Four Teens Were Hired for a “Part-Time” Murder Job | The Tochigi Murders

Kaminokawa is a scenic rural town in southeastern Tochigi.

Traditional Japanese houses stand spaced apart between verdant rice paddies.

The morning of May 14th was bright and peaceful.

Farmhands working in the fields and local residents just going about their business in one of the safest communities imaginable.

At 9.28am, police received a call from a frantic-sounding man.

He said, His report went like this.

It's a robbery.

My family was beaten with a bar.

The culprits fled on foot.

It was a desperate cry for help.

As police and paramedics approached the scene, they were greeted by views of an attractive, sprawling home protected by a high wall.

But nothing was as safe or tranquil as it might have seemed.

They soon discovered that the glass of a large window connecting the first floor living room to the garden was shattered.

And the inside of the house bore clear signs of having been ransacked.

A knife and a crowbar had been abandoned at the scene.

The man who had made the 110 call was a 68-year-old with a family named Tomiyama.

His eldest and second sons, both in their 40s, had been working in a nearby field when they received a call from their father begging for help.

As soon as they heard their father's terrified pleas, the brothers rushed home.

There they encountered the intruders, men in dark clothing and ski masks wielding crowbars.

The perpetrators immediately turned on both sons, striking them with their makeshift weapons, before eventually fleeing the scene.

Both sons sustained head injuries and were later taken to the hospital.

The attackers had also slain the Tomiyama's pet dog, silencing the animal so that the sound of barking wouldn't give them away.

But by far the worst of the brutality had been reserved for the family matriarch, 69-year-old Eiko Tomiyama.

She was discovered in the first floor living room, lying in a pool of blood, no longer alive.

The state of Aiko's body was horrific.