Two days after the severed head of a missing student was discovered in a remote mountain area, the local police department received multiple reports of a white Toyota Corolla being driven erratically on the expressway before bursting into flames. Both of the car’s occupants were killed. Confused eyewitnesses stated that the car had been continuously reversing and crashing into the guardrails, almost as if it were under some supernatural control.

Around the same time, in an unrelated incident, a television news crew was reporting from the entrance to a dark and eerie forest close to where the murdered university student’s body had been discovered. As people watched the live broadcast, they were startled to hear the chilling, disembodied voice of a woman speaking in the background. Viewers were convinced that they had just heard the ghost of the murdered student.

It would take seven years for these two seemingly unconnected incidents to be connected in a more disturbing way than anyone could have ever anticipated.

⚠️ This article contains descriptions of violent or distressing events.
– Reader discretion is advised.

Table of Contents

Miyako Hiraoka

Miyako Hiraoka was a 19-year-old first-year student at Shimane Prefectural University. She had recently moved from her hometown of Sakaide City in Kagawa to the picturesque city of Hamada, which boasted stunning beaches and magnificent mountain ranges.

Miyako was a kind and compassionate young adult who participated in fundraising activities to support developing countries. She was also an excellent student with a promising future ahead of her. She aspired to find a career where she could utilise her English language skills, and as such, Miyako had dreams of studying abroad and was eagerly anticipating an upcoming exchange program that would take her to Russia the following year. However, financing both her studies and the program was costly, and in order to save the necessary funds, Miyako worked a part-time job at an ice cream parlour in a shopping mall about a mile and a half away from her home.

On October 26th, 2009, Miyako worked her usual evening shift with nothing unusual reported. When the parlour closed for the night, she bagged the trash, turned off the lights, locked the door, and left the premises. CCTV footage captured her walking through the shopping mall towards the exit at 9:16 p.m.

After leaving the mall, Miyako could have taken a bus home, but to save money, she often chose to walk the 30-minute route instead. She usually made the walk with a co-worker who lived nearby, but that co-worker had recently resigned, leaving Miyako to make the journey alone.

Ironically, Miyako had herself made plans to leave her job, having secured a new position closer to her home that she was set to start in the upcoming days. However, until then, and without the added reassurance of her co-worker to accompany her, Miyako would have to make the journey alone.

Miyako never made it home.

When Miyako failed to show up for her scheduled shift the following afternoon, the manager of the ice cream parlour, who was already short-staffed, grew frustrated. However, when attempts to contact Miyako were unsuccessful, concern quickly replaced irritation. He contacted Miyako’s mother, who immediately became alarmed. Miyako had promised to call her the previous evening once she arrived home, but that call never came. Following this exchange, Miyako’s mother contacted the police to report her daughter missing.

The Shimane Prefectural Police immediately launched an investigation to find Miyako. Residents of Hamada considered their city a safe place to live, so as news of Miyako’s puzzling disappearance spread through the community, they became unsettled, particularly at night, fearing that a kidnapper or murderer was roaming their streets.

The authorities were determined to find Miyako as quickly as possible. However, despite their dedicated efforts and resources, the investigation into Miyako’s disappearance led to a dead end. There was no surveillance footage, none of the eyewitness accounts they received seemed significant, and there were no viable leads to follow. Miyako had simply vanished without a trace.

Then, on November 6th, 2009, eleven days after Miyako’s disappearance, a mushroom hunter made a grisly discovery in the woods near the summit of Mt. Garyu in Kitahiroshima-Cho, about 15 miles from the ice cream parlour. As he cleared away some fallen leaves, he was horrified to find Miyako’s severed head. Her face had been badly beaten, and there was a shoe print on her cheek. Horrified, the man immediately fled down the mountain and called the authorities.

DNA testing later confirmed that the severed head belonged to Miyako, and over the next few days, the police continued their extensive search of the forested mountain region, deploying hundreds of officers to the case. They discovered various fragments of Miyako’s mutilated remains scattered throughout the area. The following day, after her head had been found, they located her left femur. It was determined that the flesh had been removed artificially rather than by animals. On the 8th, they found her torso. Her breasts had been gouged out until her ribs were visible, and her genitals were chopped up to the point where her gender could not be determined. On the 9th, they discovered her left ankle. Investigators would go on to find additional remains, including a thigh bone, toenails, and a shoe. The body parts had been placed in plastic bags and discarded in multiple locations, believed to have been thrown from a vehicle.

