# 8: 44 Days in Hell (Junko Furuta's Torture)

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 11 May 2023, 23 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880306/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851592-44100-2-7cb0934377c5b665.mp3

Today's episode is on Junko Furuta, a 17 year old girl from Japan who was abducted and murdered Trigger Warning: abduction, rape, torture Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:39] Today we're going to be talking about the case of Junko Ferruta,
[0:42] and this is also known in Japan as the concrete encased high
[0:45] school girl murder case, which is a very long name.
[0:49] So I'm just going to be calling it a Junko Ferruta case.
[0:51] But it's also known as 44 days, like some kind of variation of
[0:55] 44 days, and I'm sure you can guess why, but if not, you're
[0:59] going to find out during the video S quickly.
[1:01] Before I get into it, I just want to give my usual disclaimer
[1:04] that I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk
[1:07] about in this video. This video is for educational
[1:10] purposes and everything that I'm about to say is just information
[1:13] that I have found on the Internet and I'm compiling into
[1:16] one video on the case. So Junko Ferruta was a 17 year
[1:20] old girl born on November 22nd, 1971 in Misato in Japan.
[1:25] Junko was attending high school at the time of this incident and
[1:28] she also had a part time job and she was just generally very well
[1:32] liked by everyone that knew her. She was quite a popular girl.
[1:35] She was very well behaved, she got good grades, she didn't
[1:38] smoke or drink or do drugs like her other classmates.
[1:42] She was very kind of strong willed in the way that she
[1:44] wouldn't give in to peer pressure like that.
[1:46] So on the evening of November 25th, 1988, Junko Ferruta
[1:51] finished her shift at her part time job and sat off home on her
[1:55] bike. And at some point during her
[1:56] journey home, Junko was riding past some hedges and it was then
[2:01] a boy of a similar age to her jumped out from these hedges and
[2:04] kicked her from her bike and then he ran off.
[2:08] Another boy walking on the other side of the street saw this
[2:10] happen and so he ran over to Junko, helped her up, and then
[2:14] offered to walk her the rest of the way to her house.
[2:16] And Junko accepted because she actually recognized this boy.
[2:20] His name was Hiroshi Miano, and he actually went to the same
[2:23] school as her. And this will come into play
[2:25] later. So the two of them began walking
[2:28] and talking to each other, and Junko kind of let her guard
[2:31] down. She calmed down after that
[2:32] incident, and Hiroshi began kind of leading where they were
[2:37] going. Hiroshi actually unknowingly LED
[2:40] Junko to an abandoned warehouse. And once they got there, his
[2:44] whole demeanor changed. He began shouting at Junko,
[2:48] pushing her about and claiming that he had connections to the
[2:51] yakuza, which is kind of like the Japanese mafia, like an
[2:55] organized crime group. And he was telling Junko that if
[2:58] she didn't do exactly what he said, he would get the yakuza to
[3:03] kill her. And so he led her into the
[3:05] warehouse house and raped her. Hiroshi then took Junko to a
[3:09] hotel and raped her a further 2 times there.
[3:13] And then he wouldn't let her leave for the rest of the night.
[3:16] It then became clear to Junko why Hiroshi was doing this to
[3:20] her. Like I said earlier, the two of
[3:22] them went to high school together and Hiroshi actually
[3:25] had a bit of a crush on Junko. And he'd actually asked Junko
[3:28] out before, but she didn't feel the same way.
[3:31] And so she just politely declined.
[3:33] But even though she did do it politely, this probably caused
[3:37] an intense hatred in Hiroshi. Hiroshi had never been rejected
[3:41] like that before. He was a very popular boy, he
[3:43] got everything he wanted, and he didn't make his connections to
[3:47] the Yakuza much of A secret. Everyone knew and everyone was
[3:51] scared of him, but not Junko. Junko was the first girl to ever
[3:55] say no to Hiroshi, and that probably triggered something in
[3:58] his brain that made him want to hurt her.
[4:01] So anyway, it was now getting to the early hours of the morning.
[4:05] Hiroshi still had Junko in this hotel room, and he was starting
[4:09] to think about what he could do with her next.
[4:11] Hiroshi rang his friends and told them the whole story,
[4:14] everything that he'd done to Junko and all of his friends
[4:17] seemed really excited at the prospect of keeping her around
[4:21] so that they could do the same thing to her.
[4:24] So that same night, at around 3:00 AM, Hiroshi took Junko to a
[4:28] local park and then they met up with his three friends, Joe,
[4:31] Shinji and your Sushi. And it was then that Junko
[4:35] recognized one of of these three friends, Shinji, as the boy that
[4:38] had kicked her off of a bike earlier that day.
