meters in the middle of the day. The path they were supposed to have taken led between two fields, and the day on which this was supposed to have happened also coincided with the town's annual festival, which was being held very close by. Over ten people were working in the fields that day, and the festival drew well over 800 people, some of whom would have walked along this path on their way to the festival. The people working in the fields were questioned, but none of them remember seeing Ishikawa and Nakata together. No one else from the town stepped forward with such testimony either. This is all to say nothing of the implausibility of a 16-year-old high school student following an older man she did not know into a forest in the first place. The confession states that Ishikawa murdered Nakata because she started to scream. In an attempt to silence her, he choked her, and before he knew it, she was dead. However, at this exact time (slightly after 4pm), a man was working in his field approximately away from where the murder supposedly happened. He was questioned by the police repeatedly and testified that, while he could faintly hear the sounds of the festival over away, he heard no screaming while he was working. In one of his last sessions with the police, he stated that he might have heard someone calling sometime before 3:30, but from the direction opposite the forest. This statement was used in the first trial as evidence that someone had heard the murder take place. The full contents of the man's sessions with the police and his exact location during the crime were not released to the defense until 1981, 18 years after Ishikawa was tried. Ishikawa's confession says that Nakata sustained a deep cut to her head during the struggle. However, analyses of the soil in the area revealed no trace of blood. Ishikawa had also confessed that he killed the student with his right hand, inadvertently crushing her neck in an attempt to keep her from screaming. The coroner's report states that the amount of force required to do this would have left bruises on her neck – no such marks were found. Instead, there were marks from a cloth being wrapped tightly around her neck. The confession also maintains that Ishikawa carried the body from the forest