The occurred in Suma, Kobe, Japan, on March 16 and May 27, 1997. Two victims, , aged 10, and , aged 11, were murdered by a 14-year-old boy reportedly named , under the alias . The perpetrator was arrested on June28, 1997 in connection with the Hase murder, and later confessed to both murders. As a juvenile offender, he was prosecuted and convicted as "BoyA". His real name has not been officially released to the press because Japanese law prohibits publishing the identification, but in some weekly magazines his real name has been reported as Shinichiro Azuma. Beginning in 2004, Azuma was released on provisional basis, with full release announced to follow on January1, 2005. The murders and subsequent release of the perpetrator gained widespread attention from Japanese media and politicians. Murders On May27, 1997, the head of , a special education pupil at Tainohata Elementary School, was found in front of the school gate hours before pupils arrived for classes. Hase had been beheaded with a handsaw, with further mutilations being done before being left in front of the school, for students to discover when they arrived in the morning. A note, written in red pen, was found stuffed in his mouth, identifying the killer as "Sakakibara". The note read: "This is the beginning of the game... Try to stop me if you can you stupid police... I desperately want to see people die, it is a thrill for me to commit murder. A bloody judgment is needed for my years of great bitterness." Additionally, some misspelled English was on the note as well: "shooll killer". Police commented that the style of Hase's killing and the note was reminiscent of that of the Zodiac murders in the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s. On June6, a letter was sent to the newspaper Kobe Shinbun, in which Sakakibara claimed responsibility for the slaying and decapitation of Jun Hase, and threatened that more killings would follow. This second letter, delivered in a brown envelope postmarked June3, had no return address or name. Enclosed was a three-page, 1400-word letter, also written in red ink, which included a six-character name that can be pronounced as "Sakakibara Seito". The same characters, which mean alcohol, devil, rose, saint and fight, were used in the first message that was inserted into the boy's mouth. Beginning with the phrase "Now, it's the beginning of a