At 9:15 p.m. on Sunday, July 30, 1995, 47 year old Noriko Inagaki called a friend from the second floor office of Super Nanpei Owada, a small supermarket in Hachioji, western Tokyo.
The supermarket had just closed. Noriko asked him to pick her up so they could get something to eat. He lived only a few minutes away, and the call sounded completely normal.
About two minutes later, several people near the supermarket heard a series of sharp noises. A Bon dance had taken place in the park across the street that evening, and some thought the sounds were firecrackers from the festival.
Noriko’s friend arrived at around 9:20 p.m. The light in the upstairs office was still on, but Noriko didn’t come outside. After waiting in his car for more than 20 minutes, he drove to the nearby restaurant where they had planned to eat.
Noriko wasn’t there.
He returned to the supermarket with a woman from the restaurant. Shortly after 10 p.m., they climbed the outside stairs to the office and found the door unlocked.
Noriko was lying near the safe. Two teenage girls were nearby. All three had been shot.
Police were called at 10:08 p.m.
The two girls were 17 year old Megumi Yabuki and 16 year old Hiromi Maeda. All three worked at the supermarket, though only Noriko and Megumi were working that evening.
Hiromi had only stopped by to check her upcoming schedule and wait for Megumi so they could leave together.
Noriko had started working at Super Nanpei earlier that month. Before that, she had run a restaurant and had begun studying to become a caregiver. The store had recently put her in charge of the evening cash, which meant placing the day’s earnings in the office safe after closing.
Megumi and Hiromi were both in their second year of high school. They had known each other since elementary school and were close friends.
Megumi hoped to work in child care one day. People who knew her remembered her as bright and cheerful. Hiromi was known for being thoughtful and dependable. She volunteered at a nursing home and was remembered for how gently she treated the people there.
Megumi arrived at the supermarket by bicycle shortly before 5 p.m. Noriko arrived around the same time. At about 6:30 p.m., the last male coworker left for the day.
Hiromi came by about 20 minutes later and stayed with them for the rest of the evening.
Super Nanpei Owada was a small neighborhood supermarket. The store itself was on the first floor, while the office was upstairs. The only way to reach it was to go outside and climb a separate staircase from the parking lot.
That meant someone could go upstairs without ever walking through the store below.
The supermarket had four security cameras, but they only sent a live picture to a monitor in the office. Nothing was recorded.
Across the street, families had gathered for the summer Bon dance. It ended shortly after 9 p.m., around the same time the supermarket closed.
At 8:56 p.m., a man and woman bought seven items and walked toward a white sedan in the parking lot. They are believed to have been the final customers. Police have tried for years to identify them, not as suspects, but because they may have seen someone near the outside stairs.
At 9 p.m., Noriko and Megumi closed the store, carried the cash upstairs, changed out of their work clothes, and got ready to leave. The office safe held 5.26 million yen, worth about $56,000 at the time.
At 9:15, Noriko made her phone call.
Megumi and Hiromi were later found with tape over their mouths and around their hands. Each girl had been shot once in the head from close range.
Noriko hadn’t been tied up. She was lying near the safe and had been shot twice in the head.
Another bullet had been fired into the safe door. But the safe was still closed, and all 5.26 million yen was still inside. The victims’ wallets and belongings had also been left behind. The office hadn’t been searched or ransacked.
The bullet in the safe made robbery seem like the obvious motive. But the killer had left all of the money behind, even though Noriko was responsible for the safe and could have been forced to open it.
Police also looked into the possibility that one of the three had been targeted personally, but they couldn’t find a clear motive for that either. They still can’t say for certain whether the money was ever the real target.
If the sharp noises heard at around 9:17 p.m. were the gunshots, the attack began almost immediately after Noriko ended her call. Her friend was already in the parking lot by around 9:20.
Because he stayed in his car, no one knows exactly when the killer left. Even so, Noriko had been speaking on the phone only a few minutes before her friend arrived.
Police believe the gun was a small .38 caliber Squires Bingham revolver made in the Philippines. It was a copy of the Colt Detective Special, and the ammunition also appeared to have come from the Philippines.
The gun has never been found.
All four shots that struck the victims were fired from close range. Police also found shoeprints that seemed to come from one worn pair of size 26 centimeter sneakers. That could mean only one person went upstairs, though someone else may have been waiting outside or in a car.
The prints were eventually narrowed down to two possible sneaker models. Only 533 pairs of those models were known to have been sold in Japan during the early 1990s. Police have asked people to search old photographs and family albums for anyone who may have worn them.
Several people remembered seeing something unusual near the supermarket, but none had seen enough to identify anyone.
One witness saw a white sedan parked nearby with a man inside who appeared to be looking toward the upstairs office. Someone else saw a man in a white shirt watching the same area. After realizing that he had been noticed, the man moved out of sight.
Police have never been able to connect either man or either vehicle to the murders. With people leaving the festival, unfamiliar faces wouldn’t necessarily have stood out. The music and celebrations also gave people an ordinary explanation for the sharp sounds they heard.
Police collected more than 100 fingerprints from the office. By 2025, seven still couldn’t be matched to employees, regular visitors, or anyone else known to have been there.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they came from the killer. Some were found in places such as door handles and counters, which other people could have touched.
A partial fingerprint was also found on the sticky side of the tape used on Megumi and Hiromi. Eight details looked similar to the fingerprint of a Japanese man who died in 2005.
Japanese police needed 12 matching details before they could call it a definite match. They also couldn’t find any connection between the man, the supermarket, or the three victims. There wasn’t enough evidence to show that the print was his.
Police tested more than 70 cigarette butts found in and around the supermarket. Almost all were eventually traced back to known smokers.
The remaining two had been found outside and contained DNA from unidentified people. But police couldn’t show that either cigarette had anything to do with the murders.
The gun led police through criminal circles in both Japan and the Philippines. Bullets from other crimes were compared with those used at Super Nanpei, but no matching weapon ever turned up.
The untouched money and the unusual gun have led to years of theories. Some believe it was a failed robbery. Others think one of the victims may have been targeted over a personal grudge. There have also been claims about the Yakuza and a possible contract killing.
But none of those theories has ever been proven. Police have never found a confirmed link to the Yakuza, and there is no solid evidence that the three women had been watched for weeks before the murders.
In 2009, a Japanese prisoner on death row in China told investigators that a Chinese man living in Canada might know something about the case. Japanese authorities later brought the man back to Japan over a separate passport offense and questioned him in 2013.
He said he knew nothing about the murders, and police couldn’t connect him to the supermarket office.
The old statute of limitations was due to expire in 2010. Before it did, Japan abolished the time limit for murder and certain other serious crimes. The killer can still be prosecuted if caught.
Over the years, police have logged more than 220,000 officer assignments and received more than 1,600 tips. No one has ever been arrested.
The supermarket was eventually demolished. The area is now used as a parking lot, with a small memorial to Noriko, Megumi, and Hiromi near the former site.
On the 30th anniversary in 2025, police renewed their appeal and continued offering a reward of up to 6 million yen for information that helps solve the case.
In 2026, they released more photographs and a digital reconstruction of the store, hoping that someone might recognize a detail or remember something from that night.
Megumi’s old school still holds a memorial service for her each year. One of her classmates remembers returning after summer vacation in 1995 and seeing flowers on Megumi’s empty desk.
More than three decades later, police still don’t know who entered the office that night or why Noriko, Megumi, and Hiromi were killed while they were getting ready to go home.