The Monster With 21 Faces
In 1984, an anonymous group in Japan known as The Monster With 21 Faces tormented police, poisoned candy across the country and kidnapped a man. To this day, their identity and purpose remain one of Japan’s greatest unsolved mysteries.
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CthG4GlJs4W/ (pictures)
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/02/world/the-great-candy-caper-leaves-all-japan-atwitter.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/09/world/poisoned-candy-found-on-japanese-store-shelves.html
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/03/21/Kidnapped-executive-escapes/8748448693200/
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1984/11/05/060990.html?pageNumber=2
https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Page/biztimes19841109-1.1.7
https://www.themonsterwith21faces.com/episode-2-letter-archive-may-10th-1984
https://www.historicmysteries.com/monster-21-faces
http://www.kotan.org/books/toppamono_04.html
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/03/21/Kidnapped-executive-escapes/8748448693200/
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/01/national/crime-legal/man-arrested-cash-handover-spot-ezaki-glico-extortion-attempt-reminiscent-80s-case/
https://www.themonsterwith21faces.com/episode-2-letter-archive-may-10th-1984
In Japan, it feels like you can’t throw a stone without hitting a spirit.
When I visited the country in April, I asked locals for ghost stories, and each time I asked, I would see their eyes light up with this mixture of excitement and terror.
It seemed like spirits, both good and bad, were everywhere. I heard about demonic women that lived under bridges. About old cemeteries that got rerouted only for anything built on the old burial ground to be haunted. I heard about a 1000 year old samurai that haunts a bank in Tokyo. Some of these spirits tried to earn your trust, some set fire to buildings, some of them are monsters that can shape shift.
But one night, in a smokey basement bar that only played old vinyl, I heard a story about a different kind of monster. Over a $5 old fashioned that was, definitely made wrong but was more importantly $5, a kind stranger told me about a 40 year old story that still haunts Japan to this day.
The story I want to tell you remains one of Japan’s greatest unsolved mysteries. It’s referred to as “the monster with 21 faces”, yet there is no face that we can put to this monster. It was a crime that rocked the country yes theres no mug to shot tape on the wall. Just a dark silhouette of the person, or people who shapeshifted like demons to evade police detection as they kidnapped CEOs, poisoned childrens candy, and played cat and mouse with police chiefs. And just like the spirits of Japan that roam freely around the city, this monster may still be out there.
As always, listener discretion is advised
INTRO
Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore
Welcome to our community of people who love to follow their dark curiosity wherever it leads them, and oh man did this story scratch that part of my brain. If you’d like to dive further into the community, you can follow the show on instagram and tik tok at heart starts pounding for smaller bites of horrors, or you can join me on Patreon where you’ll have access to some bonus content for just $3 a month.
I also want to make a correction. In last week’s episode I said that if you fell off the side of the grand canyon, you’d hit the ground at 300 mph. My shoddy memory from high school physics failed me. You’d actually hit the ground at only 150mph. Thank god im not SATs anytime soon.
Ok, I’m going to shut up now because this story is so interesting and I want to dive straight in. Let’s get into it.
The night is March 18th, 1984, and the day is coming to an end for the Ezaki family. The family lived in Hyogo prefecture, a short train ride away from osaka, the second largest city in japan next to Tokyo. A light drizzle falls on the multi million dollar estate owned by Masahisa Ezaki, CEO of the Glico candy company. If you’ve ever heard of Pocky, the slim cookie sticks dipped in chocolate, then you know Glico. They’re famous for creating the candy.
That night, 42 year old Masahisa Ezaki sat soaking in his tub while his wife started putting their children to sleep. What Ezaki didn’t know was right outside his bathroom window, there were two masked assailants scaling the wall of his estate.
Two people had keys to Ezaki’s home. Ezaki himself, and his 70 year old mother who lived in an in law suite behind the house. The assailants swiftly got over a wall and broke into Ezaki’s mother’s bungalow. They tied her up and told her to not make a sound as they grabbed her key to Ezaki’s home. And then, they went to the front door of the family getting ready for bed, steadied their weapons, and let themselves in.
