# Unsolved Mysteries That Are Too Disturbing For Netflix | 182

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 20 Feb 2026, 42 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO3141338126.mp3

Join me for 4 unsolved mysteries of a true crime nature. Episode 182 of the true crime podcast btw. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 unsolved mysteries, true crime, cold cases, unsolved mysteries, missing persons, murder investigation, forensic evidence, serial killers, crime scene analysis, dark history, criminal psychology, real life horror, police investigations, DNA breakthroughs, forensic genealogy, crime documentaries, criminal profiling, mysterious disappearances, solved cases, justice system, law enforcement stories, cold case files, creepy mysteries, true crime storytelling, crime reconstruction, chilling cases, investigative reporting, modern forensics, victim advocacy, unidentified remains, crime scene forensics, disturbing cases, true crime analysis, hidden clues, infamous crimes, real crime stories, forensic evidence

## Transcript

[0:01] November 11th 1995 started as a fairly ordinary Saturday for
[0:05] Carolyn Killaby, a woman who had a long history of marital
[0:09] troubles. The 34 year old medical
[0:12] technician from Vancouver, WA had been in a 2 day argument
[0:16] with her husband Dan over his drinking, putting a serious
[0:20] strain on their marriage. By that morning, though, they'd
[0:23] patch things up and made plans for a romantic dinner together,
[0:27] the kind of gesture couples use to reset after a rough patch.
[0:32] Dan went off to work, but when his brother called him as he was
[0:35] finishing his shift and invited him for drinks, he made a choice
[0:40] that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
[0:43] He and his brother drank late into the night, and at around
[0:46] one that morning he called home and left a message saying he
[0:49] wasn't coming back. That evening, Carolyn, left
[0:53] alone with a cancelled dinner and a husband who'd chosen a bar
[0:57] over their reconciliation, did what a lot of people might do
[1:01] and left the house. She drove to Omar's Steakhouse
[1:06] and Lounge on NE 4th Plain Rd. in the Orchards area.
[1:10] But despite being a steakhouse, Omar's wasn't exactly upscale.
[1:14] The place had earned itself the local nickname of Snow Mars due
[1:18] to its reputation for Coke. It was in spite of or because of
[1:23] this a popular spot busy on weekends, and Carolyn sat alone
[1:28] at a table, visibly upset. Multiple witnesses observed her
[1:33] crying at points, dancing occasionally, and drinking
[1:37] heavily over the course of the evening.
[1:40] By the time the night was ending, witnesses noted that she
[1:43] was extremely intoxicated. What happened next has been the
[1:47] subject to significant debate, but what is clear is that she
[1:51] never made it home. Among the people in Omar's that
[1:55] night was a man named Dennis Smith.
[1:58] He'd been watching Carolyn throughout the evening.
[2:01] At some point before the bar closed, he reportedly commented
[2:05] to the bouncer that she was going to find herself in trouble
[2:08] before the night was out. It was a remark that would later
[2:12] take on a deeply sinister meaning.
[2:16] Around 11:30 that night, Smith approached Carolyn.
[2:20] A witness described him essentially steering her toward
[2:23] the exit, with her apparently too intoxicated to fully
[2:26] understand what was happening. The two left the bar together,
[2:30] and that was the last time anyone ever saw her.
[2:34] What happened next is murky, and Smith's account never quite
[2:37] added up. He told investigators he'd been
[2:42] helping a very drunk Carolyn to her car when an unknown man
[2:46] appeared, confronted them aggressively and then left with
[2:49] her. Smith claimed he drove away and
[2:52] had nothing more to do with it. And nobody ever identified this
[2:56] mystery stranger. Nobody ever corroborated the
[2:59] story. And just before midnight, 2
[3:02] separate individuals called 911 to report hearing a woman
[3:07] screaming for help near the area.
[3:10] The calls were logged, but given that this was a rough area and
[3:13] this wasn't unusual, nothing was done about them that night.
[3:19] When Dan Killaby came home the next morning and found Carolyn
[3:22] absent, he didn't immediately panic.
[3:25] He assumed at first that she was punishing him for not coming
[3:28] home, staying somewhere else to make a point.
[3:32] But when she failed to show up for her job the following
[3:34] morning, something completely out of character, the alarm
[3:39] bells started ringing. He and his brother began driving
[3:43] around Vancouver looking for her.
[3:46] On November 13th, Dan found her 1991 Toyota Camry sitting in the
[3:52] parking lot at Omar's. Inside, there was a handwritten
[3:56] note about wanting to fly from Portland to Los Angeles.
[4:00] Investigators in the family couldn't fully explain this
[4:03] note, but didn't treat it as evidence she'd simply left on
[4:06] her own. Dan stated unequivocally that it
[4:10] wasn't like Carolyn to vanish without telling anyone.
