Night Prowler Assaults

The **Night Prowler assaults** were a series of serial murders in Kyoto committed by a mysterious assailant known as Night Prowler, a person who wanders around at night. The victims were all young women in their mid-twenties, all stabbed at the back using the same knife as the murder weapon every Tuesday beginning from 29 December 2015. After committing his crime, Night Prowler would leave a crumpled piece of torn paper on each of the victims' mouth.

With all first three papers uncovered, it would lead to the words "*Night Prowler*", taking inspiration from the character from the horror video game *Screaming Castle*. However, the fourth incident was a different and unique case according to criminologist Hideo Himura, perplexing the Kyoto Prefectural Police with its inconsistency from the other three cases, including divergence from its Tuesday pattern occurrence, leaving the murder weapon on the victim, and the victim being able to contact the police before her death, which the other three victims were unable to do.

Later, when the perpetrator was found and cornered into confession, he stated that the ultimate motive behind his crimes was an apparent curiosity on how applying happenings in the virtual world would be like in the real world.

## Cases

### First and Second Incidents

On 29 December 2015, a 23-year-old college student named Mai Kawaguchi was discovered in a forest in Kyoto with a 15-cm stab wound on her back. A week later on 5 January 2016, Shiori Yamano, 21 years old, was found in an unnamed children's park with a 15-cm stab wound at the back, identical to the first victim's. Moreover, in both cases, a piece of crumpled paper was placed in each of the victims' mouth, with some undecodable messages written.

At this point, investigators became wary of the random Tuesday assaults of women in their mid-twenties. As the news spread all over the city, a journalist and former policeman voiced his deductions, saying that the murders were unlikely to be a grudge but more of a bizarre murder on female twentysomethings, committed by a person with an understanding of human anatomy. He then held a seminar for young women and advised them not to go to unpopular places and, if unavoidable, to bring security buzzers and flashlights for protection and safety.

Due to the paranoia and scare caused by the two incidents, Eito University students Akemi Kijima, Takako Matsuno, and Chihiro Shibuya consulted their criminology professor Himura about the random assaults as reported by the news, despite having some information concealed by the media such as the signature message left behind by the culprit to avoid copycat killers. As a precautionary advice, he told his students to be wary and vigilant of their surroundings, especially when going home at night.

### Third Incident

Following his Tuesday pattern, Night Prowler committed a third murder on the night of 12 January, stabbing Chisa Mizuo to death with the same murder weapon. The police, presumed to have also done so with the first two incidents, contact criminologist Hideo Himura along with mystery writer Alice Arisugawa to aid in the investigation. After piecing the three pieces of paper placed in the three victims' mouths — with the third paper stating the words "*Night Prowler*" — they figured that the three messages were taken exactly from the opening animation of the game *Screaming Castle*.

This gave them a lead that the culprit has some knowledge about the video game. To further have a grasp of the game's storyline, the police ask Alice to play the game. Meanwhile, Himura and the Investigation First Division, including Hisashi Nabeshima, Nozomi Ono, and Keiichi Sakashita, interrogate Simbalinx, the producer of the video game. However, the team was met with quite adamant and furious clients, after the media and the police had claimed the game to be the cause behind the serial murders, plummeting their sales to a downfall.

### Fourth Incident

Apparently shortening the pattern by "three [*recte* four] days" as described by Nabeshima, a fourth victim was found on a rainy 16 January night. Yukie Ōwada, a 25-year-old freelance writer, was allegedly murdered by Night Prowler, evidenced by the piece of paper in her mouth, in which was written "*Game Over*". Alice and the police, therefore, believe this incident to be the final murder in the serial assaults. However, Himura, believing that the case was far from over, felt a sense of inconsistency in the fourth incident compared to the previous three cases.

#### Inconsistencies

In general, the fourth incident was unexpected by the police and even Himura himself, primarily because, first and foremost, the crime occurred on a Friday instead of a Tuesday, just three days after the third incident. This led them to believe that Night Prowler shortened the murder by three days. Second, the murder weapon was left plunged on the victim's back, an unusual trait given that Night Prowler never left his knife on the other three victims. This, alongside the message on the victim's mouth reading "*Game Over*", made the investigators believe that it might have been the culprit's final murder. Lastly, the victim had contacted 110 herself and was able to point out three details: that she was *attacked randomly in the street*, *Night Prowler*, and *brown hair*. With this peculiar act, Alice deduced that, after the victim was stabbed, she pretended to be dead, then called the police once the culprit had left. Eight minutes after the call, police arrived at the scene through GPS, but paramedics could not resuscitate her anymore and pronounced her dead. Given with what they could make out from the victim's call, the police set up a perimeter around the scene and questioned all suspicious men with brown hair.

#### Further Investigation

In the end, police efforts failed, as they were unable to catch the true perpetrator, ending only with subduing Sada, the game director from Simbalinx found lurking among the crowd at the location. This apparent failure stained the police's reputation, with the media claiming that the police were always a step behind Night Prowler. Furthermore, after the final murder, there were some netizens who associated the assaults with the extremist group Shangri-La Crusade, due to the unorthodox method of the killer.

Sakashita and other inspectors informed the victim's recently-hospitalised brother, Eiji Ōwada, about his sister's demise at the hands of Night Prowler. Meanwhile, Nabeshima, Ono, Himura, and Alice visited Yukie's friend Reimi Komuro to inform her of the incident. Later, the Investigation First Division teamed up with the Forensics Division to search Yukie's residence for possible leads. They discovered that the victim had an organised and systematic way of living, evidenced by a journal meticulously filled out everyday until 13 January (two days before the incident), the day the victim returned to Kyoto from a business trip upon finding out about her brother's accident and hospitalisation.

With the help of Alice unexpectedly smelling a faint bird faeces scent and discovering a trace of a bird cage on a cabinet in her house, Himura thought of the possibility of Yukie having had a pet bird, which Komuro was able to confirm. Sakashita then searched for the bird cage and successfully found it, merely thrown out from the window. With these clues, Himura finally pieced the mystery and solved the case.

## Resolution

Himura figured that the fourth victim was unique largely because it was a suicide; Yukie had stabbed herself to death, making it not impossible to have Night Prowler escape the perimeter on the night of the incident, as there was no killer in the first place. For that night alone, Yukie was Night Prowler, but the real culprit behind the first three cases was her brother Eiji.

After she had returned to Kyoto and went to her brother's room because of the latter's accident, she had discovered the paraphernalia that he had used, including photographs of his victims, their apparent activities, and, most especially, his murder weapon in the form of a knife. Greatly bereaved by what she had discovered, she made up her mind and took matters into her own hands, utilising his brother's hospitalisation to his advantage that shall become his alibi.

Not wanting the police to find her brother as Night Prowler, she discarded the evidence in his room and took the knife. She then went to her house and set her pet bird, a java sparrow, free because she did not want it to starve to death after she was to die, then threw the bird cage out the window. At some point later, a truck driver had witnessed her walking slowly in the rain with a seemingly grieving expression on her face. Upon her arrival at the location which was to become the crime scene, she stabbed herself at the back, and, a few moments later, she called the police and told them the three details to mislead them about the killer, before succumbing to her death.

Himura and Alice visited Eiji at the hospital to confront him once and for all. After initially rejecting their claims that he was Night Prowler, he later finally confessed his crime, merely wanting to experience the convergence of fiction and reality, as was in the horror slasher video game. He was later arrested by the police for murder.

## Victims

* Mai Kawaguchi
* Shiori Yamano
* Chisa Mizuo
* Yukie Ōwada

## Trivia

* According to the report on Yukie's death during a meeting at the police headquarters and Sakashita's statement that Yukie came back from Tokyo on 13 January (Wednesday), three days before the incident, Yukie died on 16 January 2016. Nabeshima mistakenly said earlier that the culprit had "shortened the cycle by three days" instead of four days after the 12 January incident.

## Notes

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 As per the news article from the episode, the first victim was supposedly murdered and discovered on 5 January 2016. However, this would mean that the second victim would have died on 12 January, and the third victim on 19 January. However, the drama states that the fourth victim had died on 16 January. Therefore, this would make it impossible for the third murder to have occurred three days after the supposed fourth murder. Following the canon material, this means that the first incident occurred on 29 December 2015 to be consistent with the every-Tuesday pattern of Night Prowler's assaults.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 *Screaming Castle Murder Case*