But Ezaki didn’t hear anything. He didn’t hear a sound as they descended upon his wife and 8 year old daughter, tying them up and locking them inside of the bathroom. He didn’t hear as they crept up the stairs towards him, readying their ropes and guns for what was about to happen. He didn’t hear a thing until his bathroom door was thrown open with a loud BANG.
There stood two midsized men wearing white ski masks. They told him to get out of the bath RIGHT NOW and allowed him to go into his room and change into a towel.
But what the assailants didn’t realize, was The home’s alarm system registered that the phone lines to the house had been cut, and alerted police. They pushed a held their guns at Ezaki and told him to hurry, but Ezaki tried to fight back.. He had been handcuffed by the assailants, so in the scuffle he wasn’t able to hold onto his towel. But in the end, he was no match for them. At about 9:30pm, the two attackers hauled the fully nude CEO out of his home as a red car pulled up from down the street. And just like that, they were off into the night.
Police arrived on the scene to find that Ezaki’s wife had gotten free. She actually handn’t even realized her husband had been carried away until she ran upstairs to find him. But, just like the empty bathtub that was the ghost of the struggle, the rest of the house was unfortunately empty of any clues. The police had no leads at this point.
However, a few hours later, another Glico executive gets a phone call, waking him from his slumber. When he picks up the receiver, he hears what sounds like a prerecorded voice being played into the phone. It tells him to go to this one specific phone booth in tokyo. There, he’d find an envelope with more instructions.
And he WENT?! I should at the stranger? By this point, I’m starting to feel that $5 old fashioned. Can you believe it? Maybe it’s just me but I would have locked every door in my house and hid in my closet with a baseball bat. But this man went. At 1:40 in the morning, through the light drizzle of early spring.. And when he arrived, sandwiched in between the phone books was a brown parcel and Inside was a note that read:
Tell anything to the police, I will definitely kill the hostage.
I have friends at the Police and I will know immediately if you try to trace me.
I won’t negotiate. Just listen to what I say.
The note then asked for 1 Billion yen and HOW MANY gold buillons, which is over 19 million dollars in todays US currency. At the time it was the most amount of money ever demanded in a ransom. Almost a cartoonish amount of money
By that point, hundreds of police officers were deployed to start searching for whoever was doing this. It was believed that the car carrying Ezaki was heading east, towards Osaka, the other largest city in japan aside from Tokyo. But by the time they figured that out, it had been hours since Ezaki was pushed into the car.
But that hunch was correct. In Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture. Ezaki was getting pulled from the car and pushed into an isolated warehouse. He was dressed in a large overcoat with a bag over his head, and told that his 8 year old daughter had also been kidnapped and was in another warehouse, even though that wasn’t true. For the next 65 hours, he was tied to the inside of the structure and fed juice and crackers, while the thieves waited for the ransom money.
However, on the third day of his captivity, the CEO started to figure that the weapons the theives were holding, the two guns that they had broken into his house with, were fake. He knew he’d have to test this theory if he was going to escape, so after they came in to feed him and retie his ropes, he wiggled his way out of the bindings, kicked down the warehouse door, and booked it.
He made it to a pay phone to call his wife and tell her he had escaped before any of the three men were able to catch him. No money had ever been delivered for his ransom
Ezaki made it home safely, but the entire country was shaken from the event. Crimes like this were not common at all in Japan. At the time this occurred Japan was an incredibly safe country, often referred to as heaven for cops because there wasn’t much violent crime to respond to. Violent criminals were discouraged from committing crimes because of how high the Japanese police’s solving rate was. 97.1 percent of murders were solved, compared to 73% in america at the same time. And now, people were talking. They thought maybe this was an inside job from Glico or the police, or that the owner of the warehouse had something to do with it.
There was no way to know that though, because the Japanese police didn’t have any leads as to who these men were, which was highly embarrassing. Especially to officer Shoji Yamamato, one of the head police officers assigned to this case. He was obsessed with the physical evidence of the case, rather than the leads being called in. He thought hyper analyzing items like the coat the kidnappers gave Ezaki would turn up something. But all of the physical evidence they could find was either stolen or mass produced. There was no way to trace any of it.
