The entire case spanned 17 months from the initial kidnapping of the president of Glico to the last known communication from the prime suspect,[1] a person or group known only as "The Monster with 21 Faces".
At around 9:00pm on March 18, 1984, two masked men armed with a pistol and rifle forcefully entered the Nishinomiya[2] home of then-Ezaki Glico president Katsuhisa Ezaki.
[4] After entering the home of Katsuhisa Ezaki, the two masked men tied up his wife Mikieko (35 years old) and his eldest daughter Mariko (8) before locking them inside a bathroom.
[3] The family's two other children, daughter Yukiko (4) and son Etsuro (11), were asleep in another room and left unharmed.
[2] At around midnight, the kidnappers directed a director of the company to a ransom note in a public phone booth, demanding 1 billion yen (about US$4.5 million at then-current exchange rates) and 100 kilograms of gold bullion.
On April 10, vehicles in the parking lot of the Ezaki Glico headquarters' trial production building were set on fire.
Following these threats, a man wearing a Yomiuri Giants baseball cap was caught placing Glico chocolate on a store shelf by a security camera.
An excerpt from one such letter, written in hiragana and with an Osaka dialect, reads, Dear dumb police officers.
A threatening letter arrived at the Tokyo home of Morinaga Dairy vice president, Mitsuo Yamada on November 1, 1984.
This was one in a long line of extortion and harassment letters sent to various Japanese food companies by a criminal gang calling themselves "Monster with 21 Faces".
Monster with 21 faces"[11]On November 6, Morinaga responded to the criminals by placing the missing persons advertisement in the Mainichi Newspapers Morning Edition.
Police got a second chance at the "Fox-Eyed Man" on 14 November, when the "Monster" group attempted to rob the House Food Corporation of 100 million yen (about US$410,000) in another secret deal.
At a rest stop on the Meishin Expressway, near Otsu, investigators saw the Fox-Eyed Man, wearing a golf cap and dark glasses, but again he evaded capture.
As a result, the investigative team was ordered to withdraw, believing that the drop was an evaluation by the "Monster" of police response.
However, an hour earlier, a patrol car from the local Shiga prefecture police had spotted a station wagon with its engine running and its headlights off.
Unaware of the secret ransom drop, the police officer drove up to the station wagon and shone his flashlight on the driver, revealing a thin-cheeked man in his forties, wearing a golf cap over his eyes and, more telling, a wireless receiver with headphones.
In August 1985, after continuing harassment by the "Monster with 21 Faces" and the failure to capture the "Fox-Eyed Man", Shiga Prefecture Police Superintendent Yamamoto killed himself by self-immolation.
[13][2] Following the release of the identikit in January 1985, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police quickly identified the culprit as Manabu Miyazaki.
There had been numerous whistleblowing incidents between 1975 and 1976 that were also attributed to Miyazaki, which highlighted Glico's dumping of starches and other industrial waste into the local river and drainage system.
In addition, his father was the boss of a local yakuza group and Miyazaki himself bore a striking resemblance to the "Fox-Eyed Man".
Speculation had gone on for months that Miyazaki was the "Fox-Eyed Man", until the Tokyo Metropolitan Police checked his alibis and cleared him of any wrongdoing.
The resulting notoriety caused Miyazaki to become a social commentator, and he wrote a book about his experiences called Toppamono.
In addition, Japanese National Public Safety Commission investigated extreme left-wing and right-wing groups as possible suspects.