[3][4] While the three perpetrators and a fourth unnamed US Marine were driving around, Gill had allegedly asked them if they had ever "thought of doing something crazy" which soon after prompted a conversation between all of them about how they would theoretically commit a rape, Gill claimed during testimony that Ledet had suggested doing it for real as they were about to drive Harp back to Camp Kinser,[5] prompting them to head to a store at Kadena Airbase where Harp and Ledet would purchase condoms and electrical tape.
The three would spend the next four hours searching for a target, at one point attempting to abduct a woman in an alleyway before she ran into a building after being accosted by Harp.
Her mother filed a complaint to the police who were able to quickly identify the men based on the victim's description, including the exact number on the license plate of the rental van.
[9] After the incident became known, public outrage began, especially over the U.S.–Japan Status of Forces Agreement, which gives the U.S. service members a certain measure of extraterritoriality (exemption from jurisdiction of local law) only as it relates to the place the suspects were detained.
[14] On October 21 the anti-base movement reached its apex, a rally was held in Ginowan City to protest the incident and the US military bases.
[18] As a consequence of the protests regarding jurisdiction, the U.S. made concessions and agreed to consider transferring suspects to the Japanese before an indictment if the severity of the alleged crime warranted it.
[20] In a trash can on camp Kinser, US military investigators had retrieved the three assailant's discarded pairs of underwear, each stained in the victim's blood, as well as a notebook, and a roll of electrician tape all of which were in the same plastic bag the victim obtained from the general store,[21] Having been encouraged by his lawyer who told him that Japanese courts are generally more lenient to those who confess their crimes and express remorse, [22] Gill pleaded guilty to the rape, though continuously claimed in letters and phone calls to his parents that he and the other two were being manipulated by police into making statements in accordance to a false story, claiming that he would be killed if he didn't acquiesce, and that police were presenting them with evidence such as photographs of his own blood stained underwear, which he said didn't make sense, given that he would never throw away a pair of underwear with his name sewed on it.
[24] Gill had explained to the judges that he had been under a lot of work related stress in the weeks preceding the crime which were exacerbated by his orders for a transfer back to the US being canceled after he had failed his Physical Readiness Test for excess weight.
[26] On the trial session on December 11 of the same year, Harp's statement detailing his alleged role in the kidnapping and rape was read aloud in court.
When prompted by his attorney, Harp would say that he tried to correct investigators that he had never raped the victim and that he had signed the statement confessing to his crimes under duress from American police.
He was found in the third-floor apartment of Lauren Cooper, a junior Kennesaw State University student and acquaintance whom he had apparently raped and murdered by strangulation.
[34] During December 2011 then-Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa was the subject of a censure motion from the opposition Liberal Democratic Party for failing to know the details of the rape.
[36] John Junkerman, director of Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, expressed interest in interviewing both of the surviving perpetrators for his film about Okinawa's contentious history with its US military presence.
[37] Okinawan writer, Shun Medoruma would write his 2017 novel: "In the Woods of Memory" Which centers around multiple characters' experience with sexual trauma that occurred during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, the 1995 incident is referenced twice in chapters that take place in the year 2005.