The following month, April, proved to be way worse for the police. A bottle of eye drops filled with Hydrochloric acid and a letter demanding 60 million yen, which was quite the discount from 1billion yen, arrived at Ezaki’s home, and days later two fires were lit at the Glico headquarters. Police arranged to hand off the money to the criminals on April 8th, but when they arrived at the designated time. No one was there. They waited for two hours before leaving. It seemed like if these criminals wanted money, they were not doing a very good job of getting it. Adding salt to the wound, on April 8th, a letter addressing the police was sent to local papers. It read:
To Japanese police fools Are you stupid? There’s so many of you, what on earth are you doing? If you are real pros try catching me. I will give you a hint. It’s not Ezaki’s relatives, its not the Nishinomiya police. Car I used is gray, food was bought at Daiei. If you want a new info, beg for it in the newspaper. After telling you all this you should be able to catch me. If you don’t you are tax thieves. Shall I kidnap the head director of the prefectural police?
https://www.themonsterwith21faces.com/april-8th-1984-letter
This directly called out the police in an embarrassing way, not at all the etiquette in japan at the time. Officer Yamomoto knew they had to shut down the criminals before it got worse. But then, on May 10th, his fears came true.
another letter addressed to the police arrived at local newspapers. But this one came with a serious threat It read:
To the poor policemen
Glico is annoying so I injected 2 with 0.05 grams of hydrogen cyanide in the stores in the area between Nagoya and Okayama. It’s not enough to kill but the target will be hospitalized. After eating Glico let’s go the the hospital. Eat Glico and end up in the grave.
Signed
Monster with 21 faces.
Monster with 21 faces. Also sometimes translated to they Mystery Man with 21 faces, this was a reference to a children's detective story made popular in the 1950’s. The SOMETHING with 20 faces. I think the 2 of what they were referring to got lost in translation, but we can assume they mean glico products. they were saying that they had poisoned Glico candy with Cyanide.
Cyanide is an incredibly deadly poison, famously used in the jonestown massacre where 900 cult members ingested Flavor Aid with Cyanide in it. For reference of how poisonous cyanide is, cult members that put the liquid in their mouths with the intention to spit it out and run, still died from the poison. Just it touchin the inside of their mouth was enough to kill, It’s just that deadly.
Glico stock plummeted the next day, and almost every Glico product was purged from shelves, hurting the company financially. Officer Yamamato started getting the feeling that this was either a disgruntled former employee, or a rival shareholder trying to tank the companies value. But both of those leads turned up no suspects.
And now officer Yamamoto knew they had to act fast. The police had no leads, they didn’t even know if this was one person or multiple people, so he had the tokyo police deploy officers to search 80,000 homes across Japan to search for ANYTHING. They asked residents if they had any information about who was doing this. To many japanese citizens, it felt like the police were outsourcing the investigation to them. No one they interviewed had any information as to who was responsible for the threats, but everyone was very aware of what was going on. They had read about how Yamamoto and other officers spent months chasing leads that turned up nothing, like where the coat Ezaki was given was from, and what kind of typewriter the letters were being written on. Why wasn’t MORE being done, they wondered. With every door Yamamoto went to, he could feel the pressure mounting.
But things still got worse. On June 22nd, 1984, another letter arrived at another CEO’s door. This time, it was addressed to Takashi Haga, the CEO of Marudai food. It read:
Dear Haga,
I hope you know about us.
Your company did so well because of Glico's mishaps. You should give us some of the money you have due to their failures.
Give us 50 million yen with used 10,000 yen bills. Put 10 million yen in each white bag and wait at Ota’s house in Nichiyoshidai.
Have a company’s driver in a white car waiting in front of the house. On Thursday, June 28th at 8pm, I will call Ota’s humber Say "It’s Yamada" when you pick up the phone, I’ll tell you where the letter is.
If you don’t listen to what we say and obey us, you’ll fall into the same situation as Glico.
If you tell the police, we’ll abduct your employees.
We’re stronger than the police, we have hydrochloric acid, potassium cyanide, dynamite, and guns.