[4:13] Her family backed him up, friends confirmed she didn't
[4:17] have a habit of heavy drinking, and the circumstances felt
[4:20] wrong. But it wasn't until the
[4:23] investigation took shape that the full picture of who Dennis
[4:27] Smith really was began to emerge.
[4:31] And it was deeply alarming, to say the least.
[4:35] Smith's criminal history stretched back into his youth,
[4:38] and these weren't your typical crimes associated with wayward
[4:41] young adults. And trust me, I'm putting it
[4:44] mildly. His most serious conviction
[4:47] involved the 1982 slaying of his own sister, Patricia Johnson.
[4:53] He'd served roughly 10 years of a life sentence before being
[4:56] paroled in 1993, and the parole board itself had documented
[5:00] concerns. In 1992, the board wrote that it
[5:06] was evident Smith absolutely couldn't consume alcohol or
[5:09] drugs without posing a clear risk to public safety.
[5:14] And yet, by the time of Carolyn's disappearance, he'd
[5:17] been discharged from drug monitoring after six months of
[5:20] clean tests. He was, on paper, supervised.
[5:25] However, records later revealed he'd committed at least 25
[5:29] parole violations that authorities had failed to
[5:32] properly act on. His wife had even sent a letter
[5:36] to the Department of Corrections warning that he was a dangerous
[5:39] psychopath, but it went unheeded.
[5:44] As it turns out, it was Carolyn's case that brought
[5:47] Smith to public attention in a new way, and the public became
[5:51] acutely aware of the monster in their midsts.
[5:54] Patricia's son Dustin, who was five years old when his mother
[5:58] was slain by his own uncle, had been living with his
[6:01] grandparents in the same household as Smith.
[6:06] When Dustin read about Carolyn's disappearance in the newspaper
[6:09] and saw that a man named Dennis had been seen with her, he put
[6:13] it together immediately. He called Dan Killaby and shared
[6:17] his suspicion. Dan passed the information to
[6:20] detectives, and investigators confirmed that the Dennis in
[6:23] question was indeed Dennis Smith.
[6:27] And no, you don't have to replay that to make sure you heard that
[6:30] correctly. Dustin was forced to live with
[6:33] the man who had killed his own mother.
[6:37] Smith maintained his story about the mysterious stranger in the
[6:40] parking lot and later claimed he'd had consensual contact with
[6:44] Carolyn earlier that evening. He claimed that would explain
[6:48] any biological evidence linking them, but detectives didn't buy
[6:52] it. When they searched his truck,
[6:55] they found the passenger seats cover had been removed, along
[6:59] with the upholstery and carpeting.
[7:01] A large burned hole had been made in the seat, which Smith
[7:05] attributed to a cigarette. While nothing was adding up at
[7:09] that stage, they didn't have enough to hold him, so they
[7:12] released him and kept investigating.
[7:16] Within two weeks of Carolyn's disappearance, Smith vanished.
[7:20] He fled the state and remained A fugitive for over a year.
[7:25] In the meantime, forensic work continued and DNA analysis of
[7:28] blood traces found in Smith's truck matched Carolyn's profile.
[7:33] That evidence, combined with the broader investigation, was
[7:37] finely enough to clap this sick puppy in cuffs.
[7:41] In July 1996, Smith was charged with her slaying, yet he was
[7:46] still nowhere to be found. Then, on January 31st, 1997, a
[7:53] fugitive segment about Smith aired on Unsolved Mysteries.
[7:58] Astonishingly, Smith reportedly watched the episode with
[8:01] friends. Days later, on February 4th,
[8:05] 1997, he was pulled over by police in Florida while driving
[8:10] a stolen vehicle. When he went for the officer's
[8:14] gun during the stop, he was shot and critically wounded.
[8:17] He survived, recovered, and was extradited back to Washington to
[8:21] stand trial. The trial was contentious, and
[8:26] Smith's defense team pushed back hard on the DNA evidence,
[8:30] arguing the blood was consistent with a consensual encounter
[8:33] rather than violence. They also attempted to point the
[8:37] jury toward Dan Killaby as an alternative suspect, citing the
[8:41] couple's marital tensions. They pointed out that the couple
[8:45] were routinely fighting about Dan's drinking habits, and on
[8:49] the night in question, he went out boozing.
[8:53] The jury wasn't convinced and convicted Smith, accepting the
[8:57] prosecution's claim that he had slain Carolyn after abducting
[9:01] her that night. Since he was on probation, any
[9:05] serious offense such as this was the equivalent of a life
[9:08] sentence regardless, so this monster simply eliminated her.
[9:13] Combined with a 99 year sentence that was reinstated for the
[9:17] crime against his sister, he was sentenced to life with no
[9:21] possibility of parole. In 2002, the state of Washington
[9:27] settled A wrongful death lawsuit brought by Carolyn's family for
[9:31] $2.8 million. The state acknowledged that
[9:35] Smith had been inadequately supervised while on parole,
[9:38] despite documented red flags. The settlement was a form of
[9:43] accountability, but it wasn't the closure the family was
[9:46] searching for, and Carolyn's body had never been found.
