# The 'Monster with 21 Faces' behind Japan's Glico-Morinaga extortion campaign was identified and let escape

**No verdict.** The crimes are real and exhaustively documented: a kidnapping, cyanide-laced candy planted on store shelves, and taunting letters that terrorized Japan for 17 months in 1984 and 1985. But the extortionists were never identified, no one was ever charged, and the last statute of limitations expired in February 2000 with the case unsolved. Naming a suspect or a motive is not the same as proving who did it.

Category: Unsolved Crimes & Disappearances · Era: 1980s · First circulated: 1984 · Believed by: One of the largest and most notorious unsolved criminal investigations in Japanese history, drawing about 1.3 million officer-mobilizations across five prefectural police forces.
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/glico-morinaga-case

## Summary
For 17 months in 1984 and 1985, a group signing itself 'The Monster with 21 Faces' kidnapped the president of the Ezaki Glico confectionery company, planted cyanide-laced sweets on Japanese store shelves, and mailed mocking, literate letters to police and the press. They demanded ransoms from Glico, Morinaga, and other food firms, taunted the officers hunting them, and slipped every trap. A police superintendent died by self-immolation under the pressure. Despite one of the largest manhunts in Japanese history, no one was ever identified or charged, and the case ran out its statute of limitations in 2000. This file separates what is documented (the crimes, the letters, the near-misses) from the central open question, who they were and why they did it, which remains unproven.

## The claim
That the 'Monster with 21 Faces' can in fact be identified: that police knew or could have known who ran the Glico-Morinaga campaign, whether a stock-manipulation ring shorting the companies' shares, organized crime, or aggrieved insiders, and that the case went unsolved because of police incompetence, a cover-up, or a hidden financial motive rather than because it was a genuinely elusive crime.

## Origin and timeline
- 1984-03-18: Around 9 p.m., two armed, masked men force their way into the Nishinomiya home of Katsuhisa Ezaki, president of Ezaki Glico, bind his wife and young daughter, and abduct him. They demand a ransom in cash and gold.
- 1984-03-21: Ezaki escapes on his own from a warehouse in Ibaraki, Osaka, roughly three days into his captivity, and the ransom is never paid. The kidnappers vanish.
- 1984-04: Cars are set on fire at a Glico facility, and a container of hydrochloric acid is left with a threatening note. The campaign against the company escalates from kidnapping to sabotage.
- 1984-05-10: Letters begin arriving from a writer calling itself 'The Monster with 21 Faces' (Kaijin Nijuichi Menso), claiming Glico sweets have been laced with potassium cyanide. Retailers pull Glico products nationwide; the company reports losses of more than 20 million dollars and lays off hundreds of part-time workers.
- 1984-06-26: In a letter reading 'We forgive Glico,' the group abruptly ends its campaign against the company, then turns to extort other food firms including the ham maker Marudai. Two days later, at a botched ransom drop, an investigator glimpses a large man with permed hair and 'eyes like a fox' watching the operation.
- 1984-10: The group targets Morinaga and others. Poisoned candies are planted on store shelves, several bearing hand-written labels warning, in Osaka dialect, that they contain poison, a taunt calibrated so that no one is actually killed. About 21 tampered products are eventually recovered.
- 1984-11-14: At a ransom drop on the Meishin Expressway, police again spot the 'Fox-Eyed Man' at a rest area but lose him. A Shiga patrol separately notes a suspicious van whose driver, in a golf cap and radio earpiece, speeds off when noticed. No arrest is made.
- 1985-08-07: Yamamoto, a Shiga Prefecture police superintendent tied to the failed investigation, dies by self-immolation, dousing himself in kerosene. His death becomes a symbol of the pressure the uncatchable case placed on investigators.
- 1985-08-12: The 'Monster with 21 Faces' mails a final letter mocking the dead superintendent and announcing it will stop 'torturing food-making companies.' After this, the group is never heard from again. The kidnapping statute of limitations expires in 1995, and the last count, for the poisonings, expires in February 2000 with no arrests.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: The operation was too disciplined and coordinated for ordinary criminals, so a powerful organization was behind it and its identity is effectively known.
  Evidence: The campaign was elaborate: multiple companies, choreographed ransom drops, and letters showing real knowledge of police movements. But no organization, yakuza, corporate rival, or otherwise, was ever tied to it by evidence. Sophistication is not identity. The same letters were also riddled with taunts and errors that read as much like self-aware amateurs enjoying the chase as like a syndicate, and after tens of thousands of tips the police never established who the collective 'we' actually was.
- Claim: Police had their man: the 'Fox-Eyed Man' was seen at the ransom drops and captured in composite sketches, so the culprit was identified and simply allowed to slip away.
  Evidence: A suspect answering to the 'Fox-Eyed Man' description really was glimpsed at least twice near ransom operations, and sketches and a convenience-store surveillance image of a 'video man' were circulated widely. But a description and a near-miss are not an identification. No one was ever matched to the sketches, the man at the drops was never named, and being seen from a distance at a rest area is not evidence a prosecutor could charge.
- Claim: A financial motive, driving down the companies' share prices to profit from the panic, points straight to whoever benefited, and therefore to the guilty party.
  Evidence: Share prices did fall, and investigators did examine the possibility that someone was manipulating the market or short-selling the targeted firms. But no trading trail, account, or beneficiary was ever tied to the crimes. 'Who might have benefited' is a theory of motive, not proof of a perpetrator, and the extortion demands themselves were never successfully collected, which sits awkwardly with a clean profit scheme.
- Claim: The perpetrators left mountains of physical evidence, typed letters, a tape of a child reading drop instructions, trace materials, so modern forensics should have named them.
  Evidence: There is genuinely a lot of material, including an audio recording of a child's voice relaying instructions to a ransom courier. None of it produced an identification at the time. The child was never traced, the letters were never linked to a named author, and the powerful DNA and forensic-genealogy techniques of later decades arrived after the statute of limitations had already closed the case in 2000, foreclosing any charge even if a match were later possible.
- Claim: The scale of the failure, and a superintendent's suicide, prove the case was lost to incompetence or a cover-up rather than to a genuinely elusive criminal.
  Evidence: There were real operational failures at the ransom drops, and Superintendent Yamamoto's self-immolation reflects the crushing weight the case placed on those hunting it. But the record reads as a determined, lucky, well-prepared offender repeatedly slipping enormous dragnets, not as a hidden solution. Roughly 1.3 million officer-mobilizations, about 125,000 people questioned, and 28,000 tips did not close it. That is the fingerprint of an unsolved crime, not a concealed one.
- Claim: The literary alias reveals a single mastermind steeped in Edogawa Ranpo, a distinctive profile that should have led police to him.
  Evidence: The name was borrowed from Ranpo's gentleman-thief villain 'The Fiend with Twenty Faces' (Kaijin Niju Menso), with one added for effect. But the reference tells us only that the writer knew a wildly popular series that generations of Japanese children grew up on, not a unique identity. The letters' shifting voice and Osaka-dialect taunts suggested more than one hand, and the case was never narrowed to a lone author, let alone a named one.

