” Dona’s words hung in the silence of the hospital room.

The detectives looked at each other.

They knew the story of the melting away was part of the criminal’s induced delusion, but the scream the woman mentioned was real.

Betty Anderson really did die that day, and Dona witnessed it, even though her mind refused to accept the truth.

Now the police were tasked with returning to the island and finding what remained of the second girl, based on the chilling testimony of the victim about the first.

day.

And what they were about to find could be far more terrifying than any imagined radiation.

On October 20, 2019, at 7 a.

m.

, a team of forensic experts from the Nagasaki Prefectural Police returned to the concrete slab of Gunkanima.

This time, their objective wasn’t rescue, but the house itself.

They were searching for traces of the ghost, a man who for three consecutive years had stealthily visited the secluded island, turning it into his private prison.

The basement of Block 30, where they found Dona Wise, was surrounded by yellow tape.

This place was now officially called the Level Zero Chamber.

The work of the experts inside the chamber resembled an archaeological dig in hell.

Every square inch of the space was photographed and scanned with ultraviolet light.

The first thing that caught the investigators’ attention as they closely examined the walls was a chaotic network of scratches in the damp plaster near where the victim had slept.

It was like a calendar: hundreds, thousands of vertical lines grouped in fives.

The forensic expert Tanaca, who was carrying out the inspection report, counted 1,162 marks.

The last mark was incomplete.

Dona was counting each day of her ordeal, scratching off the time with a piece of rusty nail she found on the floor.

But the true portrait of the criminal began to emerge when the experts started analyzing the trash.

Three years of isolation left behind mountains of physical evidence.

Among plastic bottles and dirty rags, the detective found a pile of old newspapers.

They were copies of the local newspaper, the Nagasaki Shimbun, dated in different months of 2017 and 2018.

However, all the newspapers had one thing in common.

The upper right corner of the front page, where the date is normally printed, had been carefully cut out with scissors.

This discovery sent a shiver down the investigators’ spines.

It wasn’t an oversight; it was a cold and calculated cruelty.

The kidnapper brought Dona news from the outside world for her to read, but deprived her of the most important thing: a temporal reference point.

He maintained the illusion of the end.

from around the world, showing him articles about local disasters or crimes, but concealing any mention of normal life, dates, or events that might refute his apocalyptic legend.

This indicated that the criminal derived sadistic pleasure from controlling his victim’s mind.

The next step was to analyze the food waste.

All the plastic water bottles were the same brand, Kyusu Springs.

This was cheap, local water that wasn’t exported outside the region.

Investigators checked the batch serial numbers indicated on the labels.

The result was surprisingly accurate.

These batches of water were supplied exclusively to vending machines located along the southern coast of the Nagasaki Peninsula, in sparsely populated fishing villages .

The situation with the canned goods was even more interesting.

Most of the cans had no commercial labels, only brand names stamped on the lid.

An inquiry with the Fishermen’s Association revealed that these were specific rations issued to the crews of industrial fishing vessels.

long voyages.

These canned goods were not sold in supermarkets.

This narrowed the circle of suspects to people who had access to maritime supplies or who worked in port logistics.

On October 22, the investigation team went to the Coast Guard Archive.

They requested radar observation data for the maritime zone around Gunanjima for the period between August 2016 and October 2019.

The analysts were looking for anomalies: small vessels approaching the island at night or in the early morning, ignoring the restricted area.

Computer analysis revealed a pattern.

The same signal appeared on the radar approximately once every four days.

It was a small object moving without its transponder turned on.

It would leave a small bay near the village of Nomosaki.

It would approach the shaded side of the island, where surveillance cameras had been damaged by storms 10 years earlier.

It would stay there for 30 to 40 minutes and then return.

The route was Always the same.

The police cross-referenced the time the object left the water with data from security cameras on the roads leading to the port of Nagasaki.

In recordings made at dawn, an old pickup truck loaded with fishing nets often appeared.

The license plate number led the investigation to the owner’s name: Kenji Ogawa, 55.

Kenji Ogawa’s file, which landed on the desk of the head of the investigation team on October 23, perfectly matched the psychological profile of the guard.