[9:51] Perhaps since he had exhausted all his appeals, Smith
[9:54] eventually admitted to the crimes against Carolyn.
[9:58] In June 2004, he attempted to lead authorities to her remains,
[10:03] claiming she was buried out on Large Mountain, but a search was
[10:07] conducted and nothing was found. And then just a few months
[10:12] later, Dennis Smith decided to pull the curtains on his life of
[10:15] violence. He was found dead in his prison
[10:18] cell in November 2004, taking whatever he knew about Carolyn's
[10:23] final resting place to the grave with him.
[10:27] So probably much like you, I can't get past the infuriating
[10:31] reality of this case and why this man was ever released in
[10:34] the 1st place. We're not talking about some
[10:36] petty offender who made a bad decision in his younger years.
[10:40] Dennis Smith strangled his own sister.
[10:43] This may come as a shock to the parole board that released him,
[10:47] but that's not a Gray area crime.
[10:50] They documented that he couldn't drink or use drugs without
[10:53] posing a clear threat to public safety, and yet he was paroled
[10:57] anyway. Then he racks up at least 25
[11:00] violations and nothing meaningful happens.
[11:03] Regardless of this, his own wife even warns authorities that he's
[11:07] a dangerous psychopath, and it's ignored.
[11:11] The warning signs were everywhere, flashing red, and
[11:15] still the system failed to act Carolyn Killaby didn't just
[11:19] disappear because of one disturbed predator that no one
[11:22] could have predicted would strike.
[11:24] She vanished because a system signed off on him, looked at his
[11:28] history, saw the risk, and chose to gamble on the release of an
[11:33] ultra high risk offender. Hood River, OR, sits about 60
[11:41] miles east of Portland in the Columbia River Gorge.
[11:45] It's the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, where
[11:48] orchard families have worked the same land for generations, and
[11:52] where serious crime is almost unheard of.
[11:56] But in the summer of 2001, this quiet community was shaken by an
[12:01] event that would expose bizarre investigative decisions and
[12:04] tangled personal relationships. The victim was Eric Tamiasu, a
[12:10] 41 year old third generation fruit farmer whose family roots
[12:14] in the area stretched back nearly a century.
[12:17] His death wasn't just a tragedy for the people who knew him, it
[12:21] was the beginning of a mystery that Hood River has never been
[12:24] able to solve. The Tamiyasu family story in
[12:29] America began in 19 O 6 when Eric's grandfather, Gunichi,
[12:34] left his farming family in Japan and boarded a ship bound for San
[12:38] Francisco. He eventually made his way to
[12:41] Oregon, laying railroad track before falling in love with the
[12:45] Hood River Valley. He leased land and started
[12:48] growing fruit, and within a few years he had a successful
[12:52] farming operation. Then came 1942 and the Tamiyasu
[12:57] family, like so many Japanese American families on the West
[13:01] Coast, was forcibly relocated to an internment camp.
[13:07] When they returned after the conflict was over, they found
[13:10] their orchards overgrown, their equipment stolen, and every
[13:14] window in their home smashed. Despite all of that, the family
[13:19] rebuilt and persevered. By the time Eric took over
[13:23] operations decades later, the Tamiyasu orchard was again a
[13:27] well established fruit growing business.
[13:30] Eric had recently built a new home right next to the orchard,
[13:33] a place he'd constructed with his own hands.
[13:37] He was single, well liked, and by all accounts, living a
[13:40] peaceful life with no known enemies.
[13:44] On the evening of June 25th, 2001, Eric invited his longtime
[13:49] friend Diana Anderson over to his house.
[13:52] The two had been close for years, but had recently
[13:55] developed romantic feelings for each other, and this was
[13:59] essentially their first official date.
[14:02] According to Diana's later recollections, the evening took
[14:05] an unsettling turn. While they were together at the
[14:09] house, they heard someone tapping on the windows.
[14:13] The doorbell rang twice, and both times when Eric went to
[14:17] check, no one was there. He reportedly heard footsteps
[14:22] running down the driveway but couldn't see anyone in the
[14:25] darkness. A single shoe print was found in
[14:28] the dirt near the front door. Diana left a few hours later,
[14:32] shaken but safe. It was the last time anyone is
[14:36] known to have seen Eric Tamiyasu alive.
[14:40] Over the following days, Eric went completely silent.
[14:44] He didn't answer his phone or show up to handle business.
[14:48] Friends began reaching out to one another, asking if anyone
[14:51] had heard from him. After roughly 5 days of silence,
[14:55] Don Dixon, a man who described himself as one of Eric's closest
[14:59] friends, and his business consultant, drove out to the
[15:02] remote property. Using a spare key he said Eric
[15:06] had given him, Dixon entered the house and the smell, the deep
[15:11] stench of decay, hit him immediately.