[4:41] And then she realized that maybe this was all a huge plan all
[4:44] along. The boys were working together
[4:46] that day to get Junko in a vulnerable position.
[4:49] And then Hiroshi would come in, gain her trust and and then
[4:53] ultimately do this to her. But what Junko didn't know at
[4:56] the time is that she wasn't the 1st girl that the boys had done
[5:00] this to her. They actually had a history of
[5:02] abduction and gang rape. Not long before this incident,
[5:06] the four boys had kidnapped and gang raped another girl and
[5:09] released her a couple of hours after.
[5:11] They didn't keep her for too long, but she never told anyone
[5:15] about it because she was too scared of Hiroshi and his
[5:18] connections to the Yakuza. So once they all met up at the
[5:21] park, Hiroshi gave the the three boys Junko's belongings so that
[5:25] they could look through them whatever, maybe steal some
[5:27] things. And then on one of her notebooks
[5:30] they actually found her home address.
[5:32] So now the boys actually had something that they could use
[5:36] against Junko. They would tell her that if she
[5:38] didn't do exactly what they said, they now had her address
[5:42] and they knew where her family were, and if she stepped out of
[5:45] line, Hiroshi would send the Yakuza to kill her whole family.
[5:49] So from the park, the four boys took Junko for Ruta to Hiroshi's
[5:54] house that he shared with his parents, and this house became
[5:57] kind of like a base for the group.
[5:59] They told John Co to act as one of the boys girlfriends just in
[6:03] case Hiroshi's parents ever asked, but they never did.
[6:06] In fact, his parents just didn't seem to care.
[6:09] They never questioned the fact that Junko had appeared in their
[6:12] house and was there for the next month and a half.
[6:16] And the parents have since come out and said that they never
[6:19] said anything about this because they didn't quite realize the
[6:22] extent to which this was going on.
[6:24] And quite frankly, they were scared of their own son,
[6:27] Hiroshi, because they knew about his connections to the Akuza
[6:30] through his friends, and they knew that he wasn't afraid to
[6:33] use them. So after a day or two, Junko
[6:37] Ferruta's parents were under understandably very concerned
[6:40] about their daughter. She'd gone to work one day and
[6:43] just not returned home. And so they contacted the
[6:45] police. So quickly, a huge manhunt began
[6:48] for Junker and the boys began to panic.
[6:51] They knew that they had to do something before police
[6:53] eventually tracked her down to their house.
[6:56] And so the boys forced Junker to ring her own parents and tell
[7:01] them that she was safe, that she'd run away.
[7:03] She was with a friend, everything was OK and she didn't
[7:06] want to be found. And they also made Junko beg her
[7:10] own parents to call off the police search for her.
[7:13] And they did because they thought she was happy and safe.
[7:16] Somewhere with a friend, Junko was made to stop her own rescue.
[7:20] And for the next 40 days, Junko Ferruto was subjected to the
[7:25] worst torture imaginable. And the whole time, she was
[7:29] completely hopeless. She knew that no one was looking
[7:32] for her. No one was going to save her.
[7:34] She was beaten multiple times a day.
[7:37] She was starved. She she was raped multiple times
[7:40] a day, it's believed up to 400 times throughout her captivity.
[7:46] She was hung from the ceiling and used as a punching bag.
[7:50] The boys wood forest her to lay on the floor and drop huge heavy
[7:54] barbells all over her body, on her stomach, on her limbs.
[7:58] They burned her with cigarettes, with lighters, with candles.
[8:01] They wood forest her to eat live cockroaches as well as her own
[8:05] feces and urine. One of the boys would hold
[8:08] Junko's head to the concrete floor while another boy jumped
[8:12] on it several times, to the point where her nose was so full
[8:16] with blood that she could only breathe out of her mouth.
[8:19] And they would also sexually assault Junko Ferruta in other
[8:22] ways, such as forcing her to masturbate in front of them.
[8:26] They would also insert foreign objects into her vagina and into
[8:30] her anus, sometimes both at once.
[8:32] This included an iron rod, a light bulb, scissors, and even
[8:36] fireworks. That they would lie inside of
[8:39] her. They mutilated her vagina, her
[8:42] clitoris, her eyelids, they pierced both of her nipples and
[8:45] then just pulled her left nipple completely off with pliers.
[8:49] And after a week or so, the four boys began inviting their other
[8:53] friends round to the house to join in in this torture.
[8:56] Most notably two other boys named Tetsua and Koichi.