Ogawa was a former skilled electrician and welder who had worked for over 20 years at the Nagasaki port docks.

He was the one with the skills and equipment necessary to professionally weld the basement door and install a complex lock.

In 2014, he was scandalously dismissed after a series of assaults on colleagues and complaints of inappropriate behavior.

Witnesses described him as a loner prone to outbursts of unjustified aggression and paranoid comments about corrupt society.

After his After being fired, he moved to his parents’ old house in Nomosaki, at the tip of the Cape, from where the silhouette of Gun Kanima could be seen on clear days.

Neighbors said he almost never left the house during the day and that at night he usually went out to sea in his old motorboat.

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place when detectives checked Ogawa’s bank transactions.

Despite not having an official job, he regularly bought large quantities of water and rice from a local wholesale store , paying in cash.

The volume of his purchases far exceeded the needs of one person.

On October 24, at 6 p.

m.

, a surveillance team took up positions around Ogawa’s house in Nomosaki.

The house appeared abandoned; the windows were boarded up, and the yard was full of scrap metal.

But a dim light could be seen at the back of the garage.

The same pickup truck was parked in the driveway, and a boat bobbing next to the dock was ready to set sail.

The police knew that the suspect He was inside.

They had the name, they had the motive, and they had the evidence.

But they still did n’t know if the guardian was prepared to surrender without a fight, nor what other secrets, besides the newspaper clippings, he was hiding behind the boarded-up windows of his lair.

The capture operation was about to begin.

On October 20, 2019, while the ground assault team prepared to raid Nomosaki’s house, another, no less grim, drama was unfolding on Gunanjima Island .

The search team, led by Lieutenant Tanaka, was ordered to verify Dona Wise’s testimony about the first day.

Her words about her friend going outside and melting sounded like the ravings of a madwoman.

But the investigators knew that in every delusion there is a kernel of truth.

Dona claimed to have heard a scream very close by on the other side of her cell wall.

Based on the acoustics of the basements, the team headed to the neighboring sector.

Their target was the building known as Niku Apartments.

An old luxury residential complex for mine managers, located just 50 meters from Block 30.

This nine-story building, constructed in the shape of the letter B, was considered one of the most dangerous on the island.

Its central atrium collapsed five years ago, turning the stairwell into a pile of concrete rubble.

At 11:15 a.

m.

, the group entered the semi-submerged lobby.

A deathly silence reigned, broken only by the crunch of glass under boots.

Following the logic that the body should be hidden and not left in plain sight, Tanaka ordered the service shafts to be inspected .

They were struck by the freight elevator shaft, whose doors were broken and lay inside the cab, stuck between the first floor and the basement.

The beam of a powerful flashlight pierced the darkness of the shaft, revealing a pile of rubble at the bottom, about 4.

5 meters deep.

Among the remains of furniture and pieces of rusted armor, something could be seen reflecting the light in a way that Unnatural.

It was the subject of a photograph.

The descent lasted 40 minutes.

When the coroner reached the bottom, he confirmed the worst.

Under a layer of dust and construction debris lay human remains.

It wasn’t the puddle Dona had spoken of; it was a skeleton partially covered by remnants of synthetic clothing that hadn’t decomposed in three years.

Around the victim’s neck hung the strap of a Sony Alpha camera.

Next to it lay a backpack whose color, despite the dirt, could be identified as bright blue, the same as the one Betty Anderson was carrying the day she disappeared.

The rapid on- site analysis cleared up all doubts.

The deceased’s skull showed terrible damage.

In the occipital region, there was a huge fracture from which smaller, spiderweb-like fractures radiated.

It was n’t a fall from a height.

The nature of the injury indicated, without a doubt, a blow to the back with a heavy, blunt object .

Someone stealthily approached the young woman and delivered a fatal blow when She hadn’t expected it.

At 1:30 p.

m.

, while searching the premises adjacent to the basement of Niku Apartments, detectives found what turned out to be the key to understanding the motive.

In the room that had previously served as a boiler room, they discovered a makeshift storage area.