[15:15] Upstairs, he found Eric's badly decomposed body lying on the
[15:19] bed, and he immediately called the police.
[15:24] When Hood River County sheriff's deputies arrived, they found no
[15:27] signs of forced entry, no indication of robbery and no
[15:32] obvious evidence of violence on the body.
[15:35] The advanced decomposition had obscured any visible wounds, and
[15:39] investigators initially believed Eric had died of natural causes,
[15:43] perhaps a sudden cardiac arrest. Then came a truly bizarre
[15:48] decision that would haunt this case for decades.
[15:51] After Eric's body was removed, County Sheriff Joe Wampler asked
[15:56] Dixon to help burn the soiled mattress and bedding.
[16:00] Wampler's stated reasoning was that he wanted to spare the
[16:02] Tamiasu family the grief of encountering the aftermath of
[16:06] decomposition. Dixon complied, and nothing
[16:10] remained of the mattress but the steel frame.
[16:13] That same day, the Oregon State Medical Examiner completed the
[16:17] autopsy and made a shocking discovery, determining that Eric
[16:21] hadn't died of natural causes at all.
[16:24] He'd been shot three times in the back of the head while he
[16:27] slept. The bullets had been lodged
[16:29] inside his skull and the decomposition had completely
[16:33] hidden the entry wounds. This strange and chilling
[16:36] decision to burn the mattress cast a long shadow over the
[16:40] entire investigation and over Sheriff Wampler himself.
[16:46] The investigation identified 3 persons of interest, with the
[16:50] first of course being Sheriff Wampler, who had ordered key
[16:54] evidence destroyed. Beyond the questionable decision
[16:58] to destroy the bed, rumors circulated that Eric had been
[17:01] involved with Wampler's wife. Don Dixon claimed that shortly
[17:06] before his death, Eric told him he was dating a Polynesian
[17:09] woman, a description matching the sheriff's wife.
[17:13] However, he didn't know any further details about this woman
[17:16] beyond her ethnic background. If true, this would have given
[17:20] Wampler a personal motive. Wampler denied the affair,
[17:24] denied any involvement, and passed a polygraph administered
[17:28] by his own department. The second suspect was Eric
[17:32] Smith, one of Tamiyasu's closest friends and a business partner.
[17:38] Dixon claimed he'd overheard A heated argument between the two
[17:41] men in the days before the attack, alleging Tamiyasu
[17:44] accused Smith of theft from the business.
[17:47] Dixon made the claim that Smith had taken over $50,000, a number
[17:52] that would prove to be highly suspect.
[17:55] Smith, for his part, denied the argument ever happened and said
[17:59] neither man owed the other money.
[18:02] Investigators found that each had invested only around
[18:04] $10,000, calling into question the $50,000 figure.
[18:10] The 3rd and most controversial suspect was Dixon himself.
[18:15] Several things raised red flags. Eric Smith and others disputed
[18:19] Dixon's claim of being a close friend, with Smith saying Eric
[18:23] had described Dixon as merely someone he bought farm supplies
[18:26] from. More troubling was a phone call
[18:29] Dixon made to Eric's sister, Ramona, shortly after finding
[18:32] the body. Dixon reportedly told her he
[18:35] hadn't found any exit wounds, A deeply strange remark given that
[18:40] the wounds hadn't been discovered yet.
[18:43] Dixon explained he'd assumed that Eric did it to himself, but
[18:46] no weapon was found at the scene and he would have known that.
[18:50] When it came time for polygraph tests, Dixon initially refused.
[18:55] He later agreed, but Examiner's couldn't establish a reliable
[18:59] baseline and the test couldn't proceed.
[19:04] Despite national exposure and a private investigation funded by
[19:07] the Tamiyasu family, the case has never been resolved.
[19:12] The authorities eventually considered Diana Anderson's
[19:14] former boyfriend and examine theories tied to the suspicious
[19:18] activity reported the night Eric was slain.
[19:22] However, since all the critical evidence was lost early on,
[19:26] detectives had little ability to fully examine this line of
[19:29] thought. Unfortunately, given that
[19:32] destruction of evidence, it appears likely to me that
[19:35] getting a conviction in Eric's death will likely be virtually
[19:39] impossible regardless. Hey everyone, it's Jimmy.
[19:46] Dropping in quickly with my usual reminder to hit the
[19:49] notification bell and share this video with your friends and
[19:52] family members. Also, don't forget to check out
[19:55] the Patreon or the YouTube membership if you want to
[19:58] support my channel further. Bermuda's waters have claimed
[20:05] hundreds of ships over the centuries, so much so that the
[20:08] popular myth of the Bermuda Triangle still surrounds the
[20:11] region. The island sits in the Atlantic,
[20:14] surrounded by shallow coral reefs that have torn apart
[20:17] vessels since the earliest days of European exploration.