## Why people believe it
- The criminals designed the case to look like a solvable puzzle. They named themselves after a fictional master detective's nemesis, wrote directly to the press, and dared the police to catch them, so treating it as a code with a hidden author is exactly the game they set up.
- There were real near-misses. The 'Fox-Eyed Man' was spotted twice, a surveillance image of a 'video man' exists, and a child's voice was captured on tape giving drop instructions, all of which make it feel like the answer was within arm's reach and only fumbled.
- A rational, worldly motive was on offer. The idea that someone shorted the companies' stock or squeezed them for money gives the chaos a tidy 'who benefited' logic that a motiveless mystery lacks.
- The sheer scale of the failure invites suspicion. When more than a million officer-mobilizations cannot catch anyone, it feels like the shortfall must conceal incompetence or a cover-up rather than plain bad luck.
- The story has an unbearable emotional shape. A taunting, uncaught gang, a public poisoning scare, and a police superintendent who burned himself alive demand a culprit, and naming one, any one, relieves a discomfort the true answer never can.

## Open questions
- Who was the 'Fox-Eyed Man'? A suspect matching the description was seen at least twice at ransom operations and captured in police sketches, yet was never identified. He remains the single most tantalizing near-miss of the entire case.
- Was there a financial motive? Theories that the campaign existed to manipulate or profit from the targeted companies' share prices were investigated but never substantiated, and no beneficiary was ever traced.
- How many people were involved, and were any insiders? The letters showed detailed knowledge of the companies and of police movements, but the group's true size, and whether it included current or former employees, was never established.
- Whose child read the ransom instructions? An audio recording of a young child relaying drop directions is among the eeriest artifacts of the case, and the child was never identified.
- Why did they stop and disappear in August 1985, and why target confectioners in particular? The group's abrupt final letter and total silence afterward have never been explained.

## Sources
- Glico Morinaga case, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glico_Morinaga_case
- The Monster with 21 Faces, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monster_with_21_Faces
- The Fiend with Twenty Faces (the Edogawa Ranpo villain the alias was drawn from), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fiend_with_Twenty_Faces
- NPA admits defeat in Glico-Morinaga case, The Japan Times (2000): https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2000/02/10/national/npa-admits-defeat-in-glico-morinaga-case/
- Clock ticking on Glico-Morinaga cases, The Japan Times (1999): https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/1999/02/24/national/clock-ticking-on-glico-morinaga-cases/
- 16-year police probe of Glico-Morinaga case to end, Kyodo News (via The Free Library) (2000): https://www.thefreelibrary.com/16-year+police+probe+of+Glico-Morinaga+case+to+end-a060053559
- How 'The Monster With 21 Faces' Terrorized Japan During The Harrowing Glico Morinaga Incident, All That's Interesting: https://allthatsinteresting.com/monster-with-21-faces

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