There, carefully covered with tarpaulins, were eight boat engines of different makes.

Checking the serial numbers revealed that all of them had been stolen from private boats in the port of Nagasaki between 2015 and 2016.

The investigators instantly reconstructed the events of that fateful day in August 2016.

Betty and Dona, while searching for the entrance to Block 65, stumbled upon Kenji Oagwa’s hideout .

The island wasn’t just his refuge; it was his criminal warehouse, the perfect place where no one dared to enter.

Oagwa was probably there at that moment, checking his stash.

The encounter was sudden.

Betty, who was ahead, saw the stolen goods.

Oagwa, realizing he had been discovered, Knowing he faced prison for large- scale robbery, he acted immediately and brutally.

He grabbed whatever was at hand— later, experts would surmise it was a heavy-duty wrench or a piece of pipe—and struck Betti on the head.

Death was instantaneous.

Dona, who was following behind, witnessed the murder.

Shock paralyzed her.

Ogawa grabbed her, but instead of killing the second girl, his twisted mind found another solution.

He needed not only to eliminate the witness but also to destroy the memory of the crime in her mind.

He dragged her to a prepared chamber in the neighboring house.

It was then that the terrible lie of the poisoned air was born.

Dona heard her friend’s scream, saw the blood, but, trying to shield herself from the unbearable truth, she clung to Ogawa’s explanation.

He convinced her that Betty hadn’t died at his hands, but from an invisible, deadly force from outside.

It came out and melted away.

It was a metaphor that Dona’s shattered mind transformed into a literal reality.

Ogawa exploited her trauma.

to transform the prosecution witness into a grateful victim who saw him as a savior, not the murderer of her best friend.

At 3 p.

m.

, Betty Anderson’s body was brought to the surface.

The island had yielded its second victim.

But as the forensic team collected evidence, one of the officers found a camera memory card in Betty’s backpack .

It was damaged by moisture, but the chip appeared intact.

If it contained the last images taken minutes before her death, they might hold the killer’s face or evidence of his presence.

The officer handed the card to the team leader, but at that moment, the radio he was carrying on his shoulder crackled to life.

The operator’s voice on the mainland sounded alarmed.

The external surveillance team at Ogawa’s house had reported movement.

The garage door opened slowly, but instead of a van, something else was peering at the officers from the darkness.

On October 24, 2019, at 6:45 p.

m.

, the task force led by Inspector Sato took up positions around the Kenji Ogawa’s house in the village of Nomosaki.

The place resembled the set of an apocalyptic movie, one the criminal had so meticulously painted in his victim’s imagination.

The single-story wooden structure was submerged in piles of garbage; rusted car engines, old refrigerators, cable reels, and rotten fishing nets created a veritable labyrinth around the house.

The windows were completely boarded up, and barbed wire surrounded the fence , indicating the owner’s paranoid desire to isolate himself from the outside world.

Neighbors interviewed, whose testimonies were included in the case file, described Ogawa as a nocturnal ghost.

An elderly woman who lived across the street told investigators that she hadn’t seen him once in daylight in the last three years .

“He only came out when everyone was asleep,” she said.

“I would hear the noise of his old engine at 2 or 3 in the morning.

He would return at dawn dragging some bags and then disappear back into his burrow.

We were afraid of him.

” His eyes were glassy, ​​like a dead fish’s.

At 7:15, without expecting any movement inside, the group received orders to storm the building.

The officers broke down the front door, but found only silence and an unbearable smell of Mo.

The house was empty.

The garage, where surveillance had indicated the van should have been, was empty.

But the most unsettling discovery was the back door, which led to a private wooden boat dock.

The chain that normally secured the boat had been cut with hydraulic shears, and the boat was gone.

On the kitchen table, the police found a radio tuned to a news station.

The announcer was reporting on the miraculous rescue of an American tourist on Gunkanima Island.

Ogawa knew.

He listened to the news, understood that his ideal world had crumbled, and decided to act.

The only question was what he planned to do: flee or destroy the evidence.

At 7:40 p.

m.

, the interception plan was announced.

