The were committed by four members of the , a yakuza gang based in Omuta,

Fukuoka is the sixth-largest city in Japan, the second-largest port city after Yokohama, and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center of international commerce since ancie ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The Kitamura-gumi was affiliated with the

Dojin-kai The is a yakuza organization headquartered in Kurume, Fukuoka, on the Kyushu island of Japan,

crime syndicate. The four were sentenced to death for the murder of four people between 18 and 20 September 2004.

Summary

Mami Kitamura had borrowed money from a 58-year-old woman, Sayoko Takami. On 18 September 2004, Mami, her husband and two sons strangled Sayoko and shot her 18-year-old son Tatsuyuki and his 17-year-old friend Junichi Hara. They put the victims in a car, which they dumped into a river. On 20 September, they strangled Sayoko's 15-year-old son Joji, whose half-naked body was found on 21 September. When the police arrested Mami the following day, she confessed to the killing of the other three victims. The police found the car containing the bodies of the three victims in the Suwa River in Omuta. The other participants in the murders included Mami's husband Jitsuo Kitamura, the leader of Kitamura-gumi; Takashi Kitamura, her son from a previous marriage; and Takahiro Kitamura, her second son. Both Takashi and Takahiro were former

sumo is a form of competitive full-contact wrestling where a ''rikishi'' (wrestler) attempts to force his opponent out of a circular ring (''dohyō'') or into touching the ground with any body part other than the soles of his feet (usually by thr ...

wrestlers, known respectively as and , with the family name Ishibashi. As police were closing in, Jitsuo made an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself with a handgun. Takashi escaped from the police, but was recaptured. Jitsuo insisted that he had committed the murders alone, but the police regarded Mami as the main offender. They were disruptive during their trials. On 17 October 2006, Mami and Takahiro were sentenced to death. Jitsuo and Takashi were sentenced to death on 28 February 2007. On December 25, the Fukuoka high court upheld the original sentence for Mami and Takahiro, and then Takahiro screamed in the court, "

Merry Christmas The Christmas season or the festive season (also known in some countries as the holiday season or the holidays) is an annually recurring period recognized in many Western and other countries that is generally considered to run from late November ...

!" On 27 March 2008, the Fukuoka high court also upheld the original sentence for Jitsuo and Takashi.

References

Popular culture

* – 2010 book about the murder by ''Tomohiko Suzuki'' **

Death Row Family is a 2017 Japanese film directed by Yuki Kobayashi. The film is based on the Ōmuta murders. Plot Four members of a family are in debt and struggle financially. They plan to rob a wealthy family who runs a loan shark operation. Due to a reckless ...

-2017 film based on the book

External links

Mob wife arrested for dumping body
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The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...

'' September 23, 2004
Mom, boys pulled from watery grave following yakuza wife's
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'' September 25, 2004
Arrest made over bodies found in river
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'' September 26, 2004
Murder suspect escapes unlocked interrogation room
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'' November 14, 2004
Mobster's wife, son to hang for four murders in 2004
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'' October 18, 2006
Mom, son's death sentences upheld
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'' December 26, 2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Omuta murders Mass murder in 2004 Ōmuta, Fukuoka People murdered by the Yakuza 2004 murders in Japan Organized crime events in Japan September 2004 events in Japan