It’s super easy to put potassium cyanide in things,
Signed
Monster with 21 faces.
Ota, the man who they were referring to, was the Managing director of Marudai. He would be getting the phone call that would direct him to a letter that had further instructions
Upon receiving this letter, Haga immediately called the Osaka police. To Haga, this was a mounting threat that could destroy his business. He saw how the threat of poisoning hurt Glico. But to the police, this was their chance to catch the criminals. They could be face to face with the monster, posing as regular people. They decided they were going to go undercover to deliver the money and make an arrest in the process
So the night of June 28th, a company driver sat in a white corolla outside of Ota’s house with 50 million yen inside of duffle bags. The Osaka police were standing by, waiting to carry out the missions once Ota gets the phone call with instructions on where to find the letter.
At 8:03, Ota’s phone rings. He picks it up and hears the sound of a womans voice. But it sounds like its been prerecorded and is being played into the receiver.
She says "The back of the tourist information map at the city bus platform south of Mitsui Bank of Seibu department store in Takatsuki"
An undercover police officer dressed as Ota, loads into the Corolla and takes off with the money towards the Takatsuki. He had even shaved his head to look like the balding managing director.
At 8:16, the undercover police officer sees a letter taped to the back of the map. In it, there was a bus ticket, and instructions to load onto the last car on the 8:19 train bound for Kyoto. He was to sit in a specific window seat and until he saw a white flag be raised outside of the train, along the track. Then, he would lower the window and throw out the bags of money.
The cop dressed as ota, who I’ll call Decoy Ota was accompanied by 7 other undercover police officers. Together, they boarded the next train for Kyoto. Trying not to look over their shoulders and give themselves away. The monster could be anywhere, watching them. They had to keep their heads down and pretend to be the commuters they were dressed as.
Once On the train, the officers were all instructed by their police captain to sit in the the first car. decoy ota was specifically instructed to not sit in the seat the thieves wanted him to sit in. Their hope was that the monster, if on the train, would look to his seat and see he wasnt there. This would force him to get up and move about the train looking for Ota, revealing himself.
So when everyone was sitting on the train they started looking around at the crowd of people to see if anyone looked suspicious. It was almost 9pm on a thursday, but the air was still hot and humid. There were some business men getting home late with their suit jackets off to try and combat the heat. There were also some teens running amok. Other than that it was pretty empty
investigators eyes widened when they saw a man, about 30 years old, operating a big radio with a long antenna. Even in the 80s, this was super uncommon. The police wondered if he was maybe trying to match his radio to the police scanner, but there wasn’t much else sketchy about him.
But Then, one of the cops noticed a man in the car behind them. Someone who stuck out even more than the man with the radio. Standing one car down was a man, 35-45 years old wearing a gray suit, and clear rimmed glasses. He also had permed hair. On him, he had a black umbrella and a folded newspaper. He was the only man with his suit jacket on, which was strange considering the heat.
His most defining feature, however, was his eyes. Through his glasses, investigators said he had the eyes of a fox, scanning anxiously through the cars of people. Once he sees the undercover cop with the bag of cash, he locks in on him like a predator, and walks forward into the car with all of the investigators. If he had any idea, it’s unclear, but he stands about 6 feet away from the decoy Ota and the bag of cash until the train stops in Kyoto. Though multiple police officers were watching out the windows, no one saw any white flag indicating it was time to dump the money. So they all exited the train at the end of the line, cash in hand. The man with the radio, and the fox eyed man also exited
Two officers stayed with the radio man after exiting, but they were informed to let him go when one of them called headquarters on a payphone. it didn’t seem like he was a real suspect
The fox eyed man however, followed decoy Ota like a hawk, his eyes never leaving him. He watched as the fake ota walked down a flight of stairs to a lower platform. Circling the stairs for a moment to make sure the coast was clear below, he then followed the money down the stairs, all while being watched by the other investigators.
Once down there, the fake Ota ran into a restroom and the fox eyed man stood behind a pillar, watching the restroom door with that predator glare.
One of the other investigators found a pay phone and called their precinct. They wanted permission to stop the fox eyed man, they had him right in their grips. But they were told to stand down.
