Hideo Murai

Hideo Murai (村井 秀夫 Murai Hideo, December 5, 1958 – April 23, 1995) was a member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult and one of the perpetrators responsible for the Sakamoto family murder.

He was reportedly the number three person in the Aum leadership, after Shoko Asahara and Kiyohide Hayakawa.

[2] Murai was mortally wounded when an ethnic Korean man named Hiroyuki Jo (徐裕行 Jo Hiroyuki), a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi (the largest organized crime yakuza group in Japan), stabbed Murai repeatedly, in the presence of 10 police officers and about a hundred reporters recording the events and broadcasting them live.

[3] Charges that Kenji Kamimine (上峯 憲司), a former leader of Hane-gumi, ordered Jo to kill Murai were dismissed by the Tokyo High Court.

Jo had claimed Kenji had ordered him to kill any Aum Shinrikyo leaders that he could.