awful. After
receiving this letter, the police search stores in cities of Tokyo. Yeah,
in that kind of in the Osaka, a western Japan
area basically well, and you know Japan is like five
or six different islands, but right on the yeah, anyway, um,

(17:00):
and they found over a dozen of lethal packages of
cocoa balls and angel pies before anyone was poison and
these packages had actually been like relabeled like stickers Edmond
put on them to say like danger contains toxins or
something similar, which is really you're not trying to hide
what you're doing. At that point, if we think about

(17:23):
things that people have done, remember was it the the
aspirin scare Thailand all scared they were saying they they
they injected it into the mix, and so you couldn't
tell which ones. But this is this is very open
and in your face, whereas the Thailand all scare was

(17:43):
very insidious because you did not know. Yeah. Actually actually
the time all thing was just somebody trying to murder
his wife. He went back and put some on the
shelves in the store, just right. I know. But I'm
just saying, it's like, you can't yeah, you can't tell.
I know, It's like and I think, you know, if
this would continue, they might have eventually started putting them
on the shelves without putting labels on them. Well, and

(18:04):
that was my impression of like the Pockey for instance,
was that it had been part of the mix. They didn't,
you know, say, oh we tampered with twenty of these boxes.
It was just kind of like a bunch of your
stuff is bad. Uh. So they actually continued to search
for them, and more tampered confections were found in February
of nine, five the year later, which meant that they

(18:26):
found twenty one um of these products about a four
or five month period, which again twenty one monster with
one face. Whatever, It's fine, No, I see the correlation.
There's very sneaky somehow, and it's it's really not important
how because why would it be important. How a deal

(18:49):
was made with a monster with twenty one faces with
a certain other confectionery producer, and basically the monster with
faces would stopped grassing them for five million yen and
the arrangement, I'm sorry, fifty million, adding zeros all over
the place. It's fine. That's why the show is doing

(19:10):
so well. It's I keep adding zeros to our numbers.
It's fine. So the arrangement was made that an employee
of this company would toss the ransom money, like in
a briefcase or whatever, huge bag that would contain fifty
million in Actually don't know how much that would weigh
or how big it would be. Yeah, you'd have to

(19:31):
put it in yen notes. Yeah, well the end notes
kind of coming big denominating. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess
it was like a suitcase or something. So he would
throw it onto a local train heading towards Kyoto. When
a white flag was displayed from a certain location, it's

(19:54):
it's again. It sounds kind of like a teenager being like,
oh I see this in the movies. Yeah, So an investigator,
a police investigator that was disguised as an employee of
this company, was following the drop instructions instead of actually
sending an actual employee. What makes sense again, it does?
It does sound just like it's a movie, but fine, whatever.

(20:14):
And he was following the instructions and he spotted a
suspicious man who he said was observing him when he
was writing the train to the drop spot. The man
was described as a large, well bit, well built man
wearing sunglasses, with his hair cut short and permed, and
quote eyes like those of a fox unquote. I was

(20:38):
able to see his eyes. I think I was wearing sunglass. Listen,
the how is not important with so much of this story,
the how was just not important. Sunglasses, right exactly. I mean,
you know it comes back to a little bit like
earlier right where we say, well a deal was struck,
but like nobody had an address for the monster with

(21:02):
you know, it's not like they could be like corresponding
via letters. And at this point, you know it's you
couldn't do encrypted email, so it wasn't like an anonymous
email address or like an anonymous phone number, I assume. Anyways,
as I said, the how is not important, Okay, so
this is the fox Side Man. He's it's the videotaped
man and the fox side Man or the two people

(21:23):
who are kind of referred to as suspects. Yeah, these
are are two main characters we know. Okay, now the
fox side Man on the train too, you know, isn't
it true that he um, he was sitting there staring
at this cop the whole way, which is, by the way,
not good trade craft. And then and then they get
to Kyoto I think, then they both get off at
the station, and then the the policeman eventually gets on

(21:47):
the train going back to Osaka or wherever they were from,
and this guy hits on the train with him. I mean,
why at that point didn't the policeman arrest him. Well,
that he was still undercover, I guess. But there was
another investigator he had somehow communicated with the rest of
his team and he said, Hey, there's this dude who's
the Fox Sided Man, and he's following me. So other

(22:07):
investigators were assigned to follow the fox Side Man, and
he evaded them because of course he did. Yeah, it's
it's this weird skullduggery. Oh, there's a guy who is
wearing sunglasses and staring at me. I've been on the
train and I've been looking at somebody. Everybody is that
guy staring at me? And then half an hour later