He’s right there, why didn’t they just get him? I shouted at the stranger telling me this story. Ok, at this point, I was on my third $5 fake old fashioned, except this one was pink, so i had no idea what the bartender thought he was making me. But i was starting to get frustrated, and I understand why the people of japan were frustrated too. All of these resources being poured into getting this guy and he’s here, 6 feet in front of them and they don't do anything? I threw down the marachino cherry in disbelief.
The police chief wanted them to wait until the fox eyed man had touched the duffel bag of cash before closing in on him. They wanted to be sure it was really him.
And they thought the moment was coming. Decoy Ota exited the restroom and sat on a bench, holding the bag. The fox eyed man started circling him like a vulture about to descend on a carcass, about 9 feet away from him. But he still wasn’t making a move. Maybe he was waiting for the right exact time. Or maybe he was catching on to the fact that this wasn’t really the executive he thought he was meeting.
The train back to Takatsuki arrived and everyone, all of the investigators, Decoy ota with the money, and the fox eyed man got on the train. At Takatsuki, they all get off, but the Fox Eyed man then gets back on to a train to Kyoto. A few of the officers follow, but now, to them it feels like he knows they're on his tail. After arriving back in Kyoto, he goes back to the platform to go back to Takatsuki, but when the train comes, he doesn't get back on. Instead, the fox eyed man stands there for a moment, letting the car of people spill out around him. Then he slips away down a staircase. when the police go to follow him, they can’t. He’s gone. Disappeared into the night.
Police sketches of the fox eyed man soon litter the city. With each flyer that was hung the public lost more and more faith in the Osaka police force. They had the 21 faced monster, or at least one of them right in front of their faces. This nightmare should be over. Their kids should be able to buy candy again without fear.
But just as the name suggests, a monster that can shift identities to fit any situation, the nature of the crimes started morphing as the humid summer faded into autumn. After the train incident the Monster went mostly quiet. Maybe they were afraid that the police were onto them, or maybe they were preparing for what was to come.
Because up until this point, some of their more dangerous threats seemed empty. No kids had gotten poisoned, no more CEOs were kidnapped. But once October rolled around, the monster was ready to prove how serious he was.
The afternoon of October 7th, 1984, an employee at a convenience store in Osaka was standing behind the counter when he hears a woman scream at a child, put that down, don’t touch that! The woman then furiously approached the employee with a candy bar in her hand. Is this some kind of sick joke? She asked, thrusting the candy bar at him.
It looked like a normal candy bar, made by the company Morinaga, but upon a second glance, he could see that there was a sticker on the bar with a message typed out from a typewriter.
“"This has poison in it. If you eat it you will die. Monster with 21 faces".
Multiple other convenience stores throughout Hyogo, Kyoto and Osaka also alerted police that they candy bars with the typed messages on them. Some of the bars went in for testing and it was confirmed. They all contained lethal doses of Cyanide.
The next day, another typed letter was sent to newspapers. This time it was addressed to mothers in Japan. It read:
To all mothers in Japan
In autumn appetite is huge. Candy is great. When you think sweets - no matter what you say - it's Morinaga right?. We added some special flavor to it. The flavor of Potassium Cyanide is a little bitter.
We placed 20 pieces between Hakata and Tokyo.
There are 2 flavors with 0.2 grams and 0.5 grams of acid.
After 10 days. We will place 30 of them, without any sign across Japan. We are preparing a lot more for later. Look forward to it!
Signed
Monster with 21 faces
3500 stores throughout Japan immediately dumped all of their Morinaga inventory. It was devastating to the brand.
Police were back on the case immediately, hunting for clues throughout the convenience stores that had the poisoned candy. But there was nothing, no leads. It was like the poisoned candy had materialized out of thin air. Or worse, been packaged at the Morinaga facility.
But finally, the Family Mart in Nishinomiya got a hit.
They were skimming through their security footage when they found video of a man placing candy on the shelves. The family mart had been using the same video tape for security footage for years, recording over old footage multiple times in the process, so the images they collected looked terrible. But at 11:23 on Sunday, October 7th, theres a ghostly, distorted image of a man in his 20s or 30, wearing a baseball cap and metal framed glasses. He had permed hair.
