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Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries

159. The Mystery of The Setagaya Family Murders

Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries

Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries

History, Fiction, True Crime, Drama

4.84.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Go to https://kachava.com and use code HSP. New customers get twenty dollars off an order of two bags or more, January 1st through 31st! One of my most terrifying fears is the idea that someone is watching me without me knowing about it. Or worse, that someone is inside my home watching me without me knowing about it. If that freaks you out as well, this might be a tough episode for you. Because today we are going to tell you about one of Japan’s most horrifying mysteries, but at its core was a family who got a really bad feeling that someone was watching them.  TW: Child D*ath, Animal Ab*se Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/setagayamurders Subscribe on⁠ Patreon⁠ to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society and enjoy ad-free listening, monthly bonus content, merch discounts and more. Members of our High Council on Patreon also have access to our weekly after-show, Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. You can also enjoy many of these same perks, including ad-free listening and bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts . Follow on⁠ Tik Tok⁠ and⁠ Instagram⁠ for a daily dose of horror. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:15.4

It was New Year's Eve in Japan in the year 2000, in an isolated home on the southwest corner of Tokyo, an elderly woman named

0:22.2

Haruko picked up the phone and dialed her daughter Yasuko. Heroku and her daughter spoke

0:27.1

every single day, especially around this time on Sunday mornings. But on this particular morning,

0:33.6

the phone rang and rang without an answer. So Haruko tried again, but still nothing. Now, it was the day after New Year's and it was a Sunday. There was no reason why Yasuko, her husband, Mikio, and their two small children that made up the Miyazawa family, wouldn't be home. So Haruko, who actually lived in the attached home right next door, just figured she would

0:55.0

walk over and knock on her daughter's door. Maybe her daughter just couldn't get to the phone and

0:59.5

she wanted to see her. But when she did that, there was still no answer. It was like no one was home.

1:07.1

She started getting a little bit nervous, so she just grabbed the key to Yasuko's front door and let herself in to check on her daughter and her family.

1:15.4

But almost instantly, the metallic smell of blood hit Haruko's nose.

1:20.4

Before she had time to really register what she was smelling, she looked down and saw something that made her gasp in horror.

1:28.0

There on the floor was her son-in-law, Mikio.

1:30.5

He was lying motionless on the front of the staircase with bloody wounds all over his body,

1:35.3

but it wasn't just Mikio.

1:37.8

As Haruko ran through the house calling out for her daughter,

1:41.1

she saw that the entire family, Mio Yasuko and their two young children,

1:47.2

had been murdered sometime in the dead of the night by an unknown assailant. So Haruko did the only

1:54.3

thing she could think of in her panicked state and she called the police. But when they arrived,

1:58.9

they realized that the scene was not like anything

2:01.7

they had ever seen before. It seemed like not only had a killer meticulously moved from room

2:07.8

to room to attack the entire Miyazawa family, but he had spent hours in the home, both before

...

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