[20:21] It's a graveyard. And the remains of those ships
[20:25] have sat on the ocean floor for hundreds of years, waiting for
[20:29] someone curious enough to go looking.
[20:32] In 1955, that someone was a 30 year old Bermudan diver named
[20:37] Edward Tucker, known to everyone as Teddy Tucker wasn't some
[20:43] weekend hobbyist. He'd been obsessed with the
[20:46] ocean since childhood, growing up close to Hamilton Harbor.
[20:50] He'd worked at the Bermuda Aquarium as a boy, served as an
[20:54] underwater demolitions expert for the Royal Navy, and returned
[20:58] home to build a life around the sea.
[21:01] By the mid 1950s, he was one of the most experienced divers on
[21:06] the island, regularly exploring the wrecks that littered the
[21:09] reef platform. On a September day in 1955,
[21:15] Tucker was diving at a site he believed to be the wreck of the
[21:18] San Pedro, a Spanish galleon thought to have gone down in the
[21:22] 1590s. He'd already pulled up coins,
[21:25] gold bars and various other treasures over several dives.
[21:30] Then, roughly 30 feet below the surface, Tucker lifted a heavy
[21:35] plank of wood and found something extraordinary lying
[21:38] face down in the sand. It was a cross, and when he
[21:44] turned it over, 7 large green emeralds caught the light.
[21:49] The piece was made of 22 karat gold, measured about 3 inches by
[21:54] 1 1/2 inches. It featured tiny gold nails
[21:58] hanging from rings on its arms, likely representing the nails of
[22:01] the Crucifixion. The emeralds were cut in a style
[22:05] dating back to the Middle Ages, and the craftsmanship, while
[22:09] beautiful, appeared to be the work of New World artisans
[22:13] rather than Jewelers from Spain. The cross also had a removable
[22:18] back, concealing a small empty cavity.
[22:21] Presumably once used to house a sacred relic, it was at the time
[22:27] considered one of the most valuable single objects ever
[22:30] recovered from a shipwreck. Tucker's discovery didn't just
[22:35] make him a world famous treasure hunter, it also created an
[22:39] ownership dispute with the Bermudan government, which
[22:42] argued that the territorial seabed belonged to the British
[22:45] Crown. Tucker reportedly told them that
[22:48] if that was the case, he'd take everything back to the reef and
[22:52] let them search for it themselves.
[22:55] The government relented and Tucker retained ownership.
[22:59] Despite this, Tucker wasn't interested in selling to the
[23:03] highest bidder. Numerous individuals and
[23:05] institutions put in unsolicited bids, and at one point the
[23:10] American ambassador to Italy sent a representative to
[23:13] Bermuda. That agent had simple
[23:15] instructions that few people could turn down acquire the
[23:19] cross at any cost. Despite being told to name his
[23:22] price, Tucker refused to consider the offer, believing
[23:26] that the cross was the equivalent of the Crown Jewels
[23:29] of Bermuda. He eventually agreed to sell the
[23:34] entire hall from the San Pedro site to the Bermudan Government
[23:38] for roughly 35,000 lbs. This was a fraction of the value
[23:43] of the cross alone, and Tucker simply wanted the money to fund
[23:47] further searches. The government placed the cross
[23:51] on public display in an aquarium of all places, where it remained
[23:55] safely stored for years. In February 1975, Queen
[24:02] Elizabeth was scheduled to visit Bermuda to survey the island.
[24:06] As part of the royal visit, the San Pedro Treasure Collection
[24:10] was to be transferred from the aquarium to the newly
[24:13] established Bermuda Maritime Museum.
[24:17] There it would be displayed for the Queen's inspection, and
[24:20] Tucker was invited to serve as a guide for the presentation.
[24:24] The treasures were packed up and transported to the new location,
[24:28] and several people handled the items as the display was
[24:31] arranged. Everything seemed to be in
[24:34] order. Then, just moments before the
[24:37] Queen arrived, Tucker took one last look at the display.
[24:42] Something about the cross bothered him.
[24:45] It didn't have the same weight or the same presence he so
[24:48] clearly remembered. So he reached out and touched
[24:51] it, and gold colored paint came off on his hand.
[24:55] The Tucker cross had been replaced with a cheap replica
[24:58] and the paint wasn't even dry. Tucker was stunned, but there
[25:03] was no time to raise an alarm. He quickly removed the fake and
[25:07] rearranged the remaining treasures.
[25:10] He composed himself just in time to present the collection to the
[25:13] Queen as though nothing had happened.
[25:16] The visit went smoothly, but behind the scenes, a crisis was
[25:21] unfolding. The police investigation that
[25:25] followed revealed just how vulnerable the cross had been.