They could see in the video that the man came in, turned to the right and started thumbing through magazines. He then started walking towards the candy aisle, looking for security cameras the whole way. He then places a square tin of Morinaga fruit drops on the shelf that were later confirmed to contain .18 grams of Sodium Cyanide.
Ok, the cops had an image, but who was this man? If this was the Fox Eyed man, the public was going to freak. They all knew he should have been caught months ago. Morinago was also furious, they had to lay off over 400 employees to cover the costs of the lost inventory. 400 people with lives to live, families to feed, that were now out of a job, and many of them saw it as the police's fault.
The reputation of the Japanese police force was tarnishing quicker than they could do anything about it. By early november, an article titled “Police in Japan: Badges have lost their sparkle” had been published in The New York Times. In the article, an expert on Police Matters in Japan, Takuro Suzuki was interviewed. He said that the Monster with 21 faces crime was quote “a new type of crime for Japan. And The police are using old-style investigation techniques, so they’re always behind.”
This was a huge blow to a police force that was regarded as one of the best in the world. Only one in 7 applicants were accepted to the police academy after taking a rigid exam, and police served in their own neighborhoods, giving them intimate knowledge of the area and people.
But resentment for the police in japan had been brewing longer than the Monster had been terrorizing the country.
Over the summer in Hyogo, the same place where some of the poisoned candy was left, two officers had been arrested for robbing a bank in order to pay back loan sharks they owed money too. That was also around the same time that a former police sergeant confessed to killing another police officer and loan-company employee in Kyoto
And remember that almost spotless record for solving homicide cases? Well, the general public wasn’t buying it. Over the previous year, three men on death row had their sentences overturned after it was revealed the police got those confessions by force. It turns out, it was a well known secret amongst the population in Japan that officers were getting confessions via force and torture, and many of these confessions were false.
The autumn dragged on into winter, and changed into spring again, and the police still had no suspect in sight. And in that time, 31 food companies were extorted and intimidated with threats of poisoning.
But, no one had died from being poisoned. And of those 31 companies, no money had been collected. At first, it seemed to police like the monster may be overly cautious, coming to collect the money only to dodge at the last second for fear of being caught. But there were times where it appeared no one came to collect the money.
The police still were scrambling to meet the Monsters demands. They drove bags of money to various locations, left it in manholes, but the money was never collected. They ran through their list of potential suspects. Was this person a disgruntled employee? Well, now they had gone after 31 different companies so probably not. Was this person attacking families. They were poisoning candy, after all, and writing letters to the moms of Japan. But no one was ever poisoned. If they really wanted someone to die, wouldn’t someone have already died by now?
It seemed the only way this was going to end this was when the monster got what it wanted. But with every passing month, and every missed ransom drop off, Officer Yamamoto and the other police started wondering. What is it exactly, that they want?
It was true, the Monster wasn’t going to stop threatening local food manufacturers and taunting the police until they got what they wanted.
And one day, it seemed like they did. Because something made them stop.
On August 7th, 1985, over a year since Ezaki’s kidnapping. Officer Yamamoto, walked into his backyard, doused himself with Kerosene, and lit himself on fire.
When searching for a reason as to why he may have done this, others in his post believed that he was embarrassed about an event that happened the previous autumn, where he and subordinates saw the Fox eyed man in a car and let him slip away. The mounting pressure from the public and the mistakes being made by his team were too much for him to bear.
After Yamamoto’s death, the Monster was never heard from again.
The monster could still be out there in Japan. If they were in their 20’s and 30’s when this was happening, they’d only be in their 60’s and 70s now.
I paid my tab $15 can you believe it? Said goodbye to the kind stranger And walked out into the warm, early summer air, chewing over the details of the story. Is the monster still out there? And if he is, what has he shifted into now? A grandfather, a school super intendant? Maybe even A kind stranger that sits at a bar and tells his story to whoever will listen.
This has been heart starts pounding, written and produced by me, kaelyn moore. Music by artlist. Special thanks to our new patrons
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