The examination of the body revealed that Miyako had suffered extensive head trauma from repeated blows while she was still alive, and marks on her neck suggested she had been strangled. The individual responsible for this crime attempted to cover their tracks by burning the remains before scattering her dismembered body parts in multiple locations around the mountain.

The police were stumped as to the identity and motive of the perpetrator. Miyako was a kind, sweet, and likeable young woman with no known enemies, which made the investigation even more challenging for the authorities because they lacked an obvious starting point. It did not make sense that anyone would want to hurt her.

A joint task force was formed between the police departments of Shimane and Hiroshima Prefectures, and a large-scale investigation was subsequently launched. Witnesses reported seeing a suspicious white sedan speeding along the route between the mall and Miyako’s home, and another witness claimed to have seen a white car in the mall’s employee parking lot around the time she disappeared. In response, the police examined footage from highway cameras and analysed data from the automatic license plate reader system (N system), searching for any suspicious vehicles that may have been in the vicinity of the crime scene, but these efforts did not yield any useful leads.

A reward of up to 3,000,000 yen, approximately 20,000 USD, was offered to anyone who could provide information to assist in solving the case. In an attempt to jog anyone’s memory of potentially suspicious activity they may have seen, thousands of flyers were distributed around the local station, mall, and ice cream shop where Miyako worked. The flyers included Miyako’s photograph and a map of key locations such as her workplace, accommodation, and the areas where her remains were found.

Eager for any leads, the authorities even checked the rental records of horror movies at local video stores. Psychologists were also brought in to create a profile of the suspect, theorising that the crime was one of opportunity and the killer was likely to be a man between the ages of 20 and 40 who was not acquainted with Miyako. Ultimately, however, despite the police’s best efforts, they still did not have much to go on, and with no leads or suspects, the case began to grow cold.

The Broadcast That Haunted the Case

As time passed, the local media continued to keep Miyako’s memory alive, eventually turning her story into a major national news event. Journalists from across Japan flocked to Hamada City, reporting from various locations connected to Miyako, such as the ice cream parlour and Shimane Prefectural University.

However, it was one particular broadcast that stood out and captivated the attention of all who watched it. In this report, a television crew was broadcasting down a dark path near the forested area where her torso was found. As the reporter began the live broadcast, a woman’s anguished voice was unexpectedly captured, saying:

“This is very painful. Why only me?”

The reporter and cameraman both confirmed that there was no one else in the vicinity of the recording and that the entire crew was male.

This chilling, disembodied voice heard on live television instantly transformed Miyako’s story into an international sensation, as viewers became convinced that they had heard Miyako’s ghost.

Despite the surge of public interest, the mysterious voice ultimately offered no useful information, leaving investigators no closer to identifying Miyako’s killer. Months slipped into years, and the case gradually went cold.

Then, in 2016, a specialised cold case team re-examined the investigation, turning their attention to individuals with prior sexual offence records. Among them was Yoshiharu Yano, a 33-year-old man with a history of sex‑related crimes. Seven years after Miyako’s disappearance, the authorities finally had a promising lead.

Yoshiharu Yano

Yoshiharu Yano was born in April 1976 in Kanda-Cho, Shimonoseki City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. His father, who owned a rice business, passed away in 2008, a year before Miyako’s murder. His mother worked as a domestic helper, and he also had a younger brother.

During his junior high school years, Yoshiharu was described as a quiet and serious student who struggled to communicate with girls. However, he actively participated in extracurricular activities, including being the head of the track and field club in his final year. He also held a black belt in judo. In high school, he excelled academically.

However, Yoshiharu’s situation changed after dropping out of university in order to devote himself to his band and to pursue romantic relationships. He held various part-time jobs until he eventually left the band and moved to Tokyo. He later revealed on social media that he had developed focal dystonia in his left hand, a condition where muscles can move involuntarily, affecting his ability to play in the band, and leaving him depressed.

After moving to Tokyo, Yoshiharu committed three separate sexually motivated crimes in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward and Kitakyushu City. He threatened three women with a knife and sexually assaulted them. In August 2004, aged 28, Yoshiharu was arrested and sentenced to three years and six months in prison.