[9:00] The two of them abused and raped Junko just like the other boys
[9:04] did, although Tetsua seemed to be the more willing of the two,
[9:08] whereas Koichi kind of had to be pressured into it, although he
[9:12] still did it. After leaving Hiroshi's house
[9:14] that day and going home, Koichi's behavior weighed very
[9:18] heavy on his conscience and so he decided to confide in his
[9:22] brother exactly what had gone on at Hiroshi's.
[9:24] Koichi's brother then told their parents, who subsequently told
[9:28] the police all about Junko Ferruta, her captivity, her
[9:32] abuse. And so two officers went to
[9:34] Hiroshi's home to go and check this out, to go and see if there
[9:37] was a girl in there being held captive and abused.
[9:40] However, when they got to Hiroshi's house, his parents
[9:43] answered the door. The parents told the police that
[9:46] there was no girl in there, there was nothing going on.
[9:49] Although they said you can come in and have a look if you would
[9:51] want to, you can come and check for yourselves.
[9:54] However, police declined the invite to go in and search the
[9:57] house because they believed that the invite alone was sufficient
[10:02] proof that there wasn't a girl in there being held captive and
[10:05] abused. Because the police thought, why
[10:07] would they be so confident in inviting us in if we're just
[10:10] going to go in there and find this girl?
[10:12] Surely if they're that willing for the police to go in, there's
[10:15] not going to be a girl in there, which is such a dangerous way
[10:19] for police to think. But police left Hiroshi's house
[10:22] that day believing that there was no girl in there.
[10:24] They didn't even step foot in the house to check.
[10:27] And so another opportunity to rescue Junko Ferruta and save
[10:31] her life was missed in early December.
[10:34] So around 2 to 3 weeks into Junko's captivity, she actually
[10:39] managed to sneak away from the boys while they were distracted
[10:42] and found a phone and began to call the police.
[10:45] However, before she could actually say anything to the
[10:47] police, Hiroshi caught her, took the phone off her, and then the
[10:51] four boys tortured her. As punishment, they doused Junko
[10:55] Ferruta's legs in lighter fluid and set them on fire and then
[10:59] sodomized her with a large glass bottle.
[11:02] This caused severe bleeding and Junker actually went into
[11:05] convulsions and the boys thought that she was faking.
[11:09] The boys thought that she was just doing this so that they
[11:11] would stop, and so to teach her a lesson to stop her from faking
[11:15] these fits, they set her on fire again.
[11:18] Throughout her captivity, Junko pled with the boys multiple
[11:21] times a day to just kill her to just get it over with.
[11:25] But obviously the boys were having too much fun.
[11:28] They continued to beat and rape her multiple times a day and now
[11:32] they were forcing her to sleep outside on the balcony.
[11:35] And bear in mind, this was mid-december.
[11:37] It was freezing temperatures in Japan in the winter can get into
[11:41] minus degrees, and Junko was forced to sleep out on the
[11:45] balcony with no blood. They began locking her in a
[11:48] freezer for periods of time, all while continuing their usual
[11:52] methods of torture. Beating, burning, sodomizing,
[11:55] raping. And one of the boys recalled
[11:58] Junko being in so much pain from all of her injuries, all over
[12:02] her arms and her legs, her hands, her feet.
[12:04] She was in so much pain that she could barely move.
[12:07] And it actually took her a whole hour to get from upstairs where
[12:11] the boys would keep her downstairs to the bathroom a
[12:15] full hour. Although eventually Junko
[12:17] Ferruta, due to her injuries just became incontinent, meaning
[12:21] that she would just urinate and defecate without any warning.
[12:25] She couldn't stop herself. And this only gave the boys more
[12:28] fuel to hate Junko and to punish her for.
[12:31] And soon Junko became unable to eat or drink, and every time she
[12:35] would try, her body would just reject it and throw it back up,
[12:39] and the boys would punish her for that as well.
[12:41] And towards the end of her captivity, Junko Ferruta was
[12:45] barely visually recognizable because of all of her injuries.
[12:48] Her face was so swollen that he could barely make out any of her
[12:52] facial features. And because her body was so
[12:55] burned and damaged and crippled, and due to her incontinence, she
[12:59] always smelled bad. And all of this made the boys
[13:03] lose sexual interest in Junko Ferruta.
[13:06] And obviously that was one of the main reasons that they were
[13:08] keeping her around. They would rape her multiple
[13:11] times a day. And now the boys didn't really
[13:14] want to do that anymore. They weren't attracted to her
[13:16] anymore. And because of this, the boys
[13:18] decided to go out and find a girl that was sexually appealing
[13:22] to them. And they found a 19 year old
[13:24] girl just like Junko. A month prior, this 19 year old
[13:28] girl was on her way home from work when the boys stopped her
[13:32] and gang raped her. But unlike what they did with
[13:34] Junko, the boys didn't keep this girl.
