44 Days Of Hell – The Murder Of Junko Furuta
TOKYO, JAPAN → Born November 22nd, 1972, Junko Furuta had just celebrated her 17th birthday three days prior. The Japanese teenager and Junior (grade 11) attended Yashio-Minami High School in Saitama Prefecture in Misato.
On November 25th, 1988, Junko left School and was walking home (although some reports say she was walking to her part-time after school job.) She never made it home.
She was kidnapped by a group of young men, including a 17-year-old who was identified as ‘Jō’ and would be later given the surname Kamisaku. They kept her captive in the house owned by the parents of Kamisaku, in the Ayase district of Adachi, Tokyo.
That was the beginning of her 44 days of torture. She didn’t know her abductors, they had no grudge against her and there was nothing specific that they were after. They attacked her because they could, embarking on weeks of atrocities because they could, and because they wanted to.
To forestall a manhunt, the kidnappers coerced Furuta into calling her mother and telling her that she had run away from home, but was with “a friend” and was not in danger. He also browbeat her into posing as one of the boys’ girlfriends when the parents of the house where she was held were around, but when it became clear that the parents didn’t care either way, he dropped this pretext.
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DAY 1: November 22, 1988: Kidnapped
-Kept captive in house, and posed as one of boy’s girlfriend
-Raped (over 400 times in total)
-Forced to call her parents and tell them she had run away
-Starved and malnutrition
-Fed cockroaches to eat and urine to drink
-Forced to masturbate
-Forced to strip in front of others
-Burned with cigarette lighters and set off fireworks in her ears, mouth, vagina
-Foreign objects inserted into her vagina/anus including a still lit light-bulb
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DAY 11: December 1, 1988: Severely beat up countless times
-Face held against concrete ground and jumped on
-Hands tied to ceiling and body used as a punching bag until her damaged internal organs made blood run from her mouth
-Nose filled with so much blood that she can only breath through her mouth
-Dumbbells dropped onto her stomach
-Vomited when tried to drink water (her stomach couldn’t accept it)
-Tried to escape and punished by cigarette burning on arms
-Flammable liquid poured on her feet and legs, then lit on fire
-Bottle inserted into her anus, causing injury
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DAY 20: December10, 1988: Unable to walk properly due to severe leg burns
-Beat with bamboo sticks
-Fireworks inserted into anus and lit
-Hands smashed by weights and fingernails kracked
-Beaten with golf club
-Cigarettes inserted into vagina and forced to drink her own urine as they laughed.
-Beaten with iron rods repeatedly
-Winter; forced outside to sleep in balcony
-Skewers of grilled chicken inserted into her vagina and anus, causing bleeding.
-And yet she’d almost escaped. One time she reached the telephone—but one of the boys caught her just in time and ended the call for help. They punished her by taunting her with a candle flame and finally dousing her legs in lighter fluid and set her on fire, as punishment for trying to run away. She went into convulsions; the boys would later say that they thought she was faking the seizure. They set her on fire again, then put it out. She survived this round.
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DAY 30: Hot wax dripped onto face
-Eyelids burned by cigarette lighter
-Stabbed with sewing needles in chest area
-Left nipple cut and destroyed with pliers
-Hot light bulb inserted into her vagina
-Heavy bleeding from vagina due to scissors insertion
-Unable to urinate properly
-Injuries were so severe that it took over an hour for her to crawl downstairs and use the bathroom
-Eardrums severely damaged
-Extreme reduced brain size
.
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DAY 40: Begged her tortures to “kill her and get it over with”
January 1, 1989: Junko greets the New Years Day alone
-Body mutilated
-Unable to move from the ground
.
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DAY 44: January 4, 1989: The four boys beat her mutilated body with an iron barbell, using a loss at the game of Mah-jongg as a pretext. She is profusely bleeding from her mouth and nose. -------They put a candle’s flame to her face and eyes.
-Then, lighter fluid was poured onto her legs, arms, face and -stomach, and then lit on fire. This final torture lasted for a time of two hours. Junko Furuta died later that day, in pain and alone. -Nothing could compare 44 days of suffering she had to go through.
Less than 24-hours later, on January 5th, 1988, the killers hid Junko’s body in a 55-gallon drum, then filled it with concrete; they disposed the drum in a tract of reclaimed land in Kōtō,Tokyo.
When her mother heard the news and details of what happened to her daughter, she passed-out. She had to undergo a psychiatric outpatient treatment.
According to their statements at their trial, the four of them raped her, beat her, introduced foreign objects including an iron rod into her vagina, made her drink her own urine and was fed cockroaches, inserted fireworks into her anus, and set them off, forced Furuta to masturbate, cut her nipple with pliers, dropped dumbbells onto her stomach, and burned her with cigarettes and lighters. (One of the burnings was punishment for attempting to call the police.)At one point her injuries were so severe that according to one of the boys it took more than an hour for her to crawl downstairs to use the bathroom. They also related that “possibly a hundred different people” knew that Furuta had been imprisoned there, but it is not clear if this means they visited the house at different times while she was imprisoned there, or themselves either raped or abused her.When the boys refused to let her leave, she begged them on several occasions to “kill (her) and get it over with“.
Three of the boys identities were sealed by the court because of their age, even though they were tried as adults. They pled guilty to a reduced charge of “committing bodily injury that resulted in death”, instead of the original charge of murder. Jo Kamisaku was released in August 1999, and nearly 5 years later he was arrested and served 7 years for assualting a jealous love-rival and according to others who know him and spent time in prison with him, he had been bragging about what he had done to Furuta.
By 2004, Kamisaku, who was already released from prison for Junko’s horrific murder, had allegedly renewed his contacts with the underworld, and was in trouble with the law again.
He was arrested for assaulting a 27-year-old acquaintance, Takatoshi Isono. Upset that a woman in his life might be involved with Isono, Kamisaku tracked the man down, beat him, shoved him in his trunk, drove him from Adachi to his mother’s bar in Misato, Furuta’s hometown, and continued to beat him. During the four-hour beating, Kamisaku allegedly threatened to kill the man, telling him that he’d killed before and knew how to get away with it.
During his trial Kamisaku admitted to the assault, but he denied that he’d referred to any previous murder or had threatened Isono.
Prosecutors wanted Kamisaku to spend another 7 years in prison. They got a conviction and the sentence they wanted.
Kamisaku has since been released again.
Picture; School photo of Junko Furuta November 22nd, 1972 – January 4th, 1989