[25:28] The key to the safe housing the cross at the aquarium had been
[25:31] kept in an unlocked cabinet. The fact that the paint on the
[25:35] replica was still wet when Tucker discovered the switch
[25:38] suggested the swap had occurred in the preceding couple of days.
[25:43] Detectives believed it likely occurred during transit between
[25:46] the aquarium and the Maritime Museum.
[25:49] The window of opportunity was narrow, but apparently
[25:52] sufficient. Bermuda's police force wasn't
[25:55] used to this sort of crime, and they called in reinforcements.
[26:00] The FBI, Scotland Yard and Interpol all became involved in
[26:04] the investigation. Despite this international
[26:08] cooperation, there was almost nothing to go on.
[26:12] Multiple people had access to the cross during the transfer,
[26:16] and nobody involved admitted to knowing that a replica had been
[26:19] substituted. The investigation produced no
[26:23] arrests, no reliable leads, and no recovery of the original
[26:27] cross. Several theories emerged over
[26:31] the years, with most suspecting an inside job, though no
[26:35] evidence supported that claim. Others believed that the
[26:39] sophistication of the crime pointed to something more
[26:42] international, specifically the creation and use of a convincing
[26:46] replica, rather than simply stealing the cross outright,
[26:50] suggested to many that the thief was likely a professional.
[26:54] Tucker himself believed that someone had been hired to take
[26:57] the cross, given the planning involved in fabricating A decoy,
[27:02] though he never named who he thought was responsible.
[27:04] Publicly, the Tucker Cross has never been recovered, and the
[27:10] case remains officially unsolved more than 50 years later.
[27:14] What makes it even more painful is that the cross wasn't the
[27:17] only treasure to go missing from Bermuda's museums.
[27:21] In 2005, visitors to the Bermuda Maritime Museum noticed that
[27:26] several other items from Tucker's collection were missing
[27:29] from their display cases, including a gold bar and a gold
[27:33] chain. As with the cross, these items
[27:36] were never recovered either, pointing to ongoing systemic
[27:40] security failures on the island. On the morning of December 10th,
[27:47] 1968, on the western outskirts of Tokyo in Fuchu, a single
[27:53] individual pulled off what many consider to be the most
[27:56] audacious robbery in Japanese history.
[27:59] Without firing a shot, without injuring a soul, and without
[28:02] ever being identified. One person managed to steal
[28:06] nearly ¥300,000,000 from 4 bank employees.
[28:10] Adjusted for inflation, that hall would be worth somewhere in
[28:14] the range of nine to $10 million today.
[28:18] It's the kind of crime that sounds like it belongs in a
[28:20] movie, and in fact, it's been turned into several.
[28:25] However, despite the apparently nonviolent nature of this crime,
[28:29] it would, as I'll explain, eventually claim the lives of
[28:33] four people. But before the decades of
[28:36] obsession came the crime itself. And to understand how it
[28:39] happened, you need to understand the Japan of the late 1960s.
[28:45] Japan was in the thick of its economic miracle.
[28:49] Companies were booming, factories were running at full
[28:52] capacity, and workers were being rewarded handsomely for their
[28:55] efforts. Twice a year, Japanese companies
[28:59] distributed bonuses to their employees, a tradition
[29:02] stretching back to the Edo period.
[29:05] The winter bonus, typically paid in December, was an especially
[29:09] significant one for Toshiba's factory workers in Fuchu, that
[29:14] bonus amounted to roughly ¥294,000,000.
[29:18] On this particular December morning, 4 employees of the
[29:22] Nippon Trust Bank were tasked with delivering that cash by car
[29:26] to the Toshiba plant. The money sat in three metal
[29:30] cases in the trunk of a black Nissan sedan.
[29:33] It was a routine delivery in a cash heavy economy where bank
[29:37] transfers weren't yet the norm for large corporate payroll
[29:40] distributions. What made this robbery possible
[29:45] wasn't just the thief's nerve, it was the groundwork that had
[29:48] been laid in the days and months before.
[29:52] Between April and August of 1968, someone had sent 9
[29:56] threatening letters and extortion demands to the Tama
[29:59] Agricultural Co-op in the same general area.
[30:03] These letters demanded money and threatened bombings and arson.
[30:07] Then on December 6th, just four days before the robbery, a
[30:11] branch manager received an ominous piece of mail.
[30:15] The letter demanded ¥3 million be delivered by a female teller
[30:19] to a specified location by the following afternoon, or the
[30:23] sender would bomb the bank and the manager's home.
[30:27] The bank didn't comply and instead contacted police, who
[30:30] dispatched around 50 undercover officers to stake out the drop
[30:34] off point. The extortionist never showed,
[30:37] but the damage in terms of psychological preparation was
[30:42] done. The bank's employees were now
[30:45] primed to believe that a genuine threat existed.
[30:49] When the Nissan sedan set out on the morning of December 10th,
[30:52] carrying the Toshiba bonuses, the staff inside were already on
[30:56] edge. Normally, only two employees
[30:59] would have accompanied such a delivery, but the recent threats
[31:03] had prompted the bank to double the escort.