[13:37] They let her go home and whatever.
[13:39] And they just returned back to the home where they were keeping
[13:42] Junko. And then one day on January 4th,
[13:44] 1989, as they were all just sat in Hiroshi's house, one of the
[13:49] boys challenged Junko to a game of mahjong.
[13:52] And Junko actually won this game.
[13:54] And this completely set the boys off once again.
[13:58] So the boys began kicking and punching Junko.
[14:01] They beat her with an iron barbell.
[14:03] They burnt her eyelids with fresh hot wax.
[14:06] They made her stand and they whipped her feet with a bamboo
[14:09] stick until she collapsed to the floor and began convulsing once
[14:13] again. At this point, Junco was
[14:15] bleeding so much, and all of her old wounds had also reopened and
[14:20] there was puss all over her. There was blood all over her,
[14:23] but the boys didn't plan on stopping there.
[14:25] But they didn't want to get blood and puss all over them.
[14:28] So in order to continue beating Junco, they put plastic bags
[14:33] around their hands, taped them up, and then just continued.
[14:37] They continued to drop the iron dumbbell on her while she was
[14:40] convulsing. They poured lighter fluid all
[14:43] over her body, including her face this time and set her on
[14:46] fire. And this attack from when Junko
[14:49] won the game. This attack lasted 2 whole hours
[14:54] and Junko made multiple attempts to try and put the fire out,
[14:57] however eventually she just became unresponsive.
[15:00] The fire eventually went out on its own, but not long after that
[15:04] Junko Faroosa passed away on January 4th, 1989 from her
[15:09] wounds. Although the boys just assumed
[15:11] she was passed out because she would pass out sometimes when
[15:14] they would beat her so severely, she would just go unconscious
[15:17] for a couple of hours and then come back round and they thought
[15:20] she was just going to come back round.
[15:22] It wasn't until 24 hours after her death that the boys actually
[15:26] realized she was dead and so Hiroshi called his older brother
[15:30] to tell him. So now the boys knew that they
[15:32] had to dispose of Junko body somehow because they couldn't
[15:35] let this get traced back to themselves.
[15:37] And so they wrapped it up in several blankets and put it
[15:40] inside of a travel bag. They placed this travel bag with
[15:43] Junko's body in it in a 55 gallon drum or 208 litre drum
[15:48] and they filled it with wet concrete and then let it set
[15:52] around her and then disposed of it.
[15:54] And since everybody else thought that Junko had just run away,
[15:57] they thought she was safe somewhere.
[15:59] No one was looking for her, no one even knew that she was dead.
[16:03] And the boys could have successfully gotten away with
[16:05] this forever. But three weeks later, on
[16:08] January 23rd of 1989, Hiroshi and his friend Joe, so one of
[16:13] the four boys, they were both arrested for the rape of that 19
[16:18] year old girl that they went out and found when they lost sexual
[16:21] interest in Junko. But at the time of their
[16:24] questioning, so Hiroshi and Joe were being questioned separately
[16:27] from each other. At the time of this, there was a
[16:30] completely separate double murder, unsolved double murder
[16:34] going on in this town. And police believe that because
[16:37] of this of the 19 year old girl, that they might also be
[16:41] responsible for that double murder because there were a lot
[16:43] of similarities. And so police in Hiroshi
[16:45] questioning began insinuating that they knew something about a
[16:50] murder. And so in Hiroshi's head, he was
[16:53] thinking Junko Ferruta, although police were insinuating about
[16:57] this other double murder. And just by the way, for the
[16:59] record, the boys had nothing to do with this double murder.
[17:02] I don't know who did that. I didn't look into that.
[17:05] I don't know the names of the people that were killed, so I
[17:07] can't really look into that. So anyway, in Hiroshi's
[17:10] questioning, police were kind of implying that they knew
[17:13] something about a murder. And he was thinking Junko
[17:15] Ferruta. He thought that maybe Joe had
[17:18] admitted to this murder in his separate questioning.
[17:21] And so Hiroshi just broke down and told police everything about
[17:26] Junko Ferruta, and they had no idea that Junko was even dead.
[17:31] They thought that she'd just run away and she was with a friend.
[17:33] They had no idea that she was tortured and murdered for 44
[17:38] days. Hiroshi told police where they
[17:40] could go to find Junko's body in that concrete drum, and the next
[17:44] day they went and found it. And so Hiroshi's story could be
[17:48] confirmed 100%. After Hiroshi's question, in the
[17:51] other two boys, Yasushi and Shinji, and also Hiroshi's older
[17:55] brother, all three of those were also arrested.