(22:30):
I realized that guy is actually asleep. He's just sitting there,
spacing out, not paying attention. And then goes, oh man,
I missed my stop. I gotta go back. I gotta
go back to stop. Oh man. Yeah, so this is
simplifying the heck out of this. But no, I mean
it's it's that's fair. Um, so police actually got so

(22:52):
they lost him that first time, right, but they got
a second chance at the fox side man November of
eighty five, UM investigators were on their way to make
a drop of more ransom money. Again, the how is
just not important? Um when they saw the fox eyed
man wearing a golf cap and dark glasses, always a

(23:14):
dark glass. I'm not totally sure what it is. Isn't
that like what Tiger Woods wears. That's a base that's
a baseball golf cap, like one of those sports caps,
like that's got the beret with a little bill. Yeah, yeah,
that's basically cap is an Irish golf course. In my mind,
that's true too, Okay, um. So there was a cash

(23:36):
delivery van that the investigators were tailing that continues to
head towards the drop point where they were they were
meant to drop the money inside a cam under a
piece of cloth. So again, like the spatial reasoning of
this is not super clear in my mind, but find whatever.

(23:56):
When the delivery van reached the drop point, there was
a white cloth sitting on the ground, but no can
as an As a result, the investigative team was, of
course in order to withdraw, they boarded the whole thing. Yeah,
they did, and they thought, oh, well, it's clearly just
the fox side man trying to evaluate the police response
watching he was watching us. Well. Actually, as it turns out,

(24:19):
like an hour before this botch drop, a local patrol
car had spotted a station wagon that had its engine
running and its headlights off and it was sitting like
fifty meters away from a white cloth um that was
suspended from a fence. So, being a responsible officer of
the law, office, officer of the law, officer of the law,

(24:42):
he drove up to the station wagon and show, like,
you know, flash flashlight in in there. Uh, And he
revealed a quote, thin cheeked man in his forties, wearing
a golf cap over his eyes and more telling, a
wireless receiver with headphones. Yeah, I guess so. So Prized
by the policeman, the driver sped off, with the police

(25:03):
car following in pursuit until the station wagon lost him.
I can I have never seen a high speed chase
with the station only in Japan. Grandpa and his station
wagon outran the police. Yeah, the patty wagon, right, you
would like to do in the movies. Now, you just
have to have accomplices and other cars who rolled away.

(25:23):
And so the station wagon, it turns out, was later
found abandoned and it was discovered that it had been
stolen earlier in that night. UM. Inside the car was
a radio transceiver UM that had apparently been eavesdropping on
radio communications between police officers from six different prefectures, including Osaka, Kyoto,

(25:45):
and Kobe, which were the prefectures where the drop point.
And to be clear, a prefecture not everybody knows that
had its The prefect is basically kind of a county.
It's an easy way to think of it. Exactly, so
a lot why would they leave their transceiver in the car? Well,
I mean you're running right, I mean you go quickly. Yeah,

(26:05):
I mean that's it's you know, you're you're leaving everything behind,
So I just gotta get out of here. But he
shook his tail. Yeah, fox sided man got away again.
Damn once again, once again a rascal. I cannot I
cannot emphasize enough. How like improbable And we're about to
get a little more improbable. Yeah. So in August of

(26:30):
the police superintendent of she goat prefectures that how you
would say that? Yeah? And the only name he was
given was Yamamoto um And he committed suicide by setting
himself on fire, not the way I would do it,
not the way I would know. No, that's that's a
bad way to go. Yeah, and it was speculated. I'm
pretty sure it was speculation. I don't think he like

(26:51):
left a note or like told anybody. My my impression
is that it was speculated that it was because he
was unable to solve the mystery of who the monster
with one faces was. It's kind of like taking your
job a little too seriously. That's but that's actually that's
actually very um that's very indicative of Japanese culture. Everything

(27:12):
is personal. It is my fault that I can't solve this,
and in a way, in Japanese culture, it's your fault
that some of these things happened, Like you take on
a certain level of responsibility and guilt for lack of
a better term for why these things are going on.
That's that's a bit of the way their culture works.

