1Month22Sunday afternoon8Time passed,JRA man and woman waiting for a bus in front of Nagano Station3People were stabbed one after another by a man with a knife.49A man died, and a man and a woman2People were injured, some seriously.4A few days later, a relay investigation of security cameras revealed that an unemployed suspect (46(age 18) was arrested.2Month17He was rearrested on suspicion of murder in relation to the deceased victim on the same day, but has remained silent to this day.
Regarding this incident, Shinetsu Broadcasting asked the following question, and Professor Makoto Nakayama of criminal psychology commented:
Question1 The circumstances that led to indiscriminate mass murders, as seen in past incidents
Comments:About the suspect in the random murders
Cause 1: Troubles with relationships (weakened relationships with family, friends, and coworkers, leading to isolation)
Reason 2: Because of reason 1, the person was unable to keep a job, changed jobs several times, and ended up in financial difficulties.
Reason 3: The perpetrator was desperate before committing the crime, and the murder was intended to release daily frustrations.
Question2Why would someone try to kill a stranger?
Comments:The purpose of random murder is not to release grudges against a specific person, but to release the resentment that has been building up inside oneself. In other words, the suspect wants to plunge ordinary citizens into the depths of fear through random murder. In order to show off his power, he tries to kill as many people as possible at once. It is important for the suspect to scare ordinary citizens and make them worry that they may have been present at the scene and become a victim. In previous random murders, the suspect often said "it didn't matter who the victim was" immediately after the crime, but this is also thought to be an absurd motive to intentionally increase the anger of the bereaved family, which will ultimately attract attention to himself and satisfy his need for recognition.
Question3Why was the area in front of the station chosen as the location for the crime?
Comments:The most common place for random murders is on the street, followed by train stations and their surrounding areas. This is because many people pass by there, making it a convenient place to kill many people at once. However, if the goal is to kill someone, one would expect the targets to be children or women who are physically weaker and are plentiful in the area around train stations. However, the suspect in the Nagano Station incident was,30-40What makes this case different from previous cases is that it targeted three people in their 20s. In this regard, the suspect's strange bravado and confidence in his physical strength, that he can kill anyone, even if they are not weak, may be related to this point.
Question4: The suspect in this case seems to have a lot of pride, but is that characteristic of random murders?
Comments:Random killers tend to be selfish, proud, and unwilling to admit their own faults even when things go wrong at work. In other words, because they feel hurt when they attribute their failures to their own abilities or lack of effort, they often have a strong tendency to shift the blame onto others, such as their employers, who do not have the ability to evaluate them properly, or who are made to take the blame for their colleagues' failures (narcissistic personality disorder). In the case of the former defendant in the Ikeda Elementary School case, he was finally unable to bear the gap between the ideal self he had, a highly educated, high-income earner, and the miserable reality of his life, where he changed jobs repeatedly, was ignored by everyone, lived a lonely, poor life, and gave up on himself, committing mass murders in an instant to release his pent-up frustrations.
Question5: It seems he was living in poverty, but could that have led to a motive for mass murder?
Comments:Just like the Osaka Station Clinic arson incident, the electricity and gas had been cut off before the crime. Since the purpose of indiscriminate murder is not to steal something, murder is not an economic solution. Therefore, poverty is not a direct motive for indiscriminately killing people. However, when someone is so desperate that they have nothing to eat that day, and they reach a point where they feel they cannot survive another day, it can be the trigger to cross the final line and commit murder.
Question6What makes this Nagano Station incident different from previous incidents?
Comments:This time, he fled the scene after the crime, changed his appearance before being arrested by the police, and tried to destroy evidence by burning his gloves. Compared to the Ikeda Elementary School, Akihabara, and Kyoani incidents, where the perpetrators were arrested on the spot, and the Caritas Elementary School and Osaka Station Clinic arson incidents, where the perpetrators committed suicide on the spot, this is different from the previous incidents in that he tried to escape after the crime. Moreover, it is different from the previous incidents in that he has remained silent after his arrest and has not spoken about his motive.
The former defendant in the Ikeda Elementary School case said he killed many children because he wanted to be sentenced to death (mass suicide), or in the case of the suspect who committed suicide on the spot, he said, "I want to have one last glorious moment" (Osaka Station Clinic arson case), and so on. They carry out their indiscriminate murders with a clear vision of the end of their own lives. In comparison, the Nagano case may have been carried out without much thought.
This case may be a copycat of the random murder that took place in Kitakyushu one month earlier, in which two junior high school students were killed. That case was quickly solved by a relay investigation using video cameras, so it should have been fully expected that the suspect would be arrested. Despite that, he stayed at his house near the crime scene after the crime and did not jump until the police raided his house, which makes me feel that his actions were half-hearted and that his crime script was incomplete. The suspect had not even thought about what he would do after the crime, so perhaps he is remaining silent for now.
Another possibility is that they may have thought that by committing a crime they could escape the hardships of their current life, especially the collection of their debts. There are cases where people who are stuck in social life due to financial hardship and isolation from others end up committing random murders in order to escape to prison (Ministry of Justice survey). However, prison is merely a temporary escape, and they probably do not want to shoulder a heavy sentence such as the death penalty or life imprisonment. For this reason, they may not know what and how much to say during police questioning in order to receive leniency in court and receive a lighter sentence, so they may remain silent for the time being. In that sense, they may be a suspect who is not very used to crime and has not yet progressed in criminality.
Introducing Professor Makoto Nakayama
Please also take a look at the introduction page of Professor Makoto Nakayama, an expert in criminal psychology and physiological psychology.
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