After being released from prison, Yoshiharu returned to his family’s home in Shimonoseki City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. For the next year and a half, he worked various part-time jobs before securing employment at a housing equipment company selling solar panels. In May 2009, he was transferred to the Masuda City sales office, where he would end up living, placing him near the location where Miyako was killed. Investigators found that Yoshiharu’s car matched the security footage showing a white vehicle near the forest and mountain where Miyako’s remains were discovered.

Finally, after seven years, the authorities obtained the promising lead they had been waiting for as the evidence against Yoshiharu began to mount. Yoshiharu’s employer reported that on the same day Miyako’s remains were found, Yoshiharu had taken a two-day leave, claiming he needed to visit his family. His friends also reported during police interviews that he had been boasting about doing “a big thing,” which in hindsight was clearly a reference to Miyako’s murder.

As the investigation into Yoshiharu intensified, detectives were seen in his hometown asking residents about a particular plastic bag used locally by NTT to deliver phone books. The colour, text, and design of these bags would change depending on the year and region of delivery. The reason for the authorities’ interest was that a blood‑stained fragment of an NTT phone book bag had been found attached to Miyako’s torso. Investigators soon discovered that bags of that design had been distributed in Shimonoseki City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, where Yoshiharu’s family home was located. It was a significant breakthrough.

But the most significant breakthrough of all came when Yoshiharu’s home was searched, and a digital camera containing disturbing images of Miyako’s final moments the night she disappeared was discovered. Yoshiharu had tried to destroy the evidence by deleting the images, but the police were able to recover them, retrieving 57 gruesome photographs, including images taken in the bathtub where Miyako was dismembered. Additionally, there were photographs of the kitchen knife used to cut up Miyako’s body.

Authorities suspected that Yoshiharu initially abducted Miyako, then proceeded to sexually assault her at his home before strangling her to death. It is believed he then dismembered her in the bathroom using a kitchen knife. Later, under the cover of darkness, Yoshiharu then drove to the mountain, where he burned and discarded Miyako’s body parts in an effort to conceal his crime.

On December 20th, 2016, Yoshiharu was indicted on charges of murder, mutilating a corpse, and abandoning a body. However, in a cruel twist of fate, the police could not arrest him, and justice could prevail.

This was because Yoshiharu Yano was dead.

The Crash That Closed the Case

On November 8th, 2009, just a few weeks after Miyako’s murder and two days after her severed head was discovered, Yoshiharu and his mother were driving along the Chugoku Expressway after visiting Yoshiharu’s father’s grave in Hagi City. At around 3:07 p.m., witnesses reported seeing a small white car with white smoke coming from the hood after colliding with a guardrail. They described the vehicle driving erratically, with the male driver repeatedly ramming into the guardrail, reversing, and then crashing into it again. The two occupants appeared terrified, screaming as the car burst into flames, as if the vehicle itself was possessed and had turned against them.

When highway patrol arrived, they found the car engulfed in fire on the side of the road. Yoshiharu’s burned body was still in the driver’s seat, and his mother’s body lay nearby. Both were deceased. There were no signs of braking or skidding, and the weather had played no role in the crash.

From the outset, investigators considered the possibility of a double suicide or murder‑suicide, with Yoshiharu intentionally driving the car into the guardrail until it ignited. The timing of their visit to the grave suggested a potential farewell, and Yoshiharu would have known that Miyako’s body had been found and that the truth was closing in — factors that could have driven him to a desperate act. Another theory speculated that his mother may have known, or suspected, what he had done. If so, Yoshiharu may have taken her with him intentionally. Alternatively, he may have intended only to kill her and stage an accident, never anticipating that the fire would consume them both.

Yet witnesses also described the pair as terrified, which complicates the idea of a planned suicide. Panic does not rule out intention, but it does leave room for doubt.

And then there is the final, more supernatural interpretation. Some believe that Miyako herself intervened — that her ghost took control of Yoshiharu’s car and delivered him to a fiery end. When paired with the eerie voice captured in the news report, this theory has persisted, offering a chilling alternative to the official explanations.

At the time, the incident received little attention, overshadowed by the media’s focus on Miyako’s case, and no one realised the two events were connected. It was only years later, when investigators finally identified Yoshiharu as the suspect, that the full picture emerged. But by then, Yoshiharu was already dead, leaving the police with no one to arrest, and the case was closed. For many, justice was never served. But for others, the belief that Miyako exacted her own revenge provides a sense of closure that the legal system never could.