On November 5, 1989, Tsutsumi Sakamoto (坂本 堤 Sakamoto Tsutsumi April 6, 1956 – November 5, 1989), a lawyer working on a class action lawsuit against Aum Shinrikyo, a doomsday cult in Japan, was murdered, along with his wife Satoko and his child Tatsuhiko, by perpetrators who broke into his apartment. Six years later, following the 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway, the murderers were uncovered and it was established that the murderers had been members of Aum Shinrikyo at the time of the crime. Tsutsumi Sakamoto Tsutsumi was born in Yokosuka, Kanagawa. After graduating from Yokosuka High School, he entered Tokyo University and graduated in law. He worked as a law clerk until he passed the bar exam in 1984 at age 27. He was a member of the Yokohama Bar Association. From 1987 he worked as a lawyer at Yokohama Law Offices. At the time of his murder, Sakamoto was known as an anti-cult lawyer. He had previously successfully led a class-action suit against the Unification Church on behalf of relatives of Unification Church members. In the suit the plaintiffs sued for assets transferred to the group, and for harm inflicted by worsened family relationships. A public relations campaign in which protesters demanded public attention to their cause was instrumental to Sakamoto's plan, and the Unification Church suffered a serious financial blow. By organizing a similar anti-Aum public relations campaign, Sakamoto apparently sought to demonstrate that Aum members, similar to members of the Unification Church, did not join the group voluntarily but were lured in by deception and were probably being held against their will by threats and manipulations. Furthermore, religious items were being sold at prices far greater than their market value, draining money out of the households of members (in a practice called spiritual sales). If a judgment was handed down in his clients' favor, Aum could be bankrupted, thus greatly weakening or destroying the group. In 1988, in order to pursue the class action suit, Sakamoto initiated the establishment of Aum Shinrikyo Higai Taisaku Bengodan ("Coalition of Help for those affected by Aum Shinrikyo"). This was later renamed: Aum Shinrikyo Higaisha-no-kai or "Aum Shinrikyo Victims' Association". The group still operated under this title . After Sakamoto's disappearance, lawyer Taro Takimoto took over most of his anti-Aum Shinrikyo legal activities. Circumstances of the murder In October 1989, Tokyo Broadcasting System Television (TBS) taped an interview with