Yoshitomo Hori

Yoshitomo Hori was born on April 29, 1975, in Toki, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. He was the fifth child of a Zainichi Korean father and a Japanese mother. Initially, he was a Korean citizen, but he and three of his brothers were naturalized as Japanese citizens on August 22, 1984.

When he was just six months old, Hori was diagnosed with purpura, a medical condition that required him to be hospitalized for several months. He continued to have regular medical check-ups until he was about five or six years old. His father worked as a dump truck driver, but he was often violent and had many arguments with Hori's mother, especially over his affairs with other women. Because of this instability at home, Hori and his siblings sometimes felt neglected. As a result, his mother enrolled him in nursery school.

When Hori was around seven, his father moved the family to Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, but he continued his affairs. In April 1982, as Hori was about to enter elementary school, his father divorced his mother and moved in with another woman. Following the divorce, Hori went to live with his paternal grandmother, with whom his mother had a troubled relationship.

In April 1985, after Hori completed the fourth grade, his father joined a local criminal group due to financial difficulties. This led to Hori's family moving to a housing estate in Nagoya. At this new school, he developed an interest in soccer.

When Hori attended junior high school, he was disappointed to find that there was no soccer club. He asked his mother to transfer him to a different school, but she could not afford it. He eventually joined the tennis club instead and dedicated himself to the sport, even when he had the option of traveling by bus to the soccer club at another school. During his first summer vacation in high school, one of his brothers offered him a part-time job in construction to help him buy a new tennis racket, which he accepted.

Over time, Hori struggled in school. He was often punished by a math teacher for wearing torn pants from work. Eventually, his behavior led him to become a delinquent, skipping classes and bothering fellow students. Hori eventually dropped out of school to work for one of his brothers.

After graduating from junior high school in 1991, Hori attended high school part-time but dropped out due to lack of interest. He returned to work odd jobs for his brothers and became involved with a woman named Kou, an employee at a local snack bar. They got married after she became pregnant, but their life together faced many challenges.

Hori continued to have multiple relationships and faced financial troubles. His chronic back pain affected his ability to work, and he fell into debt. Eventually, he was kicked out of his house due to not paying rent, leading him to move in with different women.

Hori’s first known murders occurred on June 28, 1998, in Hekinan, Aichi Prefecture. Deep in debt and increasingly desperate, he initially scouted pachinko parlors as potential robbery targets. His plan evolved when he spotted 45‑year‑old Kazuo Magoori, a pachinko manager, leaving work. Believing the man likely kept cash or valuables at home, Hori followed him to his residence and surveyed the property. Under the guise of conducting a survey, he asked the manager’s wife, Satomi, about the household, learning that their two children lived with them.

On the day of the murders, Hori returned to the home with accomplice Teruo Hayama, posing as a friend of the husband asking to be let inside. Once Kazuo arrived, Hori strangled him and then murdered Satomi in the same manner. The pair ransacked the house and fled. The killings went unsolved for years. Shortly after, Hori’s marriage collapsed and he agreed to a divorce. He drifted between temporary jobs, girlfriends, and petty crimes, unaware that he had left DNA at the scene on dishware and edamame peels he consumed before the murders.

As Hori’s personal life deteriorated further, he entered another downward spiral in mid‑2006. Financially drained, unemployed, and juggling gambling addiction with unstable romantic relationships, he became more reckless. He recalled a home belonging to an elderly woman he had once worked near in Moriyama ward and suggested to his acquaintance Hiroshi Sato that they rob her.

On July 20, 2006, posing as workers conducting an inspection, Hori and Sato attacked the 69‑year‑old woman. They wrapped tape around her face and attempted to strangle her. She survived but required nearly two months of hospitalization. Jewelry and cash were stolen, some of which Hori gave to a girlfriend, linking him to the crime later.

Despite this escalation in violence, Hori continued gambling and entangling himself in new debts and relationships. The attempted murder remained unsolved until DNA connected him to it years later.

By mid‑2007, Hori’s finances were in ruins, and he was under mounting pressure from creditors, former lovers, and gambling losses. On the Internet, he encountered an underground job board advertising criminal “opportunities,” and through it met Kenji Kawagishi, Tsukasa Kanda, and later Yūichirō Hondō. Under the alias “Tanaka,” Hori began planning robberies and other violent schemes with the group.

On August 24, 2007, after failed attempts at targeting wealthy pachinko customers, the trio set out in a van searching for a young woman to abduct. At around 11:00 p.m., they approached 31‑year‑old office worker Rie Isogai, pretending to ask for directions. After forcing her into the van, they drove her to a secluded lot, robbed her of cash and her credit card, and bound her.

The next morning, when they realized she was still alive after being smothered with tape, they escalated the violence. Hori and Kawagishi strangled her with a rope while Kanda struck her with a hammer. The men then dumped her body in a forest in Gifu Prefecture. Attempts to use her bank card failed because she had given them an incorrect PIN.

Not long after the murder, the plan unraveled. Kawagishi approached police, confessed, and led them to the body. Kanda was arrested the same day, while Hori was lured into custody through false emails fabricated by investigators.

Hori and his accomplices initially faced trial for the murder of Rie Isogai. In this case, although prosecutors sought the death penalty for all three, Hori was sentenced to life imprisonment due to his role being judged less central than Kanda’s and Kawagishi’s.

He appealed, and in 2011, the Nagoya High Court upheld the life sentence. Prosecutors appealed again but were rejected in 2012, finalizing Hori’s punishment for this crime.

However, while he was in prison, DNA technology linked him to the long‑unsolved 1998 Hekinan murders and the 2006 Moriyama attempted murder. Sato, already incarcerated for drugs, implicated both Hori and Hayama. The newly uncovered evidence transformed Hori from a single‑case murderer into a serial killer.

In 2013, Hori stood trial for these earlier crimes. Designated the ringleader, he was sentenced to death by Justice Taro Kageyama, while Sato and Hayama received life terms. His appeals were rejected by the High Court in 2016 and the Supreme Court on August 7, 2019, making his death sentence final.

Awaiting execution on Japan’s death row, Hori has spent recent years writing fiction under pseudonyms and eventually under his own name. His 2020 book “Requiem” stirred controversy, resulting in a partially redacted publication after backlash. He has written letters of apology to the families of his victims, including those of Kazuo and Satomi Magoori and of Rie Isogai. Today, Yoshitomo Hori remains on death row.