A Small Man In A Yellow Raincoat Near A Student's House That Was Burned In 1996, Perpetrators?

Police illustration of a suspicious man in connection with the 1996 student murders and arson cases (Metropolitan Police Department Photo)

JAKARTA - 25 years ago, a woman was riding a bicycle to her best friend's house. Nothing strange. He meets a lot of people. One of the men standing near a house.

Later we found out that in that house a sadistic murder was going to take place in Japan, the case of which has not even been revealed until now.

September 9, 1996, Junko Kobayashi, a student at Sophiam University, was burned inside her house in the Katsushika district of Tokyo. But police believe Junko had died from a knife wound to his neck before being burned.

The woman, whose identity was withheld, is still 21 years old. All he remembered was that it was around 3.30 pm when he was pedaling his bicycle.

The man was standing about 15 meters from a house. The man was thin with a height of about 150-160 centimeters. His small body seemed to be drowned by the large yellow raincoat he was wearing. There was a black umbrella ready for use as it was a rather cold autumn day, quoted from the Mainichi Shimbun.

There is no information on the time when this woman wanted to return to her house. He chose the same path as when he was about to leave. Right around the place where he saw the man in the yellow raincoat, the atmosphere became different.

There are lots of police and fire engines. Several road blocks were closed. A number of firefighters were struggling to extinguish the fire from inside a house.

The same man was also seen by another witness at 3:55 p.m., about 25 minutes after the timeframe the first witness reported. Referring to all these testimonies, the police made sketches and immediately released them.

"Looks like we have hope," said Kenji Kobayashi, Junko's father who was tirelessly searching for who killed his daughter.

He is already 75 years old. Yet he still hoped for some buried clues.

The perpetrator is thought to have entered Juno's house at 3:50 p.m. or after Junko's mother left the house. From the house, the police spilled blood Type A blood with the DNA of a man, which is suspected to belong to the perpetrator.

Kenji believes that there is still important information out there that investigators have yet to find. "There's nothing more unfortunate than the buried information out there right now. I want people to give us the information they have, even if it's small," he said.