Glico Morinaga And The Mystery of the “Monster With 21 Faces” (Parts 3-4)

We examined in the first previous part how the kidnapping of Katsuhisa Ezaki ended with his escape, but apparently this wasn't going to be the of the nightmare for Ezaki or his company Glico.

Previous Parts (1-2):

The story continues here:

Part 3: “The Monster With 21 Faces” And The Anti-Glico Campaign

Weeks after Ezaki's escape, Glico vans were set on fire in the company’s parking lot, and two newspapers received letters from the kidnappers condemning Japan’s police force.

To Japanese police fools. Are you stupid?

There are so many of you, what on earth are you doing? If you are real pros try catching me.

There’s too much handicap so I will give you a hint. There are no fellows in the Ezaki’s relatives, no fellows in Nishinomiya police, no fellows in the Flood fighting corps. The car I used is gray, food was bought at Daiei.

If you want new info, beg for it in the newspaper. After telling you all this you should be able to catch me. If you don’t you are tax thieves.

Shall I kidnap the head director of the prefectural police?

A few days after this letter, employees of the Glico discovered a container filled with hydrochloric acid in one of the company’s buildings.

On May 10, 1984, Glico received a new letter, this time signed by “The Monster with the 21 Faces”.

The first letter the group used this nickname, which is based on the fictional character “The Fiend with Twenty Faces”, created by Kogoro Akechi.

The letter threatened Glico that it will release company products poisoned with potassium cyanide on store shelves.

This threat forced Glico to recall its products from every store, resulting in multi-million dollar damages and the release of over 400 part-time company employees.

Major supermarkets removed Glico’s products, resulting in a dramatic drop of company sales.

The tests performed on Glico’s products detected no poisoned products. Yet, the company recorded $130 million in losses just from this threat alone.

The “Video Man”

With these disturbing conditions and an escalation of threats by the criminal group, the first sign of hope appeared.

Glico had already removed all of its products from store shelves and returned them to the company warehouses for testing, yet a Glico candy box was still spotted on a supermarket shelf and immediately attracted the attention of investigators.

CCTV was recording the current area of the shop, and police discovered more than they expected when they replayed the recording.

The recording revealed a man positioning an object that looked like a candy box back on the shelves!

The first suspect was now available and police dubbed him “The Video Man”.

The video capture was terrible though, as the security cameras of the era (the 1980s) recorded in VCR cassettes with poor capture quality.

Police extracted 20 seconds of footage from various angles, but the findings were insufficient to identify the suspect.

The case was still far from being solved, but within this devastating financial environment for Glico, the troubles of Katsuhisa Ezaki and his company were about to end.

A month and a half later, Glico received its final letter from the Monster with the 21 Faces, mentioning that the group had forgiven Ezaki and they would not harass his company anymore.

Although, the letter also mentioned that they would come back. The full translated letter follows:

To our fans throughout Japan:

We’re satisfied. The president of Glico has already gone around with his head hanging down long enough. We would like to forgive him.

In our group there’s a 4-year-old kid — every day he cries for Glico. We also have eaten none for a long time — and we used to eat it all the time.

It’s a drag to make a kid cry cause he’s deprived of the candy he loves.

So we’re also really upset. It would be great if we could forgive Glico so the supermarkets could sell their products again.

We have destroyed 18 chocolates that had acid in them. We left 1 on the 9th of May in the Daiei store in Ibaraki Prefecture, but we don’t know what happened with it. We went to collect one at a different store on the 18th of May.

Japan has gotten terribly hot and humid, so when our “work” is done, we want to go to Europe — Zurich, Paris, or London — we’ll be in one of those places.

Police, you did well. Continue with your hard work. Not even Sherlock Holmes could solve this case. If you read The Fiend with 20 faces, you will learn a lot.

“The police’s “European Tour”

“Let’s go to Europe to catch the Monster with 21 Faces”!

“Let’s bring Glico’s Pocky — the traveler’s friend!”

“Delicious Glico products — we’re eating them too!”

Monster with 21 Faces

I will be back next year in January.

Notes on Part 3:

Somehow various researchers of the case (still) believe Ezaki faked his own kidnapping. However, this concept seems impossible since Glico suffered vast losses that could even result in bankruptcy.

Other companies benefited from Glico’s nightmares (at least for a while) as Glico lost a significant market share and the trust of Japanese consumers for a long time.

However, this didn’t take long before the “Monster with the 21 Faces” targeted more food companies.

Besides “Monster with the 21 Faces”, this case is also known as the “Glico-Morinaga Incident” since Morinaga, a Glico competitor in the candy industry, becomes the next target. The Japanese candy and foods industry suffered for years from extortion and poisoning attempts that lasted for over one year.

Part 4: The Impossible Fox-Eyed Man

The Monster with 21 Faces didn’t wait until January 1985. Instead, it was already extorting other food companies days before the last letter to Ezaki Glico.

On June 22nd, Marudai foods received a letter from the criminals demanding money to be paid and describing how to proceed with the delivery.

During this incident, undercover police officers confronted a suspect and got a clear view of his facial details.

He described him as a man wearing a grey suit, with a height of 1,75 to 1,80cm, aged between 35 and 45 years old, with thin eyebrows and thin lips. The officer also provided an unusual detail, describing his eyes as resembling those of a fox!

