44 Days Of Hell – The Murder Of Junko Furuta

Junko Furuta (Furuta Junko, November 22, 1972 – January 4, 1989) was a 17-year-old Japanese high school student who was abducted, tortured, raped, and murdered in the late 1980s. Her murder case was named the Concrete-encased high school girl murder case Joshikōsei konkurīto-zume satsujin-jiken)due to the state of her discovered body in a concrete drum filled with 208 liters of concrete.

On November 25, 1988, four boys abducted Furuta, a third-year high school student from Misato, Saitama Prefecture, and held her captive for over 40 days in a house in the Ayase district of Adachi, Tokyo, owned by the parents of one of the boys, a 17-year-old by the name of Jō, who was later given the surname Kamisaku. Furuta was a student at Yashio-Minami High School and she had been kidnapped shortly after leaving school.

In order to avoid any concern over her abduction, the perpetrators forced Furuta to call her parents and tell them that she would be staying at a friend’s house for a while. Over the course of her confinement, Furuta was repeatedly raped, beaten, and tortured by her four captors, until ultimately they killed her. The parents of Kamisaku were present for at least a part of the time that Furuta was held captive, and though she pleaded with them for help, they did not intervene, later claiming that they feared their son too much to do so.

The killers hid her corpse in a 208-litre oil drum filled with concrete; they disposed of the drum in a tract of reclaimed land in Kōtō, Tokyo.

The boys were arrested and tried as adults; but, because of Japanese handling of crimes committed by juveniles, their identities were concealed by the court.

For his participation in the crime, Kamisaku served eight years in a juvenile prison before he was released, in August 1999. In July 2004, he was arrested for assaulting an acquaintance, whom he believed to be luring a girlfriend away from him, and allegedly bragged about his earlier infamy. Kamisaku was sentenced to seven years in prison for the beating.

In July 1990, a lower court sentenced the leader to seventeen years in prison, one accomplice to a four- to six-year term, one accomplice to a three- to four-year term, and another accomplice to an indefinite five- to ten-year term. The leader and the first two of the three appealed their rulings. The higher court gave more severe sentences to the three appealing parties. The presiding judge, Ryūji Yanase, said that the court did so because of the nature of the crime, the effect on the victim's family, and the effects of the crime on society. The leader received a twenty-year sentence, the second highest possible sentence after life imprisonment. Of the two appealing accomplices, the one that originally got four to six years received a five- to nine-year term, and the other had his sentence upgraded to a five- to seven-year term.

Furuta's parents were dismayed by the sentences received by their daughter's killers, and enjoined a civil suit against the parents of the boy in whose home the crimes were committed.

DAY 1: November 22, 1988: Kidnapped

Kept captive in house, and posed as one of boy’s girlfriend

Raped (over 400 times in total)

Forced to call her parents and tell them she had run away

Starved and malnutrition

Fed cockroaches to eat and urine to drink

Forced to masturbate

Forced to strip in front of others

Burned with cigarette lighters and set off fireworks in her ears, mouth, vagina

Foreign objects inserted into her vagina/anus including a still lit light-bulb

DAY 11: December 1, 1988: Severely beat up countless times

Face held against concrete ground and jumped on

Hands tied to ceiling and body used as a punching bag until her damaged internal organs made blood run from her mouth

Nose filled with so much blood that she can only breath through her mouth

Dumbbells dropped onto her stomach

Vomited when tried to drink water (her stomach couldn’t accept it)

Tried to escape and punished by cigarette burning on arms

Flammable liquid poured on her feet and legs, then lit on fire

Bottle inserted into her anus, causing injury

DAY 20: December10, 1988: Unable to walk properly due to severe leg burns

Beat with bamboo sticks

Fireworks inserted into anus and lit

Hands smashed by weights and fingernails kracked

Beaten with golf club

Cigarettes inserted into vagina and forced to drink her own urine as they laughed

Beaten with iron rods repeatedly

Winter; forced outside to sleep in balcony

Skewers of grilled chicken inserted into her vagina and anus, causing bleeding.

And yet she’d almost escaped. One time she reached the telephone—but one of the boys caught her just in time and ended the call for help. They punished her by taunting her with a candle flame and finally dousing her legs in lighter fluid and set her on fire, as punishment for trying to run away. She went into convulsions; the boys would later say that they thought she was faking the seizure. They set her on fire again, then put it out. She survived this round.