Nakagawa’s Strangling in Ageo’s Maruyama Park

Nakagawa’s Strangling in Ageo’s Maruyama Park is the killing of a young woman whose body was found in a secluded part of the park. The case moved from a hurried first bulletin to an investigation shaped by the victim’s meeting with a foreign boyfriend—and became a test of how far a reporter could go to obtain a lead without losing the police’s trust.

Discovery at Maruyama Park

A year after an earlier case had seemed finished, Jake Adelstein was eating yakisoba at Omiya Station when Takahashi, a new reporter, called in a panic. Adelstein got him to read the press release: a young Japanese woman had been found in Maruyama Park in Ageo, strangled with a woman’s scarf. The police had not yet disclosed its color. Yamamoto was already shouting in the background for Adelstein to reach the scene, and he hurried to the park.

Maruyama Park stood apart from the sparse, play-equipment-dotted parks Adelstein associated with urban Tokyo and Saitama. Its open grass and groves of trees made the discovery behind a gazebo feel markedly different from an ordinary city park. The victim had been found in bushes on the north side of the Summer Pavilion. Police could not close off the whole park: mothers objected that their children would have nowhere to play, so the restricted area remained limited to the immediate crime scene. Reporters kept their distance from it and canvassed the park instead, looking for witnesses and any information that might clarify what had happened.

What the Scene and First Leads Established

The first bulletin had left the scarf’s color undisclosed; the scene later established that it was pink. Nakagawa was wearing the same clothes she had worn the previous day, and her car was nearby. Her pockets held car keys and a handkerchief; beneath the driver’s seat, police found a drawstring purse containing 6,000 yen and her identification. The cash made robbery a less likely explanation, while the scarf raised a separate question: Nakagawa’s family said they had never seen it before.

The investigation soon turned toward people in Nakagawa’s address book. Of its forty names, several belonged to foreigners, whom police began questioning. The most consequential lead was a foreign boyfriend she had gone to meet on the day she was killed. He was identified as Abdul, known as Andy, and was reportedly an Iranian who presented himself as French. A friend said the couple had first met at a gym in Ageo, giving reporters a place to pursue the connection even as police tried to restrict access to information.

The Gym Disguise and Its Costs

With the police guarding the gym where Nakagawa and Abdul had reportedly met, Jake Adelstein proposed posing as a friend of the Iranian boyfriend. Yamamoto considered the idea clever, while Nakajima thought it reckless; the reporters eventually agreed to let him try. Adelstein changed into jeans and a polo shirt and relied on the stubble he had not shaved off that morning to make the disguise more convincing.

The ruse drew a sharp response from the police. Saeki recognized what Adelstein was attempting and indicated that his Iranian impression was not entirely off, but warned him to stay out of the investigation’s way. Adelstein then found Yokozawa at a first-floor vending machine, buying apple juice, and apologized with a bow so deep that his forehead touched the floor. Yokozawa accepted the apology, patted him on the head, and made clear that he would remember the stunt. More than a decade later, he was still teasing Adelstein about his supposed Iranian heritage.

Adelstein continued reporting on the case, but his newspaper lost the race for the story. One morning, the Mainichi and the Sankei published reports suggesting that Abdul was the killer and was already in custody. Their competitors had gone further while Adelstein’s team had held back, leaving the cautious paper behind. He could not know whether the police’s reluctance to share information had been affected by his gym impersonation; the uncertainty remained part of the episode’s consequence, alongside the professional defeat.

The Park as a Reporting Ground

Unable to approach the cordoned crime scene, reporters turned the rest of Maruyama Park into a field of inquiry. The tape drew a varied crowd—housewives, park workers, salarymen, students, and older people out for a walk—while journalists questioned visitors about suspicious activity, local gangs, whether young couples met there, and how safe the park was. The inquiries ranged from possible criminal connections to ordinary uses of the grounds, reflecting how little the first bulletin had established. With access to the scene restricted and the initial facts sparse, the reporters had to build their account from scattered observations and people’s recollections.