(27:34):
So I can see it. I don't understand it, but
I know that that's how some of that works. Yeah. So,
just a couple of days after Yamamoto's suicide, the monster
with twenty one faces sent what we would end up
being the final message to the media. They sent it
to the media, and I'm gonna read it, and I
super apologize if I end up sounding like a bad

(27:55):
anime character. All right, sailor mean, let's I'll read it.
Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture police died. How stupid of him.
We've got no friends or secret hidings in Shiga. It's
Yoshito or Shagita. Yeah, it's Yoshina or Shikita who should
have died. What have they been doing for as long

(28:19):
as one year and five months. Don't let bad guys
like us get away with it. There are many more
fools who want to copy us. No career. Yamamoto died
like a man, so we decided to give our condolences.
We decided to forget about torturing food making companies. If
anyone blackmails any of the food making companies, it's not us,
but somebody copying us. We are bad guys. That means

(28:40):
that we've got more to do other than bullying companies.
It's fun to lead a bad man's life. Monster. What's
twenty one faces? Have you guys watched ax Cop? Ever?
That just sounds like ax copy and co reference. Ax
cop is written by a five year old you? Yeah,

(29:01):
I've heard about five and that was that? Is that
an animated thing? Or is Yeah, it's kind of a
folk comics series, like it's not a comic strip though,
or it's like a comic book, or it's it's a
it's not on the internet only I believe that it's
it's totally bogus. It's totally I remember, I remember we
looked at we looked at some of the some of
the stuff, and it's like this, this guy's kid is

(29:21):
like his little brother. Yeah, that's hilarious, so ax cop.
But that's exactly what that sounds like to me. It's
like a five year old writing a letter from bad guys. Right, yeah,
it does, you know, and I know that we're we're
done with the story at this point, right pretty much?
I mean, that's that's pretty much it. Yeah, it's pretty much. Okay.

(29:42):
So here's here's my one thing about the story that
really bothers me is I've done some reading on the
Japanese police and their justice system, and I'm not and
the stories that I've read focus on Tokyo, But I mean,
this is kind of deal with the entire system as
a whole. They always had, up until about the turn

(30:06):
of this century, they had an amazing record for solving crimes.
Do you know why they had an amazing record for
solving crimes? Because they cherry picked what they were going
to solve. In other words, if you came up and said,
oh my god, my brother disappeared, Oh, well, your brother

(30:29):
is probably a drug user, so we don't care. And
then my brother was found dead in an alley two
days later, Well, your brother was obviously a drug user,
so we don't have to investigate that he overdosed. It's
his fault. Like they have this weird mentality of if
it's not an obvious answer, then we're not going to

(30:50):
investigate it. Therefore, our numbers look really good. They also
have this weird thing where they will only take on
cases where they think they can get the culprit, and
their entire judicial system in terms of prosecution at that
time hinges upon a confession. So if I get somebody

(31:11):
in the box, as they would say, so I get
him in the room to confess to to interrogate them.
They will interrogate somebody until they finally confess, and if
somebody doesn't confess, they don't get it. There's been cases
where people are like, I'm not going to confess to
this crime. I didn't do the crime, and they don't
understand it because it's sort of that cultural thing like

(31:31):
you're actually partially responsible even if you're not involved. So
your brother, let's say, is drug user, Well that's actually
kind of your fault, so you should kind of take
some culpability for that. So they have this weird cultural
bias where they will only go after certain things. And

(31:52):
because of that, I'm not going to say that they're inept,
but they're very slow footed and they're not quick on
the draw. They're not creative, and how they'll look at problems.
So I know that what they probably did, if this
is in my mind, like let's say, uh, Glico, that's
the first one, right, is a Kaiah. They probably looked

(32:15):
at him and they put him in the box and
they said, Okay, what did you do? What did you do?
That your fault that you got abducted and why did
you what did you do wrong? And you should take
some responsibility. And now they run this weird circular logic
process and they I mean, this is very condensed. This

(32:37):
is a very condensed issue with their their investigative process,
but they do some really weird things and they cannot
think outside of an extremely small box, which is what
I have a lot of problems with a case that
took a year and a half and they had lead none,

(33:00):
I mean other than finding blatantly labeled candies on a
shelf and a videotape and the supposed fox eyed man.
There wasn't anything they found because they didn't theydn't they
didn't cast a net that we know of. So actually
that's a very interesting thing that you would say, Um,
there actually are a couple theories from people around you know, again,

(33:23):
they're maybe not like the most substantiated theories, but they
are very interesting. Um oh yeah, no, I I like
the theories. But I just I want to put that
out to people that I think that maybe they didn't
really pursue this as a solid case because they didn't
want to. They pursued it because they had to. It's

