Futoshi Matsunaga was convicted of six counts of murder and one of manslaughter for seven deaths in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka prefecture, between February 1996 and June 1998. He was sentenced to death in September 2005, the sentence was upheld on appeal in September 2007, and the Supreme Court dismissed his final appeal in December 2011. He is awaiting execution. The case is known in Japan as the Kitakyushu serial murder incident.
He was born in Kokura, Kitakyushu on April 28, 1961 and ran a futon sales business that was largely fraudulent. His partner was Junko Ogata, born in Kurume on February 25, 1962, who had been at school with him briefly and began seeing him in 1982; she had worked in a preschool and was described as a gentle person before the relationship. They had two sons. He abused her severely throughout.
What he built was not a series of attacks but a closed system. He established psychological control over a small group, employees, a former employee's family, and Ogata's own family, using debt, isolation, sexual violence and physical torture. He presented himself to Ogata's parents as a polite young man and won them over. He raped her married sister Rieko. The family transferred some sixty-three million yen to him, and he then held them captive.
Seven people died. Kumio Toraya, a former employee and one-time police officer, was tortured to death in February 1996; his daughter also died. Over seven months ending in June 1998, five of Ogata's relatives were killed in the apartment the couple shared with them: her mother Shizumi, her sister Rieko, her brother-in-law Kazuya, and the children Yuki and Aya. Her father Takashige died of injuries the couple inflicted, and the court found they had not intended to kill him. Which is why the convictions are six murders and one manslaughter rather than seven murders.
They were confined, starved, beaten, and given electric shocks from a device wired to the mains. Matsunaga directed the surviving family members to kill one another, and to dismember and dispose of the bodies. They did.
It came to light in March 2002 when Ogata's ten-year-old niece, who had survived, escaped and reached her grandparents. The pair were arrested on March 6, 2002.
No human remains were recovered and there was no physical evidence of any of the seven deaths. The prosecution rested on the testimony of Junko Ogata and the surviving child, and on the pair's own statements. Japanese media largely declined to report the details; prosecutors told the Japan Times that the case had no comparison in the criminal history of Japan.
The Fukuoka District Court sentenced both to death in September 2005. On September 26, 2007 the Fukuoka High Court upheld his sentence and reduced hers to life, accepting that she had acted under his control after prolonged abuse. Prosecutors appealed that reduction, and in December 2011 the Supreme Court's First Petty Bench upheld both outcomes: death for him, life for her.
That Supreme Court judgment is the part legal commentary in Japan keeps returning to. It is extremely rare for a defendant involved in seven deaths to escape the death penalty under the Nagayama standard, the framework Japanese courts use in capital sentencing. The five justices were divided, and the presiding justice Koji Miyagawa attached a supplementary opinion. The court's reasoning was that Ogata's compliance had been effectively unavoidable given the abuse she had suffered.
So a capital conviction was obtained with no body, no forensic evidence and one accomplice witness, and the same evidence produced a death sentence for one defendant and a life sentence for the other. That is why the case is discussed in Japan in the context of both the death penalty and confession-based prosecution.