The Coast Guard of the Nagasaki Prefecture put two Sagri-class fast patrol boats on alert.

The search radius was extended to 20 nautical miles.

The weather that night worked against the fugitive.

Waves up to four feet high were rising at sea, and visibility due to fog was less than 200 yards.

At 9:15, the radar operator aboard the Aagir 5 patrol boat detected a weak signal.

The small vessel was heading west, out to sea, with its navigation lights off.

It would have been suicide for an ordinary fisherman in those weather conditions, but not for someone who knew those waters like the back of his hand.

The object was 15 miles offshore.

The coast guard boat reached the fugitive at 9:45.

The powerful beam of the searchlight pierced the darkness, bringing an old, chipped motorboat out of the night .

At the helm was Kenji Yi Ogawa.

He was wearing a raincoat.

His canvas suit and face, illuminated by the cold light, expressed not fear, only anger.

At the order to shut off the engine, Ogawa responded with a sharp maneuver, trying to ram the side of the patrol boat.

When this attempt failed, he grabbed a long harpoon to hunt Tun.

“Don’t come any closer,” he shouted, his voice muffled by the roar of the engines.

“You don’t understand.

” I’ve cleaned this place.

I won’t let them ruin everything.

The confrontation lasted less than 5 minutes.

Coast Guard special forces used high-pressure water jets to bring down the criminal.

Ogawa slipped on the wet deck, dropped the harpoon, and was instantly neutralized by the assault group that landed on his ship.

They handcuffed her wrists.

During the search of the ship, investigators realized that Ogawa had no intention of dying.

Inside the hold, authorities found a fuel reserve for 100 miles of navigation, a map with a route plotted towards deserted islands near Okinagua, and a large amount of cash hermetically wrapped in plastic.

But other findings revealed a much more terrifying story.

In the boat test there was a stack of fresh newspapers from the last week.

All the dates were in place.

It was direct proof that Ugwa was perfectly aware of reality.

He knew that the world had not ended, that war had not broken out, and that the air was clean.

He would read about politics, sports, and the weather before going down to the basement and talking to Dona about radiation and mutants.

Each newspaper was proof of his conscious sadism.

Next to the newspapers was a box with food: fresh apples, bread, and quality chocolate.

things he never gave to his captive, whom he kept on a diet of fish scraps.

But the most gruesome discovery awaited the police in a black waterproof bag that Ogawa tried to throw overboard just before being arrested.

Inside there was an old digital camera and a pack of printed photos.

When the agent shone a flashlight on them, her hand trembled involuntarily.

They were photos of Dona, hundreds of photos, but all were taken from the same angle, through the round eye of the peephole in the door or some hidden crack.

The photos captured everything.

Adona crying, curled up in a fetal position, staring in horror at the door, eating rice with dirty hands, scratching the wall.

On the back of each photo, the date and time were written in careful handwriting, along with brief comments.

Day 142, the subject shows humility.

Day 315, attempt at prayer.

Day 820, full acceptance.

Ogawa not only detained her, he observed her.

He kept a diary of the destruction of the human personality, enjoying each stage of its downfall, like a scientist enjoys an experiment with a laboratory mouse.

He was there behind the door, breathing the same air almost every day, listening to their cries and recording their pain with the camera.

When Ogawa was transferred to the patrol boat, he suddenly stopped resisting.

He looked at the officer holding the bag with the photographs and a faint, creepy smile appeared on his face.

“Do you think you’ve saved her?” she asked in a low voice, looking directly into the policeman’s eyes.

You only took the shell.

His mind has remained there in the darkness with me.

She will never truly leave that room.

The boat turned around and headed at full speed towards the coast, cutting through the black waves.

Behind them, in the darkness of the sea, lay an empty boat, full of evidence of madness, and ahead awaited the port, where the news of the discovery of the photographs would turn the kidnapping case into something much more terrible.

Inspector Sato did not yet know that in the pocket of Ogawa’s raincoat there was another piece of evidence, the key to a bank safe deposit box whose contents would make even experienced psychiatrists shudder.

On October 25, 2019, at 9 a.

m.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »