[SPEAKER_01]: Can we talk 7-ounce?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can we talk about 7-ounce?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
[SPEAKER_01]: We can all use a friend at the very least someone to talk to, from time to time, even those of us who can't stand anyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Miss and throats may need it most, in fact.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have to be a huge deal, a big commitment with unwanted expectations, just a bit of time with someone who understands, or at the very least is willing to pretend.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't care how down and at you are, you can be suicidal even, and in that case,
[SPEAKER_01]: to anyone, but to kill you to try?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, in this case, who would, so, maybe we should talk about this later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Dark Topic on your host, Jack Luna.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a true crime happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: The suicide scout.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro, Shiraishin, was born October 9, 1990, in Tokyo, Japan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Growing up Takahiro was babyed and coddled by his parents.
[SPEAKER_01]: His mother named him Takahiro for its meaning of prosperity, nobility, and fastness.
[SPEAKER_01]: But her son would quickly become limited, a comparison to his peers, with her coddling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Reports say that he had a normal comfortable childhood, but what do reports really know and where do such reports come from?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can't it be said that because there is no record of anything happening to a person that nothing happened to them?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we fine growing up just as long as no criminal reports can be found later on regarding the treatment of us?
[SPEAKER_01]: Something was wrong with Takahiro.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could tell you that he was reclusive.
[SPEAKER_01]: The boy has he grew up, would avoid social situations and lock himself in his room to play video games.
[SPEAKER_01]: This in the early 2000s, which wasn't unusual for many young people at the time, or in this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in Japan there are expectations of kids that statistically far exceed most of the world, and Takahiro's parents had little control over their son.
[SPEAKER_01]: Though they would a desperation trip
[SPEAKER_01]: in order to get them added there, and he'd come out like, my game's not working again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Takahiro, maybe you should be working on your studies.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro, normally quite gentle when getting his way could blow up.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd scream in his mother, quote,
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro would often run away and claim that he had thoughts of killing himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Later Takahiro would share that he did this so his parents would pay more attention to him, yield more to his wishes, and give him more allowance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes he would leave his laptop open on sites about suicide, or go to bed with a rope beside his head.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had no intention of suicide, and he just wanted his parents to baby him.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a young teenager, Takahiro would play a game with his friends called the Blackout Challenge.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is where people choke each other out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to play this game with my friends too.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd usually take a huge bomb hit first.
[SPEAKER_01]: And probably not a great sign the Takahiro also enjoyed this game.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he was more into the prospect of someone dying than I was.
[SPEAKER_01]: Personally, I liked the dreams.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could live a lifetime in those Blackouts.
[SPEAKER_01]: I rude awakening, but that's what happens when you grow up with a bunch of scummy homies, or as we prefer to be called, scummy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro's parents split up at some point and his mother left home, it said she was provided money by the father and told not to worry about their son, he would handle him and make him a man.
[SPEAKER_01]: With this perceived abandonment, Takahiro grew some, to stay with him, for his mother and I think women in general, considering how he treated them going forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: A boy needs his mother and she suddenly wasn't there.
[SPEAKER_01]: After graduating from high school, Takahiro started spending time in the seedier districts of Tokyo, playing in the arcades and gambling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually he was recruited as a scout for a prostitution ring.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro was good-looking and could be used to attract girls to the business.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would use his skills and technology to find women and lure them into the club's or cafes via the internet, and there they would be recruited to work on the sex work industry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro would receive a finder's fee for his part.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was easy money, though Takahira wasn't great at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He liked to lure depressed girls, and depressed girls weren't great at charming men in the spending their money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most scats would gaslight or trick these girls about the type of job they are being recruited for, but in some cases like in Takahira's, they would date them to convince the girls to work at these underground scumbag Tokyo sex clubs.
[SPEAKER_01]: The recruiter or scout's job was to find attractive girls, find their vulnerabilities and weaknesses, and then exploit them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro, like I mentioned, wasn't great at the gig, but he did manage to stick around as a sex scout throughout most of his 20s.
[SPEAKER_01]: He got in deep enough to be arrested in February of 2017 for his work in the sex trade and spent some time in jail.
[SPEAKER_01]: Upon his release, the now 27-year-old was unemployable and still living with his father.
[SPEAKER_01]: He considered the option of scamming people that involved setting up a fake company and asking people to invest in it, but that was too difficult to set up for the lazy-tacket hero.
[SPEAKER_01]: He eventually settled on what he knew, but this time he'd work for himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea wasn't far from the sex scouting.
[SPEAKER_01]: The plan was to target vulnerable girls on Twitter who were suffering from mental health issues and expressing the desire to kill themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would string to press an impressionable younger girls along and then siphon money off of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: or so this was the plan initially.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro created five Twitter accounts for this purpose, including one he called, at Hanging Pro.
[SPEAKER_01]: His avatar was of him with his wrist slit and a new surround his neck.
[SPEAKER_01]: His face was distorted somewhat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro wanted to connect to a suicidal Japanese girls, of which there were many apparently, and pretend to be interested in them and wanting to help them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro would mirror whatever the girls were going through with fake stories, claiming he could relate.
[SPEAKER_01]: The handsome and charming Takahiro was able to get many girls quickly to trust him.
[SPEAKER_01]: A gentle, big brother type he was, whose own personal type for whatever reason had always been troubled young women.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd guess the reason would be that he was sadistic and enjoyed being around the pain and suddenly agitating the pain of others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro met his first victim, Mizuki Miura, 21 years old, on Twitter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mizuki was dealing with bullying at work and feelings of insecurity.
[SPEAKER_01]: She wasn't necessarily suicidal, but was certainly vulnerable.
[SPEAKER_01]: She had a boyfriend a year younger, who was no match to match the charms of 27-year-old lover boy Takahiro.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro started messaging her on Twitter and told her everything she wanted to hear, and soon he and Mizuki bonded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually Takahiro told her about his desire to have a loft apartment and was able to convince the girl to lend him $4,500 as proof of funds to secure the apartment.
[SPEAKER_01]: apartment number 205 that he found in his district near his father's house was very small, only 150 square feet like a tiny home.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a studio with a bathroom, a kitchenette, with a tiny sink in it, a mini fridge, a single burner stove top, and a loft with a ladder up to it and a railing across.
[SPEAKER_01]: After messaging with Uzuki for a while, he invited her to his apartment with the promise of helping her with her suicide, as he claimed he had helped many others.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not clear if she understood that he wanted to kill her for her, or if she thought that maybe it was just about talking her through getting better and not wanting to commit suicide in longer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some reports say that he had promised to kill himself with his victims, which was probably a major draw for someone suicidal, not dying alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro gave his first victim here, specific instructions.
[SPEAKER_01]: She abruptly quit her high-paying job at a logistics company as a result, and she wrote a note to her family telling them she was leaving with her family as well as her boyfriend.
[SPEAKER_01]: She said in the note, under no circumstances where they'd come looking for, she didn't want to be found.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her note was short, and she simply told them she wanted to live on her own and was running away, and she left the nun her desk at home.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mizuki then left her house and waited for more instructions from Takahiro via her cell phone.
[SPEAKER_01]: She received a text message, it was told to meet Takahiro at a train station, but before she did, she was told to throw her phone into the ocean.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mizuki decided as she was already near the station that she didn't want to go to the ocean, so she hit her phone in a restroom stall in the station, thinking she could possibly come back and get it if she needed it, and this was later found.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro meets her at the train station and takes her to his apartment on August 23rd of 2017.
[SPEAKER_01]: He originally wanted to keep this girl around so he could get more of her money, but he sensed that she was becoming less interested in him as time went on, and he found out that she actually had a boyfriend.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he would later claim that he was worried that this boyfriend knew about him, that this boyfriend would come looking for, and he decided he had to kill Mizuki.
[SPEAKER_01]: He offered her alcohol at some point, they chatted, they got to know each other quite well,
[SPEAKER_01]: He lunge towards her, started molesting her, raped her likely, and choked her until she was unconscious.
[SPEAKER_01]: He tied her hands and feet and put a rope around her neck, holding the rope he climbed the ladder to his loft, and pulled her up to a standing position.
[SPEAKER_01]: He then pulled harder until his victim's feet were off the floor, and she was hanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: He secured the rope to the railing and climbed down from the loft, and his victim comes alive at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: He sits there for 30 minutes and watches the show he then says, and this is what he does with all of his victims, ties him up to the loft after he knocks them unconscious and watches them come back to life and then die hanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once he was finally dead, he released her from the railing and took the girl into the bathroom where he proceeded to dismember her body.
[SPEAKER_01]: His first decision was to decapitate her to drain most of the blood down the drain, this works somewhat.
[SPEAKER_01]: The smell was something that he never experienced before in his life, but he knew he couldn't stop, he needed to get this job done.
[SPEAKER_01]: He filled the tub with water once he drained as much of the blood as he could from the stump of her neck, and then removed her arms, and cut her in half.
[SPEAKER_01]: By this time he had a major migraine, he later said, and he was exhausted.
[SPEAKER_01]: He couldn't continue so he passed out.
[SPEAKER_01]: When he woke up, he dismembered the rest of the body.
[SPEAKER_01]: He cut the flesh from this first victim's bones, wrapping it all up in plastic and newspaper, put it in a trash bag, and disposed of it in the apartment trash bin outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: This along with the guts.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't sure at this point what to do with the bones and the head, but his main concern at the moment was the smell which was really surprising to him how bad it was.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro began to research online, had to take care of the smell, and he found lots of information from bleach to cat litter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It took him two days to fully dismember her body, because he had to take breaks to get away from the smell.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the worst with the internal organs, especially the stomach he was fucking with all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was cutting into the stomach, he did everything wrong this first time around.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would later say that each of his victims smelled differently.
[SPEAKER_01]: After removing the flesh from the bones, he started to cook it.
[SPEAKER_01]: To try to remove the smell or mass the smell with the smells of cooking.
[SPEAKER_01]: People in the apartment building are complaining about the smell by now.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has a exhaust fan running constantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes he'd add curry to the pot and make it into like a Chinese stew smell.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, the neighbors were like, what the fuck?
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy's really bad at cooking.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they were really too polite to say anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Directly to them, they thought he was just a bad cook.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro, he claimed later that he cooked the flesh as a way to deal and rise the rot smell and shrink the flesh for easier disposal.
[SPEAKER_01]: But his phone when they'd reveal searches for precautions when eating human flesh.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's cut the music.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shall we?
[SPEAKER_01]: I know it's Star Wars, level production, quality, I'm throwing on here.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's cut the ship that's cut the music.
[SPEAKER_01]: He finished cutting up his victim.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no need for me to bother you with the background there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe on this episode, you're going to hear a short story that I wrote that has to do somewhat with suicide in the end, stay tuned for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: After cooking the bones to remove the flesh, he placed the bones neatly in a box or a kid coolers actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he would put the skull in there, the bones in there, and then take the cooked meat and the organs in garbage bags, slowly from his apartment over time.
[SPEAKER_01]: and put them into the trash for them to be hauled away.
[SPEAKER_01]: The coolers were the smallest possible place to get put all the rest of the remains, and then he would cover them with cat litter to cover the rest of the smells that were still coming off of this poorly done job.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have like tattered flesh on skeletons, and
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, skulls with hair and stuff still stuck to them in these boxes that are being filled with cat litter.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew he couldn't do this forever, so he decided he could get a storage unit, but he never really got around doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tucker here is very lazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had another issue to deal with almost immediately after killing Mizuki, her boyfriend Shogo, Nishinaka, who was 20 years old, he was looking for, and he was snooping through her Twitter account and managed to track down Takahiro.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gets a hold of him, and Takahiro says, hey, sounds like you're going for a left to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's Shogo if he wants to hang out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shogo also suffers from mental health issues, and Shaltainio Takahiro would help him, so he agrees to meet him at the train station.
[SPEAKER_01]: This a week after his girlfriend's murder.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro tells Shogo to throw his phone into the ocean.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once Shogo is in the apartment, he is rendered unconscious, and Takahiro covers his mouth with duct tape, tapes his hands together, and wraps a rope around his neck.
[SPEAKER_01]: He then takes the rope up to the ladder to the loft.
[SPEAKER_01]: He struggles lifting Shogo and realizes it's much easier with a female, a girl, a young woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, no disrespect, it's just habit, but he manages to get him to his feet by now Shogo is awake and he's thrashing around, but Tucker Hero has him hanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: He climbs back down from the loft and, although Shogo is not his usual choice, he enjoys watching him struggling to get free.
[SPEAKER_01]: 30 minutes later, he is cold to the touch, and in case he's in confusion with the 30 minutes,
[SPEAKER_01]: To keep them alive, all throughout the process it continued to enjoy them being slightly revived and then going to death and revive.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, walking up to them, grabbing their legs, lifting them up, taking the tension off the neck until they start breathing again and then dropping them again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Techie here, a reaches him to show goes pocket and finds a small amount of cash and puts it in his own pocket.
[SPEAKER_01]: He also checks for the phone at or not finding it, he's satisfied that it's in the ocean.
[SPEAKER_01]: He expects people to think that the two had possibly run away together.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what people think for some time.
[SPEAKER_01]: He moves, she'll go into the bathtub, but before he begins to swim right now, he makes himself some dinner.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm assuming he a Japanese that night.
[SPEAKER_01]: A week and a half later, Takahiro is standing over another body when someone knocks on the door.
[SPEAKER_01]: He looks through the people and sees this woman that he had been dating casually over the last few weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's not suicidal.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is an actual girlfriend of his.
[SPEAKER_01]: The girl walks into his apartment and the smell hits her.
[SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't remember his apartment having this smell.
[SPEAKER_01]: The girl wants to use the restroom, but Takahiro stops her and admits he helped a person from Twitter commit suicide and has started to dismember the body.
[SPEAKER_01]: This girl, she knew that he was into helping people on Twitter that were suicidal, but she had no idea that it had gone this far.
[SPEAKER_01]: The girlfriend is shocked and tells Taki Hero that hey, I can't be around this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, but I think we should break up then she gives him some money and says this is it for for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm splitting with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Taki Hero looks at the window.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a drizzly day and
[SPEAKER_01]: tears drip from his face, then he heads back to the bathroom and being slashed around with the corpse again.
[SPEAKER_01]: This girlfriend attack arrows did not call the police, which is unfortunate.
[SPEAKER_01]: The killings occurred from October 22, 2017, and opened window of less than two months that she felt, smelled, a draft from, but failed to help close.
[SPEAKER_01]: The so-called Twitter killer collects the bones and skulls of nine victims over this short span.
[SPEAKER_01]: He hangs them from his loft, sits down to watch them struggle.
[SPEAKER_01]: He then chaps up the bodies in his bathtub, takes their internal organs out to the fucking dumpster.
[SPEAKER_01]: He cooks off the meat in the kitchen, not very well.
[SPEAKER_01]: He puts the dish articulated remains and coolers fill the cat litter to hide and cover some smell from the flesh still clanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: He does all of this in a tiny home, in an apartment, a 150 square foot apartment.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was dragging internal organs out to a dumpster outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: People were smelling all of this, but again, very polite people and didn't say anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had started to near the end, but I mean this all happened very quickly within two months, nine victims, many believe that Takahiro kept choice cuts of his victims and was living.
[SPEAKER_01]: off of eating.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wouldn't be during this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't have any money except for what he would get from his victims.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahir was very particular about his victims and later stated that they had to be high school age or a little bit older as the police would likely assume they were runaways or ended up in a brothel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or in a brothel.
[SPEAKER_01]: They needed to be vulnerable and suffering from some kind of mental health issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hitomi Fujima was a 26-year-old mother in the only victim to be married.
[SPEAKER_01]: She had her daughter when she was 19 and struggled with postpartum depression and her daughter had a developmental disability.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hitomi was looking at Twitter for someone she could relate to, and that's when she was lured to Takahiro's apartment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hanako Sarashina was a 19-year-old university student who met with Takahiro after meeting him on Twitter.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was excited to have someone to talk to, as she was one to struggle with her appearance in self-esteem.
[SPEAKER_01]: She paid for their dinner and the cab rides, to all the activities they did together.
[SPEAKER_01]: The girl was really enjoying her time with Takahiro and suggested they go to an arcade or get some dessert as she was feeling much better after one particular day spent with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: She ended up that night having drinks with him and then ended up.
[SPEAKER_01]: hanging out far too long by the end of a rope and then spend some time in the bathtub before ending up in a cooler filled with kitty litter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nat Sumi Kubo was a 17-year-old student who was struggling with feeling good about herself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends would describe her as the most considerate person they knew.
[SPEAKER_01]: A couple of men I often receive.
[SPEAKER_01]: She too would be lured to Takashiro's apartment.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was last seen being carried in a bag.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kazumi, Maryama, I was a 25-year-old convenience store clerk.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was really struggling with her anxiety and rarely left her room only to go to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her family thought she was getting better when she was lured to Tucker Heroes apartment.
[SPEAKER_01]: These murders all happen in a span of two months and is not a whole lot of information on them individually.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just kind of running through them.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Tucker Heroes dismembered his first victim, it took him two days.
[SPEAKER_01]: But by the fifth victim, it was taking him two hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would meet his victims on Twitter and arrange an in-person meeting where they would talk about him helping them commit suicide for the most part.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then they would meet him at the train station, but never approach him was the rule.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead he would have them call, give them instructions how to get to his apartment, and they would be ordered to throw their phone in the ocean along the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: That way he would not be seen with any of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: In his apartment, he had everything waiting for them, rope, a saw, air freshener, and cat litter.
[SPEAKER_01]: The way Nakh-the-Met was giving them whiskey with sleeping pills and tranquilizers in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's most of the time, sometimes he'd straight up just attack and strangle to unconsciousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And each time he would rape the victim, save the one man, the young man, show-go, who he killed at an necessity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some reports say that he would sleep with them while they had the rope around their neck hanging
[SPEAKER_01]: and when they tried to fight, he'd be like, ah, ah, ah, and he'd run up to the top of the loft and yank on the rope like, you know, ringing a bell.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some he raped while they were hanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: He really enjoyed the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: He liked to watch his victims get volced while they were hanging, swaying from side to side.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was killing from the start once a week.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's all, it was still wasn't enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was watching violent rape videos.
[SPEAKER_01]: He found on the internet.
[SPEAKER_01]: After his first murder, he became addicted to rape and resistance.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was an unidentified female age between 15 and 26 that was later found in his apartment.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was 15-year-old Korea, Ishihara.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was a high school first-year student, and there was a final victim here, Ayako Tamera, 23 years old from Tokyo.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was the first to be identified by authorities the last to be killed.
[SPEAKER_01]: With Ayoko, he changed things up a bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was beginning to take pictures of his victims at this point and the Ziele photos found mainly of her private parts.
[SPEAKER_01]: After he confirmed she was dead, he had later down raped dead body and taken a bunch of pictures of her.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ayoko's older brother received a call from a psychiatric group home where Ayoko had been staying.
[SPEAKER_01]: He rushed to the Psychiatric Center, thinking, surely there were mistaken.
[SPEAKER_01]: He went to a room finding everything in order and her bed made.
[SPEAKER_01]: There, he also found a note she left beside her computer saying, quote, I'm sorry, everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: My brother, I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: the brother then called the police to report her missing and said she was likely going to hurt herself, but they brushed him off saying girls run away all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: From psychiatric group homes?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess they will if they get the opportunity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who cares?
[SPEAKER_01]: Big brother was beside himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both their parents were gone and Ayoko had no friends, so where could she be?
[SPEAKER_01]: She was really dependent on him as her older brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knew her password for a Twitter account
[SPEAKER_01]: Her username was, at, I love croquettes.
[SPEAKER_01]: He logged in.
[SPEAKER_01]: In her last entry, I go to wrote.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to die, but I'm afraid to do it alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: If anyone wants to die with me, please DM me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a 23-year-old from Tokyo.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be ideal if you had a car.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, quote.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Japan, it's not unusual for a user to have more than one Twitter account.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, around the world, it probably isn't, but especially in Japan, apparently.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of those accounts is usually used for personal use.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another to follow a celebrity crush.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is with girls, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then another for deep dark thoughts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is known as a Yamiyaka account.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's best to keep your personal thoughts, your most depraves shit to yourself anywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in Japan, especially where there's so many expectations on you to behave a certain way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the Yamayaka account is something that students use as a way to vent.
[SPEAKER_01]: That place to talk about their feelings with their judgment and to feel a sense of purpose or just someone find people to talk to, you know, that are going through the same shit, but not have to reveal themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: A burner account, all nine of the victims that ended up missing had a Yaki Yaka account.
[SPEAKER_01]: and they were all talking to at hanging pro at one time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another account at want to die, which were two of Takahiro's accounts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Aiko's brother posted on his sister's account on October 23rd, 2017, saying he was her brother and that she had gotten missing and that she had been looking for someone to die with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does anyone here know anything about this kind of shit?
[SPEAKER_01]: He's asking to Twitter?
[SPEAKER_01]: After further searches over her accounts, Ayoka's brother finds her tweets and diams with both of Takahiro's accounts, at one to die posted they could die together and urge her to contact at hanging pro.
[SPEAKER_01]: The brother message at hanging pro, pleading with whoever at hanging pro was not to go through with her and leave a sister alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: When he finally saw the green check confirming the user had read his message, it immediately went gray, meaning the user had turned off read receipts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he thought to himself, why would he do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: The brother then received a reply to his post asking for help.
[SPEAKER_01]: This came from a user named Yumi.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this girl told Ayoka's brother that she had met with At Hanging Pro at one point.
[SPEAKER_01]: But after talking with him, she had a strange vibe and deserted the meeting.
[SPEAKER_01]: She could tell that At Hanging Pro wasn't really interested in her story and his only interest was in hanging someone.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all he was talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: So she had a man who's to escape.
[SPEAKER_01]: She told Ayako's brother about his strains and instructions to write a note telling your family not to try to find her, to throw her phone on the ocean and to meet him at the train station.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to follow his instructions from there, this girl Yumi told Ayako's brother that at hanging pro tech hero wanted to know how much saving she had and how much money she made.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, from here, the brother of Ayoko, the final victim there, he sets up Takahiro.
[SPEAKER_01]: He asks this girl, hey, if he contacts you again, can you agree to meet him and I'll go.
[SPEAKER_01]: She agrees, and on October 31st, Halloween of 2017, Takahiro is lured to the train station.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's feeling uneasy and messages you may and says, hey, I changed my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to meet you here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Contact me again, and we can go to the apartment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Police who are waiting, followed him to his apartment, they knock on the door.
[SPEAKER_01]: Taka here opens it up, and the smell is what greets them first.
[SPEAKER_01]: Taka here knows whether they're there, and when asked if he knows where Ayaka is, he calmly points to one of the nine boxes and says, she's in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are nine such coolers on the floor of his small apartment.
[SPEAKER_01]: The scene is over run by forensic investigators who cram in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They find debit cards, IDs, women's persons, some cell phones.
[SPEAKER_01]: They find two kitchen knives that have been used for the cutting.
[SPEAKER_01]: They find scissors for the same reason, the saw, bonding rope, a drill, a blender that all have blood on them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nine severed heads and 240 bones total were packed neatly in the boxes covered in cat litter, a tenth empty box was waiting.
[SPEAKER_01]: With all you may have been dealing with emotionally, helping to take down Taki Hero and the realization of this dark side of humanity and her potential to have ended up in that box, pushed her to take her home life as a result.
[SPEAKER_01]: He got his tenth victim after all, it seems.
[SPEAKER_01]: While in prison waiting for trial, Takahira would do interviews with journalists and authors and would only agree to these interviews if they paid him.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what he's all about getting paid for easy work.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would always start the interview talking about food and would use the money to buy snacks.
[SPEAKER_01]: While he was eating snacks, he just treated it like a little get together.
[SPEAKER_01]: With these interviews, didn't want to talk about what had happened much.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the beginning of COVID when all this was going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahira was obsessed with collecting snacks from his visitors because he never knew
[SPEAKER_01]: He was asked by one interviewer who paid for the interview.
[SPEAKER_01]: How did it feel to do all that?
[SPEAKER_01]: He responded he would get sexually aroused at the side of the dead bodies and by the end he was taking some pictures he wish he had taken more.
[SPEAKER_01]: He talked about the severed heads and how hard it was to break apart a body from the neck up.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had planned to dispose of everything but he never gotten around to it around to that locker and he was kind of bitching about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mattered himself for not having gotten the storage locker.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said he was shocked that he got caught, and he was upset with you me, that she had set him up like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when he heard that she had killed herself, he was like, oh, sweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay, that's all right then.
[SPEAKER_01]: One interviewer asked Takahiro why he had covered his face when he was arrested.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said he instinctively had covered his face when the report is around, because he only wanted to show his face of someone paid him to see his face.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had no intentions of acting innocent during the trial, even though his lawyers said they would fight for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: When asked if he had any concerns about receiving the death penalty, he said he'd research death by hanging and said, that looks pretty painful.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't want to fight during the trial, but he also didn't want to be in pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Though he eventually came around to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I should get a taste of that too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I will do the hanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's joking, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's fucking with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, I've looked into hanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I've heard it's quite painful.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's an expert on what the fuck hanging does to people.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's been hanging, he's hung, hanged, fucking nine people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Controled hanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, his username was at hanging pro.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's just screwing around here.
[SPEAKER_01]: The trial began September 30th of 2017.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was charged with robbery for sexual assault and the murders of eight women.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he was charged with robbery and the murder of one man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Apparently those are two separate charges of the man or a woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was charged with the mutilation and abandonment of nine corpses.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he got a total of 18 charges.
[SPEAKER_01]: During the trial, Takahara looks sluggish and unimpressed of the whole proceeding.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was probably full from everything he was eating.
[SPEAKER_01]: While seated, he would stretch his arms and legs from boredom and crack his knuckles.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many had to take breaks or leave during the gruesome details.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would sit with his eyes closed through this trial.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fat, you know, and happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he'd only been eaten human beings for the past two months.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was nice to, you know, get some good snacks into him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's a little drazzy.
[SPEAKER_01]: His lawyers tried to fight for him, claiming Ali did was help those who wanted to die anyways, according to the Twitter accounts, but in reality, he was a sadistic serial killer.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was constantly looking for another victim and at one point was talking with 37 different accounts.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would be DMing people while he was in the process of dismembering his latest victim in fact.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was clearly not trying to help anyone but himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro, he would say that he felt the trial was a waste of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: The evidence is overwhelming.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do what you're going to do with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: When he finally took the stand, he answered questions from the prosecutors.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would ignore or stay silent when the lawyers ask some questions that he wanted to withhold for the press to get payment for.
[SPEAKER_01]: He shared that eventually he was wrapping a towel around the next of his victims first before putting the news around their head while they were unconscious.
[SPEAKER_01]: He shared that he had initially thought of taking his victims out to the mountains and make it look like they hang themselves out there, but he was kind of lazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he just did at home.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tackahero said in a situation where a person knows are going to be raped, like a sex worker.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's less exciting than a surprise attack on a woman that doesn't know she is going to be raped.
[SPEAKER_01]: The judge asked him if rape was his main motivation for the attacks, and he explained that touching a woman's breasts in a normal state compared to when she's unconscious is way better.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what he said.
[SPEAKER_01]: He shared that the reason why he would knock them out, whether it would be with drugs or by strangling them, was because he didn't want them to be screaming while he was raping them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The judge asked if he had any interest in a relationship with a woman who would not resist or only with a woman who resist it, and Takahiro said, I, at this point, I only want women who resist.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the only thing that will get me off, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: or don't resist it all in the form of being completely passed out.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll take that, but regular shit, I'm not into that anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tack a hero, loved the feeling he got through sex or rape with a woman who was unconscious or tied up.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't even care about their looks or age or anything of this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, he just like, that's his thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Taka here was very interested in answering the questions from the prosecution.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wants to show off.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's proud of what he's done.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's having fun with this.
[SPEAKER_01]: He sees himself as some kind of villain, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: And knows that he's cooked much like,
[SPEAKER_01]: his victims had been, that's funny, Jack.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the one question he takes from his defense attorney was this one, quote, if you had not been arrested, what kind of life do you think you would have had?
[SPEAKER_01]: And tacky here, it closes his eyes and this and says, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I just plan to take the bodies out of my room, bury them in a rental room or in the mountains, terminate the lease on my loft apartment, move out, move into the room or a woman I found on Twitter,
[SPEAKER_01]: Kill her, take the apartment, reset, do it all over again.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all I really wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And quote, so the defense is trying to help him out, and he's like, I don't know, that I just keep doing this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do it better.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahiro's only defense was to blame the government for the murderers because his only intention was to rape them.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the time he was on probation for being a sex scout, like I explained earlier, and if he got caught for the rape, he would go to jail, so he had to kill him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the government's fault for catching me for being a sex scout.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have just been raped in women.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you guys let me, he also blamed Twitter for making it so easy to approach vulnerable people online.
[SPEAKER_01]: When asked if he felt guilty about what he did, tacky a hero set, quo, to be honest, I don't have feelings for the victims.
[SPEAKER_01]: In other cases, I've seen people apologizing to the victims and the families, but in my case, I don't feel anything for the families.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, maybe I feel a little bit for the victims.
[SPEAKER_01]: My first victim, we spent quite a bit of time together, so maybe I feel a little bad there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one had a kid, so I feel bad for the kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then another one I could have used her for money a little longer, so I killed her without getting all her money.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of, not sure why I did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, the other ones, I don't feel anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: And quote.
[SPEAKER_01]: These might be really bad translations, by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a lot of trouble getting really clear information on this case, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Takahira said he felt bad for killing Ayoko on second thought, but only because it led to his rest.
[SPEAKER_01]: As for the others, he didn't even know their names.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the other Twitter accounts, his only male victim, he actually felt proud of because he was able to overpower him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, one thing's wrapped up, Takahiro, he asked one of the journalists to publish an article to announce that he was single and looking for love.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, if you're already publishing articles about me, I'm hoping you could find someone for me and find someone nice and return for my time.
[SPEAKER_01]: His real thought here was that if he sends to death, he can only have visitors that are family and his sense of family had no interest, his mother and father completely abandoned a mirror.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't want anything to do with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're embarrassed, obviously.
[SPEAKER_01]: Since he's only allowed to have visitors that are family once sends to death, he thought, hey, get me married real quick, so I could find someone to bring me some stuff because I'm still hungry here.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the trial, the judge asked Taki Hero if he had anything else to say.
[SPEAKER_01]: Taki Hero said, quote, I have nothing more to say.
[SPEAKER_01]: On December 15th of 2020, the judge stated that the defendant is sentenced to death.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ticket Hero was not phased at all, and his biggest concern was feeling lonely in jail.
[SPEAKER_01]: His defense appealed to sentence, but Ticket Hero withdrew it.
[SPEAKER_01]: On June 27th of 2025, at the age of 34, Ticket Hero Sharashow was executed by hanging at the Tokyo Detention House for the murders of eight women and one man in a two-month killing spree in 2017.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the victim's fathers would say this, quote, personally I wanted him to get a life sentence over which he has no choice but to atone for his wrong doings, rather than give him the death penalty that he clearly wanted.
[SPEAKER_01]: And quote,
[SPEAKER_01]: But he didn't want to do it himself, he was too scared.
[SPEAKER_01]: He found an easy way and just accepting his sentence and not fighting it and eventually we all were left hanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: We never got any real answers as to why he wanted to do this other than it was easy and he liked it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're left hanging like Takahiro and his nine victims.
[SPEAKER_01]: Without clear answers as to what made the suicide scab.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have been listening to dark topic plus an exclusive piece of content.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got Doris Locke's Day Paranoid talking to you soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to share a quick story before the story I've written starts here.
[SPEAKER_01]: My grandmother is who I base this on, although it's not exactly who she was, it's who I think maybe she could have been or who I imagine someone like her could have possibly become in her later years.
[SPEAKER_01]: and how they would have dibs on cores, which would be someone's eating an apple, and people around them, they were weren't eating apples, the kids would say, I got dibs on the core, and they would eat the apple core.
[SPEAKER_01]: She just was a really caring, tough person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she took care of me as I was growing up in my brother,
[SPEAKER_01]: When we go to see our dad on weekend, she was the intermediary.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was the one who would be there because my dad couldn't see us on his own He lived with her all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would keep going back to her and she never gave up on anybody my grandmother had a husband my Grandpa Bill while Bill he was known as he was through World War II.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was from Ireland.
[SPEAKER_01]: He joined the military or joined
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the war when he was, I think it was 15 or 16 years old, had a fake name to get in.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was an orphan at a viral end, and they ended up meeting at some point she was from England.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they had six kids together.
[SPEAKER_01]: My uncle Larry, my aunt Jenny, my aunt Kate, my uncle Mike, my uncle Ray, and my father, who was the youngest.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uncle Bob, he was known at.
[SPEAKER_01]: to my cousins, notice hardcore bow to most others as he went on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Robert Roy, his middle name was Roy, and he was the baby of the family and black Irish.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think is what they call him because that is like, I mean, having the really dark eyes, a little bit darker skin, dark hair.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a little devil and continue to be so through it as life and everybody took care of him, especially my Aunt Jenny.
[SPEAKER_01]: They took care of him and provided a place for him to stay when he got into so much trouble, but the main one who took care of my father was my grandmother, his mother.
[SPEAKER_01]: She took care of everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: This abuse of relationship with her husband, my grandfather, Bill,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Bill, I don't know all the details of, but it was one where she had to hold things down to make things right by her kids and deal with him as well on the outside of things, and it must have been very difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that they even adopted a child at one point for a few years, so there was seven kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I was a kid, like I said, she would raise us basically, and when I mean my that is with the way in which he spoke to us and cared for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: in, in viewing on a second sense of being loved, being very much loved by her and that side of the family.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, bringing you milk and cookies and asking you questions about your school day and all those things, just really packing stuff in on the weekend.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know she had so many other people to worry about, but my brother and I were in a tough spot and she made it so much easier.
[SPEAKER_01]: This story is about her and this story isn't me in this story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to make that very clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know there's a lot of sketchy stories that I tell about myself but I don't want to get the wrong idea here.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is an idea that I had about the way in which she was treated.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the way I watched my Aunt Kate who raised me in certain ways was treated by outside younger guys who would take advantage of them for their kindness, that being like friends of the family, things like that when it comes to my Aunt Kate and my grandmother when it comes to my grandmother really has to come down to my dad who I want to say took advantage of her so much but needed her quite often she always took him in.
[SPEAKER_01]: He lived with her all through my childhood.
[SPEAKER_01]: He, whenever we went to see my dad, it wasn't at his apartment, it was at my grandma's house.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or my aunt Kate's place, or my aunt Jenny's place.
[SPEAKER_01]: We spent a lot of time and both of these other scenarios as well and had great childhood memories with my aunt Kate and my aunt Jenny both and our cousins, Nikki Terry Glenn, just incredible memories.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was like I said in a way raised by her and I did never I never did her wrong Like what's going to happen in the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to make that very clear
[SPEAKER_01]: I know a lot of what I write and what I speak in these dark fiction episodes seems like it comes from a real-life experience, it feels very real.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you write what you know, but this character that you'll meet here is briefly in Jonathan and it's not me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when my grandmother finally passed, she was 92, I believe.
[SPEAKER_01]: She might have been, yeah, I think it was 92.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't spoken to her for about five years.
[SPEAKER_01]: My grandmother was near death, and I had moved away a far distance.
[SPEAKER_01]: So to call her, I called her a few times.
[SPEAKER_01]: She couldn't hear anything I was saying and I felt like I was stressing her out.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I knew she was in a weird spot because as she got very old, I believe she wanted to die, and she wanted to die with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, she didn't want to be a bother than anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: The last conversation I have with her face to face in depth, like we always had through my whole life, was in my early thirties.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was an argument I'd had with my dad.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was crying because it was so intense.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she had been there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she took me outside and we went for a walk actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, don't worry about any of this bullshit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just take care of your family and take care of those kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just take care of those, your shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry about this shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take care of your shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't let this shit become that shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she eventually ended up, I'll tell you another quick story.
[SPEAKER_01]: She went to sleep one night.
[SPEAKER_01]: My dad told me this and she was walking up.
[SPEAKER_01]: She fell asleep in a chair and it looked like she.
[SPEAKER_01]: had passed.
[SPEAKER_01]: She wasn't breathing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was staying with my Aunt Jenny who was a very strong figure in my life as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: and everybody's lives and our family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very much reminiscent of our grandmother.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she's the closest to my grandma as any of the children became.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jenny, my aunt Jenny, or someone else woke up my grandmother at the place and she woke up and she said, why'd you wake me up?
[SPEAKER_01]: She wanted to go away.
[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't want it to go to the point where people were taking care of her.
[SPEAKER_01]: she'd take care of everybody her whole life.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, as she got older and the kids left the house, she moved around a lot and went to small houses and just lived in her own and went for walks and you know, just eat small meals like apples.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and a doctor had told me one time that the key to a long life is to not eat too much eat well when you do eat something like
[SPEAKER_01]: And my grandmother was that to a T. And I think that's why she lives so long.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm all over the place here, but eventually she did pass.
[SPEAKER_01]: She took advantage of the, or I'm sure my engine was the one who did this looked into the maid program here in Canada, which is medical assistance in dying.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was effectively, like what Jack of Orkin would do for people, assistance suicide.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here in Canada, it's a controversial program.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's politicized at times.
[SPEAKER_01]: People claim it's being used to kill mentally ill people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know about all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do know I'm thankful my grandmother was offered a solution to another wise and possible problem, unless one ends along life with a suicide.
[SPEAKER_01]: there's really no other choice and I think it's important to offer our elders in opportunity to dive with dignity and in front of their family rather than hide away and suicide.
[SPEAKER_01]: As my mother's father actually did, she was adopted but that that happened to my mother that she found her her adopted father having committed suicide.
[SPEAKER_01]: My grandmother had, excuse me for a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: My grandma had the opportunity to do that, so I'm thankful for the made program here.
[SPEAKER_01]: This story that I'm about to tell is very loosely based on my grandmother, my grandmother who I've explained a little bit of, but a couple of more stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember being in the back seat of her.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a red car was in like the mid 80s.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, this is red car was sitting in the back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we pulled to a stop sign and she sees a kid spit on another kid, a bigger kid spit on a smaller kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she gets out of the car, goes over and starts smack in that guy around.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was in her 60s.
[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, start smack in the kid around.
[SPEAKER_01]: Smack on the side of the head.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were a few times like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: She, well, to a test to a test to her toughness in the stories in which I know, and there are many, but here's another one.
[SPEAKER_01]: She flipped her car into a ditch, a long ditch on a winter road in the middle of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's in her sixties again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was able to crawl out of the car, climb up the side of the embankment, and then get down to the road and wave down for help.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was talking about later with two mewn, my brother, and my dad on one of these every other weekend, visitations we got with her father.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, it was the most embarrassing thing I was missing a shoe.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what she, she focused on with.
[SPEAKER_01]: She kind of died as she climbed out and she survived and this winter's fucking storm that's blizzard and I was so embarrassing I was missing a shoe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyways, Maria, the toughest, most selfless person I've ever known.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is my story today, not about her so much, just with her in mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the old woman had committed in her old age to no longer making promises or plans.
[SPEAKER_01]: She also committed to never hesitate when a tough decision had to be made.
[SPEAKER_01]: The key in old ages to eliminate worry is quickly as possible and to have collected an excess of wisdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: In order to properly achieve this, Marie, a quiet genius, was dead set on perfectly executing
[SPEAKER_01]: with this mindset paired with an excellent diet in regular exercise, Marie had designs on reaching 100 years old plus.
[SPEAKER_01]: It had been a good life, difficult in the beginnings with the depression, the war, trying in the middle, seven kids, and no help while completing studies, but that's what made things so pleasant in these later years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything was done.
[SPEAKER_01]: The finish line would be easily reached at 75 with a paid off home, no debt.
[SPEAKER_01]: A quarter million pound in the bank with a set of decent pensions rolling in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie knew she was golden.
[SPEAKER_01]: The kids had grown up and mostly gone away to live their own lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: She received letters from Germany and phone calls from France.
[SPEAKER_01]: England was from where the kids had started.
[SPEAKER_01]: As had Marie, though she and her husband Bill had migrated to Canada for a decade after the war before managing to make it back home.
[SPEAKER_01]: That in 1960.
[SPEAKER_01]: The year is now 2002, and Marie, a retired professor of literature, has no more kids or even grandkids to raise, so no more necessary responsibilities, no friends, this by choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends, she come to realize, where a source of stress, gossipy, self-involved things, takers of time, rarely improving it.
[SPEAKER_01]: She lives humbly in a small hobbit-like home of a sparsely populated village, a shire, as she sees it, just like in the books of Tolkien, Marie Sewed Dors.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her husband, Bill, had passed in 1997 at the age of 75, the age she's at now, which strikes her as strange.
[SPEAKER_01]: Five years separated them,
[SPEAKER_01]: She didn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: Carrying for an invalid isn't something one misses once it's finally over, though she does cherish the memories of life with Bill before Bill fell apart, as all widows of brash, ruddy, yet irresistibly charming Irishman try to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her days are filled with walks through the countryside and visits to the grocery where she picks out each day's selection of foods.
[SPEAKER_01]: She loosely follows the Mediterranean diet, fresh love of bread, high quality cheese, all those tuna eggs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything that looks bright and happy in the produce section.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fruit is her candy.
[SPEAKER_01]: No alcohol, no cigarettes, no drugs.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is, unless one counts the caffeine of green tea, of which she drinks exactly three cups of per day, loose leaf, organic, brewed without releasing the microplastics in those evil little bags of lipped in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her husband Bill had been a physician with all of the knowledge, but none of the discipline.
[SPEAKER_01]: He preferred his drink in his pipe, while Mary always found a good night's sleep and an early morning stroll to be the only true habits worth keeping.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill had shared long ago with her that his longest living patients had a few things in common.
[SPEAKER_01]: They kept low stress and low weight.
[SPEAKER_01]: This seemed like a simple recipe.
[SPEAKER_01]: They ate an apple a day, which she found funny, but true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie had stayed strong following this recipe for the last 50 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: She found to be of the utmost importance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sleep was something she'd found little of through life but made up for now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turning in each night at 8pm, reading until Drowsy, that by half past, out and under way to all of the wonderful benefits of rest by nine, waking up promptly at 6am, no alarm clock, her body hungry for fresh air and movement which she fed after a cup of green
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like clockwork, her life of her last leg, her life of her older days, no TV, no radio.
[SPEAKER_01]: Though speaking of clockwork, that's the one intrusion she allows, the loud, constant tick-and-talk of Bill's cherished miniature, grandfather clock, his grandchild clock, as he called it.
[SPEAKER_01]: For its size, the only item he brought back from the war kept through Canada and returned
[SPEAKER_01]: It had been a constant in their homes, and in these quiet years for Marie, it does something to set a baseline for all of this glorious peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in the middle of one such sleep that a knock of the front door wakes Marie.
[SPEAKER_01]: At first she's not sure, but then it comes again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three quiet taps.
[SPEAKER_01]: Quiet, but needy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm mistaken.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie knows it's Jonathan, her grandson.
[SPEAKER_01]: The black sheep recently emerged from the compasture of all past upbrings.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie had been told that there's always one, but she'd hoped her family had been spared.
[SPEAKER_01]: She gets up turns on the living room lamp and looks to the clock, quarter past three, and is there anything more disconcerting than a polite knock on the door at an ungodly hour?
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan is 19 years old and apparently not doing so well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie knows it's the father.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her daughter met a man as brash and ruddy as her bill.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just not so charming or capable or with any real intelligence to fall back on when the drink swayed him too far.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning, Jonathan.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're bringing you to my door and such a fine summer's morning or should I say evening?
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems you are stuck in between.
[SPEAKER_01]: The young man looks ashamed, he is disheveled, dressed like a scissy, tight black jeans with intentional tears of the thighs, earrings in the face, a shirt that blurs the words sex, sex pistols, he's a punk rocker or something, hair spiked up in a dyed red mohawk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie is unballaded by any of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her last grandchild's independent nature had always amused her.
[SPEAKER_01]: She ushered Jonathan inside once realizing he's choking on emotion, unable to properly speak.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you drive here, dear?
[SPEAKER_01]: I walked.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan spits the sadness of someone should feel at fault for the fact.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen, Grandma, I'm sorry to bother you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I just crash on the couch all?
[SPEAKER_01]: We got early tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just need a place tonight, or I got to stay in the street.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, dear, of course, come in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie goes to the closet and retries a fresh pillow in a blanket.
[SPEAKER_01]: She sets Jonathan up after first giving him a glass of water.
[SPEAKER_01]: The boy is exhausted.
[SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't pry.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not her way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not another word is spoken, but she does hear a muffled sob from her grandson as she shuts her bedroom door.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie is troubled for the first time in years.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is wrong with Jonathan?
[SPEAKER_01]: She attempts to snatch an hour of the remaining night's sleep, loses it, then eventually catches five, causing a miss of six a.m. for the first time in years, finally waking up late at 7.30 a.m.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan has crept away.
[SPEAKER_01]: The home so silent for some reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the boy stole the soul of her abode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie is disturbed by this sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: What happened?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is everything suddenly strange?
[SPEAKER_01]: Off-kilter?
[SPEAKER_01]: She prepares her tea, stretching lightly as it boils, her eyes shifting around her cottage, searching at the issue here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something's wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something's missing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as she takes her first sip of the always invigorating green tea, Marie realizes the issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her grandchild is gone off with bills grandchild clock.
[SPEAKER_01]: The next few days are difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie refuses to call her daughter the mother to Jonathan.
[SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't bring the theft up to a soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is between she and Jonathan.
[SPEAKER_01]: The issue will be handled in due time.
[SPEAKER_01]: time moves an odd fashion without the clock.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie tells about the sun in the shadows.
[SPEAKER_01]: She gets a quick update with her grocery visits, but mostly Marie lives in stunned silence.
[SPEAKER_01]: She reads, she walks.
[SPEAKER_01]: She nibbles at her fruits and nuts and breads and cheeses.
[SPEAKER_01]: She slips her teeth.
[SPEAKER_01]: She stretches.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all fucked up, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan fucked it all
[SPEAKER_01]: Finally, nearly a fortnight since his brazen theft, Jonathan returns.
[SPEAKER_01]: This time, right at dinner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie invites him in, Cheerie is always.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan eyes her suspiciously, quickly tucking away his apology.
[SPEAKER_01]: He accepts dinner, bread with butter, cheese, olives, and a tin of tuna of the highest quality packed with olive oil imported from Italy.
[SPEAKER_01]: After dinner she makes tea, does the dishes, and senses Jonathan begin to creep around the cottage.
[SPEAKER_01]: No matter, whatever he is up to, this time, will remain as always in house.
[SPEAKER_01]: when she returns to the table, Jonathan is sitting as he was.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now, rather than the silent, broody mood he'd brought, one she'd barely tried to crack in their near-zero dinner conversation, Jonathan is bright-eyed, anxious, and talkative.
[SPEAKER_01]: He holds his satchel to his lab.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie knows immediately that he's stolen something else, and that he's on drugs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan, do you enjoy alcohol?
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan, who's been spilling his guts in a non-sensical fashion, has been just going on a bit as band as new girlfriend, a bunch of nonsense, probably lies.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stop.
[SPEAKER_01]: And says, oh, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grandma, I like to trick out occasion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why you ask, Grand?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, your grandfather left a bottle of scotch behind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unopened.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was wondering if you could make use of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I could use it right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I could use it right now before I go.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I thought.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jonathan, I know what's going on with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know you stole the clock.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan stiffens.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then slumps.
[SPEAKER_01]: He looks to the floor.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know you stole something else.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever it is, you're clutching in that bag.
[SPEAKER_01]: Silence.
[SPEAKER_01]: He could save himself here by keeping quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: She can help a helpless child, but this one he does what all scum do.
[SPEAKER_01]: He begins making excuses, blaming everything in everyone but himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan, you can stop now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will get you your drink and I will get you the drugs you've been here searching around for.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan looks up, confused.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's managed a few tears and his mascara is running.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're addicted to drugs, Jonathan.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're addicted to drink.
[SPEAKER_01]: I see these things, and I don't judge.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that, you know, your grandfather had the same issues.
[SPEAKER_01]: Christ, I had to hide the pills when the cancer was a year into eating his guts up, but I still have them.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they would help you from the trouble you're in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yes, oh my goodness, Grant.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could sell the pills.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can get the clock back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just tell me where to find the clock, Jonathan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan shamed again, takes a moment that digs into his pocket and retrieves upon slip from a pawn shop just in town.
[SPEAKER_01]: He retrieves this from his otherwise empty wallet and hands it to Marie.
[SPEAKER_01]: His grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: A thousand pounds, that's it, Jonathan.
[SPEAKER_01]: That clock is worth five times more than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not to mention it sentimental.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll get it back, Ryan.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll get it back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, Jonathan, don't worry, I will get it back now with this slip.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't you worry about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The old woman eats the words, and they don't sit well.
[SPEAKER_01]: She looks old by consuming them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in her brief moment of exasperation, she somehow turns from it back to her new self.
[SPEAKER_01]: She smooths like a ruffled sheet under a steady hand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now for your honesty Jonathan that drink, but first I'll have what's in that bag.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan for a moment appears to not understand, but soon let's go of the act when
[SPEAKER_01]: I trade them."
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan hesitates a moment longer, then gives in.
[SPEAKER_01]: He retrieves the first addition hobbit from a satchel.
[SPEAKER_01]: The copy he knows could fetch double that of the clock he'd stolen, but those pills he needs to give it up for those pills.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie's copy of the Hobbit.
[SPEAKER_01]: First edition, first printing.
[SPEAKER_01]: In reality is worth at least 30,000 pounds.
[SPEAKER_01]: At least, of course, to Marie the copy is priceless.
[SPEAKER_01]: The pill bottle shakes like a moracca in her hand.
[SPEAKER_01]: as she hands it to Jonathan in exchange for the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something she kept behind glass and lock and key, she turns to the corner where the display seems to show the book, lime green and worn by the age, Marie's same age, 75 years, but of course this thing isn't 75 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: She realizes the book that he's placed there is a fake.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan had somehow swapped her Hobbit for a fake.
[SPEAKER_01]: How?"
[SPEAKER_01]: She asked him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fanning a musman.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two angry now to shake.
[SPEAKER_01]: A deadly comm is overcome the old woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: The new woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: The woman who only wanted to live in peace the peace that she'd earned after a life of sacrifice and hard work committed to family all the way down to Jonathan, the lowest being proven here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Grant, I found one with the color of the age, but Tina, I think they call it, but first I broke the lock when I slept over last.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan is opening the pill bottle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's strengthen these grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are these oxycodone?
[SPEAKER_01]: Holy shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie can't believe the boy's brazeness.
[SPEAKER_01]: He broke the lock, then took the clock.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whilst planning to come back with a false copy of that book weeks later to swap, grand, about that drink, then I'll take the bottle if that's what you was offering.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, of course, dear.
[SPEAKER_01]: Marie, in her days, heads to the bottle of scotch from her, late husband, stashed away or it surely would have been swite by Jonathan by now.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would have been swite by Bill who had stashed it, somewhere's in the house and she had found it.
[SPEAKER_01]: stashed it herself so as that he wouldn't kill himself with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe with pills, those 80-mila-gram tablets of oxycodone, the greens is billed called them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Being a physician, he got the good stuff, but Maria guarded them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The old fool would have definitely killed himself at no time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two of those, and it's a few long snores before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good night.
[SPEAKER_01]: Grand!
[SPEAKER_01]: What's strength of these?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no label on this, Marie brings the bottle in a glass with ice.
[SPEAKER_01]: She pours Jonathan's scotch.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, as she had promised herself, made a quick decision.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan wasn't the only thief of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Procrastination, like her grandson, was no longer a part of her life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take two, my dear, and call me in the morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jonathan smiles, takes his medicine, downs the drink, pockets the pills, then kisses Marie and the cheek.
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't be bothered to you again, Grant.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your understanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the bottles in his hand, the pills in his pocket, and the boy is gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: After putting away the hobbit on her bedside table for reading later, the old woman eats an apple,
[SPEAKER_01]: then goes for a stroll.