I’ve spent countless nights falling down true crime rabbit holes, but nothing—and I mean nothing—has ever haunted me quite like the case of Junko Furuta. If you’re eating right now, maybe bookmark this for later. Seriously.
November 25, 1988. A normal Friday in Japan. Seventeen-year-old Junko Furuta was riding her bike home from her part-time job when she was knocked off by a boy on a motorcycle. What followed wasn’t a simple traffic accident but the beginning of 44 days that would make even the most hardened true crime enthusiast sick to their stomach.
The boy who knocked her down wasn’t alone. His friends approached, and through manipulation and threats, they managed to lure Junko to a house in Adachi, Tokyo. This would become her prison—and eventually, her tomb.
(I remember exactly where I was when I first read about this case—curled up in my living room with a cup of tea that went cold as I stared at my screen in disbelief. Ryan walked in, took one look at my face, and said, “Oh god, what serial killer are you obsessed with now?” If only it had been that simple.)
The four teenage boys who abducted Junko weren’t strangers lurking in shadows. They were students. Kids, really. But with connections to the yakuza that made them feel untouchable. As untouchable as predators circling wounded prey.
What happened over the next 44 days is almost too horrific to comprehend. Junko was raped over 400 times. Beaten. Starved. Hung from the ceiling. Forced to eat cockroaches. Burned with cigarettes and lighters. Made to dance for her captors’ entertainment while injured. They dropped weights on her. Inserted foreign objects into her. Poured hot wax on her. Used her as a “punching bag” to practice boxing.
If this sounds like the plot of a horror movie too extreme to be real, I wish it was. But this happened to a real girl who had been excited about her upcoming graduation.
The most bone-chilling part? This didn’t happen in some remote cabin in the woods. Up to 100 people reportedly knew about Junko’s captivity. Some even participated in her torture. The house belonged to one of the kidnapper’s parents, who were too afraid of their own son to intervene. Neighbors heard screams but didn’t call the police.
As someone who’s studied criminology, I keep coming back to one thought: this case represents a perfect storm of evil—not just from the perpetrators but from the community that enabled it through silence. It’s as if an entire neighborhood collectively decided to look the other way while a girl was tortured to death under their noses. (Would I have been brave enough to call the police? I’d like to think so, but fear is a powerful silencer.)
By day 44, Junko’s body had given up. After one final session of torture involving a beating with an iron barbell, her internal organs failed. The boys put her body in a drum, filled it with concrete, and abandoned it in a cement truck.
When the case finally went to trial, the sentences handed down were shockingly light—a maximum of 20 years because the killers were juveniles. Some have since been released and gone on to commit other crimes. Justice for Junko? As elusive as finding remorse in a psychopath’s heart.
What keeps me up at night about this case isn’t just the unimaginable suffering Junko endured. It’s how many people could have saved her but didn’t. It’s how systems designed to protect the vulnerable failed so catastrophically. It’s how juvenile justice laws can sometimes protect the wrong people.
Junko’s parents couldn’t even say goodbye properly. At her funeral, they had to place her ashes in the coffin because her body was too damaged for a proper viewing. They later had to move away from their neighborhood because they received threats from their daughter’s killers.
The most comprehensive accounts of the case reveal a society that wasn’t ready to confront the darkness in its midst. Japan’s culture of conformity and non-interference may have contributed to the bystander effect that allowed this torture to continue for so long.
If there’s anything to learn from Junko’s story, it’s that evil thrives when good people stay silent. When we prioritize our comfort over someone else’s suffering. When we convince ourselves that someone else will surely step in.
No one stepped in for Junko.
And that’s why, decades later, her story still matters. It still demands to be told. Because somewhere, right now, someone might be gathering the courage to speak up when they suspect something is wrong.
For Junko’s sake, I hope they do.