Yasutoshi Kamata

Yasutoshi Kamata was born on July 10, 1940, in the city of Ōzu.

The son of an inn proprietor, he married a local woman and worked as a disposable chopsticks salesman at a local inn, but learning that his wife had been cheating on him, he took their two children and moved to Nishinari-ku in 1960.

He made a living by selling stolen merchandise to women working in the restaurant business at high prices.

Kamata was regarded as an amiable, soft-spoken and kind individual, who was well-liked by his business partners.

However, it was also known that he was prone to sudden outbursts of anger.

Kamata's modus operandi was to lure women to his various condominiums and apartments around Osaka, where he then proceed to strangle them.

While he had around 20 known addresses, he committed the first three murders in Nishinari-ku, and the last two were committed at another residence in Naniwa-ku.

In addition to the murder charges he would later be found guilty of, he was also charged and subsequently convicted of theft in the third and fourth murders.

Yasutoshi Kamata (鎌田安利), known as The Osaka Ripper, was a Japanese serial killer responsible for the murder and dismemberment of four women and one girl in Osaka between 1985 and 1994.

The case was designated by the National Police Agency as "Metropolitan Designated Case No. 122".

At the time of the incident, the Osaka Prefectural Police considered it one its most important cases, investigated alongside the Glico Morinaga case.

The first victim was a 46-year-old housewife from Higashisumiyoshi-ku, who was married and had three children, but on May 14, 1985, she had decided to go to a local bar in Nishinaru-ku under a pseudonym.

Kamata visited the bar as well, and came across the woman, whom he invited to have a meal and some drinks with two other people, but by the end of the night, he brought his drunken acquaintance back to his condominium.

There, he strangled the woman when she started resisting his sexual advances.

Her body was only found after Kamata's arrest, having been dumped in a wooded area near the National Route 175 in Kobe's Nishi-ku ward.

The second victim was a 19-year-old college student, who went missing after she left her dormitory at around 17:00 on April 16, 1985, while en route to her job as a dry cleaner for a treatment facility in Tondabayashi.

Kamata had met her near the Tsūtenkaku tower, and around 14:00, the two were seen eating at a sushi restaurant in Naniwa-ku.

After that, he took the girl to his condominium, but when she requested 10,000 yen as pocket money, Kamata became angry and proceeded to strangle her with both hands.

After killing her, he spread out carpets and vinyl sheets on the floor, and then cut up the body into pieces using a saw and a kitchen knife.

After he was finished, Kamata put the remains in a cardboard box, put them in a rental car and then ditched them along a country road.

Early next morning, the victim's remains were discovered near the Miyoshi family's farm in Kōryō, Nara Prefecture, who immediately notified the district police about the gruesome discovery.

Three months after the finding, on September 6, Kamata sent a taunting letter to the police chief, signed "The Monster with 22 Faces" (alluding to the Glico Morinaga case), postmarked from Sakai.

After sending the letter, he temporarily fled to Tokyo after learning that an investigator had come to his favorite snack bar, using the Tokaido Shinkansen (from the Shin-Ōsaka Station to Tokyo Station), where he resided until things could quiet down.

In the letter, Kamata provoked police by telling them to "catch [him], if they can", naming the sushi restaurant that he took the victim before killing her and what body parts he had cut off, providing information only the killer could have known.

When the Nara Prefectural Police traced the girl's whereabouts on the day of her supposed disappearance, they learned that she had been seen visiting the exact same sushi restaurant with an unidentified middle-aged man.

When the circumstances were deemed consistent with the letter writer's claims, police concluded that the killer had indeed written it.

Around 17:30 on January 22, 1987, Kamata stopped a 9-year-old walking home from school, ostensibly to ask her for directions towards the Sumiyoshi Grand Shrine and pay her 200 yen, whom he then kidnapped.

He brought her to his home, intending to sexually assault the girl, but the girl's screams scared him off from doing so, and he instead strangled her.

After killing her, he discarded the body in the mountains, and then called the Sumie Elementary School four or five times, where the victim was attending, requesting them to prepare a ransom of 30 million yen in exchange for the girl.

On May 4, the girl's body was found in a cypress forest near Toyono.

While this victim hadn't been dismembered, Kamata would later admit later claimed that he felt no need to, as the girl's body was small enough to fit in a cardboard box.

Shortly after killing his third victim, Kamata was convicted for several thefts committed between October 1989 and August 1991, and remained in prison until March 1993.

Soon after his release, he started killing again.

In an attempt to change up his modus operandi, he started frequenting the forested road near Todoromi, which he often used to travel to and from Fukuchiyama, as well as the National Route 423.

Around July 24, 1993, Kamata paid money to a 45-year-old snack bar employee to accompany him back to his house.

When they arrived at his condominium, he strangled her.

He then dismembered the victim's body with a saw and abandoned the remains in the mountains outside Minoh.

On April 4, 1994, an investigator from the Minoh Police Department, while searching for the body of Kamata's fifth victim, was examining the cypress forest grounds.

Eventually, he found the skeletonized remains of the fourth victim, whose identity was subsequently verified on July 24 via her dentalwork.

Around the end of March 1994, Kamata paid a 38-year-old restaurant clerk to accompany him to his apartment, where he then strangled her.