(33:44):
got a lot of publicity. Yeah, so it's not an
easy to solve case. So crap work on Monday. They
didn't have anything to go on, right, And I mean truly,
like the monster with one one faces for like how
horrible they were. They knew how to work the police system.
They knew that the police weren't going to investigated if
they weren't sending things to the media, if they weren't
doing something super public. And that's yeah, I think that's

(34:07):
a good point, is that they wouldn't do anything that
they knew they couldn't work around. I mean, obviously they
were playing for fools. I mean, look at the typewriter
I use, and they were and you know, they like,
look at how dumb you are, Like, oh, we're bad men.
Don't let us get away with it. Ha ha ha. Yeah, absolutely,

(34:27):
but they're so bad, So like here's a quotement. I know,
we decided to forget about torturing food making companies. Um,
we are bad guys. Yeah, Why I decided to forget
about torturing food making companies? They get paid off, every
single one of them. So actually I think they did.
I think. So there's a couple theories here. All right,
well let's let's my my, my tirade is done. Yeah,

(34:49):
there aren't. They're on a whole lot of them. One
of them is do you know do you guys know um?
Um yeah, Srikyo? Yeah, do you know? I know who
they are? Yes, yes, So I can't pronounce it, but
I knew who they are. Yeah. A cult, really truly
a cult that carried out what I think has been

(35:13):
dubbed the most horrific attack in Japan since the World
War two world was dropped bomb, Yeah, basically, and it
was Saren gas attacks in the chimneys subway freaking terrible.
It's terrible. So Saren essentially kills you within one to
five minutes of you. Yeah, it just it just paralyzes

(35:37):
your lungs. Yeah. Yeah, So what happened was it was
these kind of like religious nuts who were part of
this cult defended. Yeah, they were fanatics, and they tried
to do this attack. It ended up being kind of botched,
which was good. I ended up being much better than

(35:57):
it could have been. I think it only killed it
only killed like twin people, I think, and it could
have been a much It seriously injured it like temporarily
blinded a hundred people or something like that, you know,
and like many, many, many many people. Yeah. So they
just like put buckets of this stuff next to subways
as they were going by. You know. They could have
been really really terrifying and gotten on subway cars and

(36:20):
goodness stuff up and they would have killed thousands of
people probably. That was so. Actually, it turns out that
this cult was founded in four which is the same
year that the Monster with twenty one Faces attack started happening.
The cult is Shinko, right, Okay, And that's a whole

(36:41):
different If you're interested in that, google it. It's a
story in and of itself. Yeah, there's a lot there,
but there is that theory circulating around. One of the
other theories is that the Fox Side Man was actually
a famed yakuza member named Manibu me me as Hockey.
His alibis apparently checked out. It doesn't ever say what

(37:03):
his albis were. Um, and I'm not sure that the
police in that time period wouldn't necessarily like super pressure
a member of the yakuza. Well and and again, do
you remember my complaint about the Japanese police system is
that the stories that i've i've dealt, I've read in
that have been deep investigative stories is that I say, no,

(37:27):
I was on holiday at this place, and they go, oh, okay,
thank you very much, and they never double check. They
never double checked people's alibis, just oh, no, I said
I was here. Oh, well, of course you wouldn't lie
to the police. Why would you lie to the police. Yeah. So, actually, um,
I think the yu Kusa theory is it's pretty popular,

(37:48):
and I kind of like it is kind of one
of their specialty. It is one of their specialties. It
could have been just like a small fringe group. And
as it turns out, the attack stopped right when there
was this huge mob or in Japan in like the
late kind of time period, there was this huge mob
war that broke out. So you know, ostensibly, if somebody

(38:11):
were doing a side project of hey, we're gonna go
attack all of these companies just for fun. You know.
It kind of reads that whole like we're bad men,
ha ha ha ha taunting part of the yuck, who's
a mob? That that person could have been killed or
it could have, you know, just not been feasible to
spend the time to do this side project of attacking

(38:32):
the confectionery producer companies or whatever. So I kind of
like that theory. I think it's quite interesting. Well, and
that that actually lends to I don't remember. I was
listening to some story recently that was dealing with some
of these guys in Japan in kind of that time
frame who were trying to be basically bad bikers, and

(38:56):
they were like, we're bad biker gang. Yeah, we're going
to do all this stuff. Except it was kind of
this game of one upmanship. How close could I get
to the line before I walked away? Before I actually
crossed that line, And suddenly consequences go on and I
can't I can't pull back from it, you know, I'm

