[Chapter 431: The Shocking Case]
Maple Leaf Tea House was, after all, a public place. The strong scent of blood soon drifted out from the private room, making many patrons uneasy. When the tea house staff followed the sll and opened the door, they were imdiately horrified by the grisly scene inside and fainted on the spot.
Once the police were alerted, they promptly arrived to secure the scene and begin their investigation. The officers quickly identified one of the victims as Koji Miyamoto, a notorious core mber of the Yamaguchi-gumi gang. Their first instinct was to suspect a gang-related vendetta.
However, what baffled them was that a case containing five million dollars was left untouched, and the valuables on the victims remained intact.
...
At the Four Seasons Hotel, a five-star establishnt, the situation was equally eerie. mbers of the Seagram Group had all died inside their rooms -- and each had died in their own separate room. The scent of blood was not as strong, so no one noticed anything suspicious until the afternoon. That's when a floor attendant slled sothing wrong. After internal approval, security and staff opened a door and discovered a brutal massacre: the victims were decapitated, with blood pooled on the floor already beginning to coagulate.
The hotel acted swiftly and notified the police. They quickly identified the guests as Seagram Group employees. There were thirteen of them in total. Calls to eleven other rooms went unanswered.
When the police arrived, they first secured the already opened room for evidence collection and scene preservation. Then, with the hotel's cooperation, they opened the remaining twelve rooms. In nine of those rooms, the scenes were identical: all victims were decapitated, dead beyond any doubt. Even the guests in the presidential suite suffered the sa fate, their bodies severed in two. Only three rooms were found empty.
Strangely, none of the victims' valuables or room belongings were touched. Even more puzzling was the lack of any traces left by the killer -- no fingerprints, no footprints, no scent.
This was a major five-star hotel. The sudden and savage killing of twelve people -- mostly Aricans -- among them the chairman of the Seagram Group, sent shockwaves. The mysterious slaying of such a high-profile figure in Tokyo was a huge case, destined to create a political storm in Japan.
The local police took no chances. The hotel was imdiately sealed off, and no one was allowed to leave pending investigation. They promptly reported the case to their superiors.
...
When the Tokyo tropolitan Police Departnt chief received the report, it felt as if the sky was falling.
They mobilized a large force to support the investigation and imdiately inford the Tokyo city governnt and police headquarters. The case quickly escalated to the Japanese Cabinet and even the Pri Minister.
Hearing that the entire Seagram business delegation, including their chairman, had been gruesoly beheaded, officials at all levels were shaken. This was the most serious diplomatic incident imaginable. Mishandling it could bring down nurous top executives and result in political heads rolling.
Their concern materialized into direct orders demanding the Tokyo tropolitan Police conduct the investigation at all costs. Several Cabinet officials personally oversaw the investigation. The Pri Minister and Foreign Minister grimly visited the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to brief Arican officials about the murders.
...
This, of course, placed enormous pressure on the Tokyo police, who mobilized nearly their entire force, cordoning off three floors of the Four Seasons Hotel. The unlucky hotel and its guests were all detained and subjected to exhaustive questioning.
Although the investigation uncovered a host of illegal activities among guests, none connected to the murders. At the cri scenes, despite the police's utmost efforts, no clues surfaced aside from tiny pinhole breaches found in so windows.
No leads; no logical trail.
The police then began cross-referencing people the Seagram Group had interacted with in Tokyo, focusing on Panasonic Electronics and Linton's contingent.
Panasonic Electronics appeared to sell Universal Group to them, but no motivation or rational cause for murder erged.
Linton's group, on the other hand, were logical suspects: they were competitors of Seagram and had recent contact. Motive seed plausible.
But all their mbers stayed inside the hotel the entire day. Apart from a lawyer declaring they had no connection to the case, the others ignored the police entirely.
Had they been Japanese or from other countries, the police might have forcibly taken them for questioning, even resorting to heavy-handed tactics due to the case's gravity.
But given their Arican nationality, the police had little leverage, and in the absence of suspicious evidence, their efforts fell flat.
...
The only confird facts were that among the six victims at the Maple Leaf Tea House, three were from the Seagram Group -- guests from three other hotel rooms.
Thus, the entire Seagram business delegation of thirteen was decapitated without exception.
anwhile, the tea house owner, staff, and all custors present that day were dragged into the police station for intense interrogation.
The Yamaguchi-gumi gang also ca under extre scrutiny due to Koji Miyamoto's death at the scene.
The Yamaguchi-gumi was already a primary target of police investigations, but their complex network of interests and various protection made direct action difficult.
However, this incident was too big -- huge enough to unsettle the entire Cabinet and Pri Minister, who feared the wrath of their Arican allies.
No one dared to defend the Yamaguchi-gumi this ti.
Almost all mbers of the Yamaguchi-gumi were taken in for rigorous questioning. Their assets were thoroughly examined, exposing nurous illegal activities, solving many old cases, rescuing several young won, and confiscating large amounts of illicit gains.
Many core mbers faced serious prison sentences.
This investigation dealt a bone-crushing blow to the Yamaguchi-gumi. The Tokyo branch was uprooted, and the other branches faced a potential wipeout.
Yet, despite the massive efforts, the baffling murders of the thirteen Seagram Group mbers remained unsolved.
*****
spatreon/Sayonara816.
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