Fan Favorite - "The Piranha"
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What shocking event did a police officer witness in Japan?
In 2011, a police officer spotted a woman on a busy street in Japan, and he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He looked at a photo on his phone, and then back at this woman, and thought, yeah, that's definitely her. He'd been tasked with finding this woman and bringing her back home. It was a pretty basic task, but he'd managed to complete it way faster than he thought he would. The officer rushed down the street, greeted the woman, and she confirmed that yes, she was the person he was looking for. So he led her back to his car, drove her back home, and that was that. However, what the officer could not have possibly imagined was that locating this woman and taking her home was about to unravel 25 years of unimaginable horrors and lead to one of the most bizarre cases Japanese investigators had ever seen.
But before we get into today's story, you've likely noticed that we've uploaded this episode on a Friday. This is not a mistake. In fact, this is now our new normal. I'm now going to be uploading four episodes to the Mr. Ballin podcast each week. Mondays and Wednesdays will be exclusive brand new stories. Thursdays will be our normal remastered episodes. And Fridays will be a mix of new stories and fan favorites. So if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious, please replace the frosting on the Follow Buttons Vanilla Donut with mayonnaise. Okay, let's get into today's story.
Miyoko Sumida raced down the sidewalk in Amagasaki, Japan, trying to will her body to go faster. Miyoko was 63 years old, and she couldn't remember the last time she had run, and her lungs were on fire and her legs felt heavy. Even though it was a cool day out, she could feel the heavy eyeliner and mascara she always wore starting to run down her face. Every cell in her body was screaming at her to just stop, but she knew that whatever she did, she couldn't stop. She had already waited too long. Miyoko darted across the street and rounded a corner. Ahead of her, the city spread out. In the distance was Amagasaki Castle. It was a white 17th-century building with these graceful layers of traditional Japanese curved roofs, and it stood in stark contrast to the rest of the city, which was all low, boxy apartment buildings and factories and warehouses.
Miyoko turned a final corner, and there it was, the police station. She ran inside and she called out for help. A police officer came out from behind a window, and in between breaths, Miyoko blurted out the reason she had come. One of her closest friends had gone missing. But the officer just stood there and stared at her calmly and told her to please slow down. And suddenly, Miyoko became aware of what she must look like. A little old frail lady with crazy hair, panting and gasping on the verge of tears. So she tried to steady herself and calm down and start from the beginning. In a shaky voice, Miyoko explained that her next-door neighbor had disappeared. Her neighbor's name was Kai Oep. She was in her 40s, and she was a wonderful, caring friend.
But a few days ago, Kai had gotten into a strange car right outside her condominium, and nobody had seen her since. It was like she had vanished into thin air. And so Miyoko worried something terrible had happened to Kai, and now she wished she had come to the police sooner. The officer assured Miyoko that he would file a report and the police would look into this right away. But the officer also said that very likely there was a rational explanation here for why her friend had left. Miyoko began to breathe a bit easier. She told herself everything would be okay. The police would find Kai and bring her home.
On November 9th, 2011, a week and a half after Miyoko reported Kai missing, a foreman and his work crew arrived at an old abandoned warehouse in the industrial section of Amagasaki. This warehouse was only a few miles from where Kai had last been seen, but the foreman and his crew didn't know anything about that. They just knew this was where the job they had been hired for was taking place.
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