(39:16):
I'm trying to be a bad guy, and I get
to this point and then oh this is getting a
little too real. We put these we put these poisons
out and they found him and it's getting a little
too creepy. Okay, we're gonna actually back off because I
don't actually want to be an outlaw. It might be that, Yeah,
when the somebody finally died, the policeman have committed suicide,

(39:39):
that might have Yeah, this game is not what it
was before. It's no longer fun. Now. Let me ask
you this. The so they threatened in the original the
original extortion attempt was with Glicko, and they threatened to
put sanide laced bags of candy on the supermarket shells.
And they pulled all those and they want to them

(40:00):
they find any that have been laced with poison, not
as far as I know, So the only one that
got laced with poison was the second, the second as
far as I know, and that and that could be
false information. Um, but they they said, yep, there's stuff
on the shelves. So Clicko pulled all that stuff. And
then once they put all their stuff, all their product

(40:20):
back on the shelves after they had gone through it
or whatever, the threat came in, Oh yeah, you're putting
that back on the shelves. Great, because we actually have
a bunch of that stuff that's been tampered with, that
we're just going to stick on the shelves too. But
they never but as far as that they found tampered,
that's as far as I know, but it's it was
after they forgave glicko then then that was when they

(40:42):
found the stuff that's been laced with sodium cyanide, which
naga Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah. So, I mean some
of their notes, let's see, one of these ones seem
to be the loss. So why not let us help you.
We'll give you a clue. We ended the factory by
the front gate. Does that mean they are they basically saying, hey,
we worked the company, Yeah, we worked there. Maybe they

(41:03):
were a delivery guy or I'm a security guard. Yeah,
I mean it's hard to tell, right, A million people
to go in and out of the front gate of
a factory every day, So that's kind of um. The
only other little tidbit that I found kind of interesting
was that, you know, the statue of limitations on the
kidnapping and the poisoning ran out in two thousands. Actually,

(41:24):
shortly after that, the Japanese media started saying, oh it
was North Korea. I mean, yeah, Korea well, I mean
to be fair, like North Korea is a place that
like when when found to be tunneling under border with
South Korea, they just went in and painted all the

(41:45):
walls of their tunnels black and they were like, no,
it was Cole. We're looking for Cole. Look see all
that black stuff. It's yeah. I mean so I'm not
going to say that this because you don't know what
coal is, but we know Cole's black stuff on the wall. Yeah,
So I'm not going to say like for that this
would be involved North Koreans. But I'm also not going

(42:07):
to say yeah, I was definitely North Korea, because that
just seems silly and like there they would have really
nothing to gain from it. What they gain money, I
mean potentially, But if you're going to launch some kind
of espionage, whether it be corporate or international, I mean

(42:28):
that that just opens the gates right there for what
for anybody? It could have been US, It could have
been the US government that was screwing with him. It
could have been you know, the Soviets that were messing
with me. It could have been you know, um an
Australian who're trying to make it in Yeah. Well yeah,

(42:49):
I think competitors. That might be one thing. But I
mean if you're saying that in terms of countries, I mean,
but North Korea has North Korea is now it doesn't.
I mean North Korea is there is unique there as
actially looney and gangster like. They are the kinds of
guys who would do this. Australia would never do That's
the government Australia, you know, it's but this is almost
would China not do this? China doesn't need to do this.

(43:11):
Korea is short on cash. Everybody short on cash. Why
wouldn't Why wouldn't any other Why wouldn't the British do this?
If they're trying to get in there to sell products
there for or they have some loony sanction they're they're
they're pushing for some reason. I mean, I'm just saying,
if we're going to open up the fold to that,

(43:32):
why folks just on Korea because it could be anybody.
Because this is so goofy. This sounds like a black
Ops operation on mushrooms. Well no, I mean essentially, the
reason I don't think it's Korea, it's like Korea is
they're uniquely gangstruish and irresponsible. What Korea. What North Korea
would have done if they'd been behind this is they

(43:53):
wouldn't have set any nose. They would have poisoned candy,
killed a bunch of kids, and then after that was
all over the news, and then they would have like
the said, hey it's us North Korea. We did it,
and if you don't want to happen again, you're just
gonna send a suitcase it's full of golden cash, because
that's essentially what they do. Now. I just love that
whole like the idea of like, hey it's us North Korea. Yeah,