[17:58] At first, despite the severity of the crimes that these boys
[18:02] had committed, they were all under the age of 18 and so all
[18:05] of their identities were kept anonymous from the public.
[18:08] But it wasn't long before journalists from a lead in
[18:11] Japanese magazine found out the boys names and leaked them to
[18:15] the whole world. They believed that whoever was
[18:18] capable of committing such heinous crimes didn't deserve
[18:21] anonymity and all of the boys took a plea bargain.
[18:25] So rather than pleading not guilty to murder, they pled
[18:29] guilty to committing bodily injury that resulted in death so
[18:33] that they could get a lesser sentence.
[18:35] In July of 1990, Hiroshi Miano, who was the leader of the group
[18:40] of boys, was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
[18:43] He actually tried to appeal that sentence, saying that 17 years
[18:48] was too much for what he did and so his case was reviewed.
[18:53] But judges believed that 17 years wasn't enough, so they
[18:57] gave him an extra 3 years. So then he was serving 20, and
[19:01] his parents were actually ordered to pay Junko for Reuters
[19:04] family some kind of compensation for their son's actions.
[19:09] And so they actually had to sell their family home for $400,000
[19:14] so that they could give the fruiters some money.
[19:17] Obviously, it wasn't $400,000. It was in Japanese currency.
[19:20] But most of my viewers are Americans, so I thought I would
[19:23] convert it. And Hiroshi Miyano is now out of
[19:26] prison, living under the name Hiroshi Yokoyama in Japan.
[19:30] Shinji Minato was originally sentenced to four to six years,
[19:34] so between four and six years. But just like Hiroshi, he
[19:38] appealed it and his sentence was raised to 5 to 9 years.
[19:42] And Shinji's parents weren't ordered to pay the Ferooters any
[19:46] kind of compensation for their son's actions.
[19:48] I think it was just Hiroshi's because it happened under their
[19:51] roof and they were negligent to tell police about it when they
[19:55] knew that something was going on, whether they knew the extent
[19:58] of it or not. After Shinji was released from
[20:00] prison, he moved in with his mother and he has been
[20:03] unemployed ever since this happened so.
[20:06] For 20 years, Yesushi Watanabe originally received three to
[20:10] four years in prison and then appealed and that was increased
[20:14] to five to seven years. Joe Ogura spent eight years in a
[20:18] juvenile prison and was released in 1999.
[20:22] Yet on his release and actually the whole time he was at the
[20:25] juvenile prison, he would brag to people, to his friends about
[20:29] how he raped and killed Junko Ferruta.
[20:33] So after his release, Joe went on to get a job and a life and
[20:36] just live a kind of normal life. That was up until July of 2004.
[20:42] Joe was arrested for assaulting a man that he believed that his
[20:46] wife was cheating on him with. But this was no kind of spur of
[20:49] the moment fight or something like that.
[20:52] Joe tracked down this man, beat him, shoved him in the back of
[20:56] his van and then drove him miles away to a bar that his mother
[21:01] owned. He then took this man into the
[21:03] bar and beat him for a further 4 hours, the whole time telling
[21:07] him that he was going to kill him, that he'd killed before and
[21:10] he knew how to get away with it. And for this incident, Joe was
[21:13] imprisoned for seven years, and upon his release, he changed his
[21:17] name to Joe Kamisaku. And Joe's mother has allegedly
[21:21] vandalized Junko Ferruta's grave, stating that she did so
[21:26] because Junko ruined her son's life.
[21:29] All we know about Joe and how he's living now is that he's
[21:32] blown all of his family savings on luxury goods, holidays like
[21:36] that, and all of that was money that was supposed to be going to
[21:40] the Furutas. But yeah, that completes this
[21:43] video. I don't like to do cases like
[21:45] this very frequently just because they are so heavy and it
[21:50] leaves me feeling very sad after it.
[21:52] I don't know about you. Like all of the cases that I
[21:55] cover on this channel are sad, but I I hate knowing that
[21:59] someone was in pain for so long. Which is why I very rarely cover
[22:03] abduction and abuse cases, because the people are often in
[22:07] pain for a long long time before they eventually die.
[22:10] And stuff like that just weighs very heavy on me, and I imagine
[22:13] it weighs very heavy on you too. So I don't like to do them too
[22:16] frequently, but I will still do them if they are recommended to
[22:19] me, just like this one was. Thank you so much for listening
[22:26] to Usual Disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[22:28] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[22:31] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[22:34] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[22:37] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
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[22:43] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[22:46] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[22:49] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[22:52] production. See you next time.

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