[31:06] Importantly, handwriting analysis later confirmed that
[31:10] the threatening letters sent to the Tama Co-op and the letter
[31:13] sent to the bank manager were written by the same person.
[31:18] The Nissan was only a few 100 feet from its destination when
[31:22] something very unusual happened. A young man on a white police
[31:27] motorcycle, dressed in the uniform of a Tokyo Metropolitan
[31:31] Police officer, pulled alongside and signaled the car to stop.
[31:36] The location was a quiet stretch of road near the walls of Tokyo
[31:40] Fuchu prison, a comparatively desolate location in the
[31:44] metropolis. The fake officer approached the
[31:47] vehicle and delivered a stunning piece of news that would have
[31:50] normally seemed unbelievable. He told the four bank employees
[31:54] that their branch managers house had just been blown up and that
[31:58] police believed a bomb had been planted beneath their car as
[32:01] well. The employees, already anxious
[32:05] because of the recent threats, didn't question him, and they
[32:09] got out of the vehicle as fast as they could.
[32:12] The imposter then crawled beneath the vehicle, ostensibly
[32:16] to check for explosives. Moments later, smoke and flames
[32:21] erupted from under the car, and the employees, terrified, ran
[32:25] for cover. What they didn't realize was
[32:28] that the smoke came from a simple Rd. flare the thief had
[32:31] ignited to sell the illusion. While they scrambled to safety,
[32:36] the fake officer calmly climbed into the driver's seat of the
[32:39] car and drove away with nearly ¥300,000,000 in the trunk.
[32:44] The entire operation, from the moment the car was flagged down
[32:48] to the moment it vanished down the rain slicked Rd. took
[32:52] roughly 3 minutes. With the proper groundwork.
[32:56] That's all it took to pull off the biggest robbery in Japanese
[32:59] history. By the time the bewildered
[33:03] employees gathered their wits and contacted the bank, only to
[33:07] learn that the manager's house was perfectly fine, the thief
[33:11] had already vanished. He'd driven the bank car to a
[33:14] secondary location, where he transferred the metal cases to a
[33:17] stolen vehicle, then switched cars again.
[33:21] Multiple getaway vehicles had been arranged in advance, each
[33:25] one stolen beforehand and staged along the escape route.
[33:30] The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department declared a state of
[33:33] emergency across the city within minutes.
[33:36] Checkpoints were established at intersections throughout Tokyo,
[33:40] and officers searched every vehicle passing through.
[33:44] Despite this massive and immediate response, the thief
[33:48] slipped through the net entirely.
[33:50] By the end of the day, police had to concede that their
[33:53] dragnet had failed. What followed was the largest
[33:57] criminal investigation Japan had ever seen at that point, with
[34:01] 10s of thousands of police officers from Tokyo and across
[34:05] the country participating in the search.
[34:08] Roughly 100,000 forensic sketches were printed and
[34:11] distributed across the country, with the image achieving the
[34:15] cultural equivalence of the Unabomber sketch.
[34:20] The suspect list eventually ballooned to an astonishing
[34:23] 110,000. Names, fingerprints collected
[34:27] from the crime scene, the abandoned vehicles, and other
[34:30] evidence were painstakingly compared against 6,000,000
[34:33] prints on file, but not a single match was found.
[34:37] The serial numbers of every stolen banknote had been
[34:40] recorded, and authorities monitored banks and businesses
[34:43] across the nation for any sign of the money entering
[34:47] circulation. Despite this massive effort,
[34:51] curiously, none of the money ever ended up surfacing.
[34:56] The investigation also produced over 120 individual pieces of
[35:00] physical evidence recovered from the various crime scenes.
[35:04] This included the motorcycle that had been painted white to
[35:07] resemble a police vehicle, a hat, the road flare, and a
[35:12] magnet. Most of these items were common,
[35:16] simply everyday objects, and it's widely believed the thief
[35:20] scattered them deliberately to muddy the investigative waters.
[35:24] The weather that morning had also been rainy, which further
[35:28] Hanford evidence collection and limited the reliability of
[35:31] witness accounts. The investigation produced
[35:36] several prominent suspects, though none was ever charged.
[35:40] The 1st and seemingly most compelling was a 19 year old man
[35:43] known publicly only as Boy S. He was the son of a motorcycle
[35:49] police officer and a member of the Tachikawa group, a local
[35:53] youth motorcycle gang. His familiarity with police
[35:57] uniforms, motorcycles, and the local area made him an obvious
[36:02] person of interest. He had no alibi for the morning
[36:06] of December 10th. Despite A publication ban on his
[36:10] name. Both him and his father became
[36:12] temporarily notorious in police circles.
[36:15] Unfortunately, just five days after the robbery, on December
[36:19] 15th, he was found dead of potassium cyanide poisoning.