(Note: The fox-eyed man gave the impression to the police officers he was of Korean descent rather than Japanese).

The incident involved an undercover police officer transferring the money demanded by the Monster With 21 Faces from Marudai Foods.

The letter received by Marudai Foods (June 22 1984):

Dear Haga,

I hope you know about us.

Your company did so well because of Glico’s mishaps. You should give us some of the money you have due to their failures.

Don’t you feel bad for not giving us any money?

Give us 50 million yen with used 10,000 yen bills. Put 10 million yen in each white bag and wait at Ota’s house in Nichiyoshidai.

Have a company’s driver in a white car waiting in front of the house. On Thursday, June 28th at 8pm, I will call 0726 87 1234.

Say “It’s Yamada” when you pick up the phone, I’ll tell you where the letter is. Once you get the call, start moving. Once you read the letter, immediately follow the directions.

Ota should wear a white blazer, I won’t do anything to Ota. If you can’t decide on your own just talk to Komori, Kudara, and Takano. If you don’t listen to what we say and obey us, you’ll fall into the same situation as Glico. We know a lot about Fushimi and Yamatecho.

If you tell the police, we’ll abduct your employees. We’re stronger than the police, we have hydrochloric acid, potassium cyanide, dynamite, and guns.

[omitted]

I’ll let you listen to Katsuhisa’s voice while he had been abducted.

If you’re going to give us money, put this advertisement up on Mainichi and Sankei, for the Kinki region on the 26th and 27th of June.

Looking for part-timers. Advertisement and Salesperson. Under age 35, a healthy lady. 500 yen an hour. Transportation fee provided.

Contact Marudai Food Inc. Personnel Department.

Monster with 21 faces.

On the afternoon of June 28th, 1984, an undercover agent was following instructions and more directions by prerecorded messages from the Monster With 21 Faces.

The back of the tourist information map at the city bus platform south of Mitsui Bank of Seibu department store in Takatsuki

This was a woman’s voice recording that directed the undercover agent (acting as a Marudai executive) to Takatsuki, where he discovered the next piece of information left by the Monster.

To Yamada

As soon as you read this, move immediately .

Take this ticket and go to Takatsuki Station.

Take the 8:19 Kyoto bound train that stops at every station. It is a yellow train. Get on the second car from the back and sit on the left side marked with the circle. Either circle is fine.

Ride the train alone, Yamada.

If the seats in the circled area are not available, say that you feel sick and have someone give up their seat. Sit on the side with the tracks and open the window so that you can throw out the bag.

Perceive. Once you see the 1-meter square, white flag, throw the bag out the window

Go to Kyoto, and if there is no flag, then do it again.

When you retry, contact me.

It was another elaborate plan established by the Monster.

This last letter also contained a diagram and further instructions to clarify where the money carrier should sit.

It did not matter if it was police agents executing the order. The money (50 million yen in white bags) had to be thrown out of the train as soon as the money carrier noticed a white flag from his window.

Upon entering the train, more agents followed the money carrier and instructed him to disobey the orders of the letter. He boarded the next train to Kyoto but took another car and sat on a different seat.

The purpose was to confuse criminals in the setting and force them to reveal themselves by making a move.

The agents on the train noticed two individuals acting suspiciously, with one of them holding a radio with a large antenna adjusting the frequency.

At that point, the man later dubbed a “Fox-Eyed Man” onboarded the train. The fox-eyed man spotted the money carrier, and officers reported he kept his eyes on him.

No white flag appeared, and the carrier did not toss the money out but disembarked upon arriving at Kyoto station.

Behind him, the radio man and the fox-eyed man followed, with the radio man taking a different direction and the fox-eyed man following the money carrier.

Perhaps a mistake from the police side, but no agent followed the radio man as he mingled with the crowd. The radio man was never seen again.

The fox-eyed man kept stalking the money-carrier. He watched while he called his headquarters for more information and awaited him to come out of a restroom.

Another undercover agent on the scene called the Osaka police headquarters (twice), but he was instructed not to confront the fox-eyed man unless he made a move to the money first.

The money carrier followed the headquarters’ instructions to return to Takatsuki Station. Meanwhile, the fox-eyed man kept stalking him and was spotted only three meters away.

They boarded the train but on different cars, and both disembarked at Takatsuki Station with the fox-eyed man following the money carrier.

Another undercover officer was waiting to collect the carrier outside the station and drove him back to Marudai’s headquarters.

At this point, the fox-eyed man could not follow the carrier and embarked on the next train to Kyoto.

At Kyoto Station, agents observed the fox-eyed man waiting on the platform again, but he did not enter any train. After a while, he moved out of the station and followed an underground passage, where the agents lost track of him.

Note:

It seems that police failed in a rare opportunity to arrest a suspect in this case. While they followed a solid plan by proceeding to wait until criminals made a move first, they still should have arrested the suspect while he was waiting at Kyoto station. At that point, they should have ignored previous orders from the headquarters as the money carrier was already back at the headquarters.

The story continues with Parts 5 & 6 on this link:

Previous Part:

Originally published on Medium (full story), on my "Ex Cathedra" profile.

Cover Image Source

The story contains 11 parts and the conclusion, so publishing in parts would work better for the reader. I will publish the rest parts and provide links as well.

Don't forget to Like and Subscribe if you enjoyed the content!