(44:16):
we kill a bunch of kids. Yeah that's right. Yeah,
that's the kind of stuff that those guys are. Psycho
the industrious leaders said to do this or whatever they
call him, We're we're way off track here being super
offensive at the time. Well, no, it's not super offensive.
But I'm just saying it's not super offensive because they
don't get podcast. If if we're going to open up
the door to espionage of any cases, this is just blackmail,

(44:39):
well corporate apionage, you're a blackmail, then then that opens
the door to anybody because nobody stood out as a suspect,
which means everybody could be here. I think we generally
assume that like corporations, as corrupt as they are, are
not psychling as can be corporation, Yeah, but are not

(45:00):
psycho enough to either actually poison a bunch of candy
or even like say candy. I mean, you know, just
like the tub of hydrochloric acid itself speaks of something
actually psycho like that's a pretty psychic you. Um, so
I there aren't good answers, But so to this day,

(45:21):
nobody knows who did it. The monsters is yeah, the
cryptic notes, you know, the monster with faces of Matt Damon. Yeah,
or the phantoms. Sorry, that's a that's a Wilford reference. Yeah, okay,
So you guys have a favorite theory on this one,

(45:43):
and there are really theories. Yeah, I think that Joe
and I have both argued, you know, some of the
basic theories. I don't know. I mean, I don't think
that it's the guys who did the sarin gas. That
doesn't seem like they're uh their can of worms, because
they seemed pretty fanatical. Yeah, they probably would have just

(46:04):
poisoned a bunch of kids. It was you know, would
have been eleven years before, right, it would have been
the very so that was there. Well, but you would
think that groups and people who do that kind of
behavior they have a cyclical build up, So I do
one small thing to another bigger thing, to another bigger thing.
But you would think that we would heard of all
these things, whereas that group the sarin gas was just

(46:28):
like they just dropped that bomb, no pun intended. They
didn't work up to it, and you would think that
in that eleven year period between the two they would
have done something else. Yeah, I don't think it was.
There's no reason, No, I don't. I don't know who
did it, but well, yeah, I think that I would
it be interesting to find out is how many other

(46:49):
companies got blackmailed by this whole But I think it
was probably I think, as far as I can tell,
it was three or four. Yeah, but I mean, I mean, seriously,
it could have been a whole lot more, could be
more then lots loss more as Yeah, so yeah, well
we'll never know. I don't think it was a Nork's
but you know, I wouldn't put it past him. You
know that they're disgusting little gangsters. Yeah, sure, Joe loves

(47:11):
North Korea. Yeah, so I guess, but yeah, I'm gonna
go with let me think, let me think. Yeah, yeah,
the Fox side Man. Yeah, there you go it I
say it was the videotape man. Okay, yeah, can you
how do you know they're not the same person your
anime voices? I don't. I don't have an anime voice.

(47:32):
It was the Fox side Man. It was clearly the
Fox side Man. Okay, that was good. Can we stop
now before we just make bigger fools of ourselves? So
here Yeah. Yeah, so we didn't solve this one. We
were still suspicious about North Korea. Joe is at least. Yeah.

(47:55):
So all of the links for this um are of
course on our website, which you may be listening to
us on. Uh. That website is as always thinking sideways
podcast dot com. You may also be listening to us
on iTunes. I don't know. I'm not the boss of
tracking these sort of things. We have that. You know,

(48:16):
we have people for that. Uh. So if you are
listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a comment
and a reading. We like hearing from you. Guys. UM
find us on Facebook. We have the group and the
fan page, so you can like us and friend us.
Tell us lots of stuff. We're very friendly. We're pretty
good at sharing stuff. I forgot to say, you can

(48:37):
always stream us on Stitcher. If it's Thursday and you
realize the show came out and you didn't download us,
just stream us right from Stitcher. Also, you can send
us an email if you you know, are the Monster,
what's one one faces? Or know who that person is
or those people I don't know, or if you just
have a question. We've been getting lots of awesome, interesting
questions discussions. Yeah. I had a very interesting conversation with

(49:02):
a listener recently about aliens. If they exist, where are they?
Why haven't we found them? It doesn't matter anyways. So
that email address is as always, thinking Sideways podcast at
gmail dot com. So that's it. Um, I guess we're
gonna monster mash on addie. So if you're you accused

(49:24):
that police, don't kill us, um, and if you're the Monster,
of course we want to hear from you. Yeah, that's
about it. I really want some puckey now, Yeah, it's good. Huh.
Just we just gotta hope that we don't get any
of the potassium cyanide stuff. No, actually chalky and gross,
but let's have some anyway. Yeah I do want some candy.
Yeah Okay, bye, okay to everybody.