[36:24] Authorities ruled that he did it himself, but in A twist, they
[36:29] declared that he was innocent with absolutely no evidence to
[36:32] connect him to the crime. Tragically, it appears that the
[36:36] significant attention that was placed upon him and his father
[36:40] had driven him to commit this act.
[36:43] Sadly though, this wouldn't be the only tragedy connected to a
[36:46] false accusation in this case. A year later, in December 1969,
[36:54] the Menichi Shimbun newspaper publicly identified a 26 year
[36:58] old man as a suspect. Police arrested him on an
[37:02] unrelated charge as a pretext to interrogate him about the
[37:05] robbery. It turned out he had an airtight
[37:08] alibi since he'd been sitting a proctored examination at the
[37:12] time of the heist. The arresting officer was
[37:15] subsequently charged in relation to this bad faith arrest,
[37:19] accused of putting closing the case above getting to the truth.
[37:23] Disturbingly, the suspect's life was destroyed, his reputation
[37:27] was shattered, his family went bankrupt defending him, and he
[37:32] eventually chose to end it all over the accusation.
[37:36] Notably, 2 police officers involved in the investigation
[37:40] took the same route during the course of the investigation,
[37:43] also having their reputations ruined for failing to solve the
[37:46] case. Then, in November 1975, just
[37:53] weeks before the criminal statute of limitations was set
[37:55] to expire, a friend of the original teenage suspect was
[37:59] arrested on an unrelated charge. He was found carrying a large
[38:03] sum of money. He'd been 18 at the time of the
[38:06] robbery. Police pressed him for an
[38:09] explanation of where the cash had come from, but he refused to
[38:13] speak without proof tying his money to the stolen funds, and
[38:18] since it didn't match the serial numbers, they couldn't charge
[38:22] him and had to let him go. Some believe that this
[38:26] individual was in some way involved in the original heist,
[38:31] and that he may have been the fake cop himself.
[38:35] In December 1975, exactly 7 years after the crime, the
[38:40] statute of limitations for criminal prosecution expired.
[38:45] The police officially acknowledged that no charges
[38:47] would ever be brought. In a bizarre twist, the
[38:51] investigation had cost an estimated ¥900 million, roughly
[38:55] 3 times the amount that had been stolen in the 1st place.
[38:59] Then, in 1988, the civil statute of limitations also lapsed,
[39:06] meaning that the perpetrator could now come forward and tell
[39:10] the entire story without facing any legal consequences
[39:14] whatsoever. The fact that the thief has
[39:17] remained silent even after all legal risk evaporated has fueled
[39:22] endless speculation. Some theorists believe the
[39:27] perpetrator died before he could enjoy the money, and that he was
[39:30] perhaps even Boy S himself, despite the police ruling him
[39:34] out. Others have suggested the
[39:37] robbery was the work of a small organized group, possibly
[39:41] connected to the leftist student movements of the 1960s.
[39:45] Still others believe the sophistication of the operation
[39:49] means that it may have been the work of one of the Yakuza
[39:52] organized crime families. Under this theory, the money
[39:57] never resurfaced because the heat associated with the crime
[40:00] was much greater than expected. Some have even theorized that
[40:05] the individual responsible may have been silenced permanently
[40:08] by this organization to prevent the details of the crime from
[40:12] ever coming out. Potentially more far fetched
[40:16] ideas claim that it may have been an intelligence operation
[40:19] by North Korean agents. Eager to get their hands on
[40:23] Japanese currency for foreign operations, under this theory,
[40:28] North Korean agents may have used this money while abroad,
[40:32] posing as Japanese citizens. However, given that none of the
[40:36] stolen money ever re entered Japan despite over half a
[40:39] century passing, this seems increasingly unlikely.
[40:46] There's a critical detail about this case that often gets
[40:49] overlooked. The robbery was, in a practical
[40:52] sense, victimless, even if the investigation itself wasn't.
[40:58] Nobody was physically harmed during the heist, and the
[41:01] Toshiba employees received their bonuses on time because the
[41:04] money was fully insured. The insurance company's own
[41:08] losses were covered through international reinsurance,
[41:11] meaning the financial impact barely registered domestically.
[41:15] But that hasn't stopped the case from becoming one of the most
[41:18] famous crimes in Japanese history.
[41:21] The robbery has inspired novels, manga, films, and television
[41:25] specials, with the earliest film version coming out in 1975.
[41:31] Notably, the crime has become embedded in Japanese popular
[41:35] culture in much the same way that the DB Cooper hijacking has
[41:39] captivated the American imagination.
[41:42] And it makes sense because the parallels between the two cases
[41:46] are striking in many ways. Both involved lone perpetrators
[41:50] conducting extremely daring crimes for significant amounts
[41:53] of money, as well as a total absence of any meaningful
[41:56] resolution.

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