Murder With Friends: Tokyo Sarin Gas Attacks

In Membership, Murder With Friends - On Demand by Gigi Manukyan10 Comments

Grace Baldridge is joined by Brett Erlich and Jack Ruley to talk about the Tokyo Sarin attacks–an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated on March 20, 1995 by members of the cult movement Aum Shinrikyo.

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  1. Jack is correct – the things you need to start making Sarin (as well as VX) are not that difficult to obtain, and could easily be gotten without suspicion.

    Sarin, while the process sounds easy, is not easy enough for it to be done *right* by someone without a good background in chemistry or biochemistry. So engineers and computer techs who were really smart could “follow the process”, however, getting it to be on the level used in chemical warfare like these guys were after isn’t made without good facilities (which it doesn’t sound like they had) and those who know chem.

    VX, frighteningly enough, also starts with simple components, however thankfully the process required to take them from not so frightening to murder-level is complex, and absolutely has to be done with the right facility for it to even work, which is why it is far less common.

    After the attacks that were apparently Sarin in Syria, and the VX attack on Kim Jong-un’s half brother, I got curious and looked up information on them (later, I’d look at novichok too), in the first case to verify whether the Syria incident truly could be Sarin (it had to actually be some pretty shitty Sarin to not spread as far, for as much as was supposedly dropped) and in the second case to try and confirm whether or not the suspicion that it was state sponsored was viable (again, with the facilities required, it was either state sponsored or someone *extremely* connected). Lastly, the precursor to Novichok is also not all that exciting, component wise, and is again the process it goes through that makes it so lethal – and that’s just the precursor experiments that were done by the scientist who released the information, so it’s likely Novichok is the hardest of the 3 to make.

    …don’t ask about my hobbies, okay? Or my internet search history…

  2. When I came to Japan to live and work in 1984, I HATED going to Shibuya. The station entrance was always full of guys and gals in white outfits wearing elephant masks or masks of Asahara (whose actual name is Chizuo Matsumoto). They were dancing around playing recorded smarmy music they were singing “Shoooookooooo” over and over to. I wondered why the cops couldn’t get control of these creeps. Shibuya Station was like this for another five years, until one of the lawyers investigating the Aum Shinrikyo cult was murdered along with his family in November 1989. Then those pathetic people in Shibuya made themselves scarce and Ginza Station started to get my attention, because the lawyer’s mother was out there speaking Japanese, English, whatever she had to in order to get people to support her in nailing that Aum cult as she was more than sure they murdered her son, his wife and little child. Lots os us saw her out there and felt for her, she was out in front of a main exit of Ginza Station for at least two years every day.

    The morning that Sarin attack happened I was on my way to work. It was the day before the Japanese Spring holiday. I lived then, as I still do now, a few minutes walk from Kamiyacho Station, one of the cult targets. It was 7:45am, it looked a bit rain-cloudy but clear, so I decided NOT to take the train and instead go by my beloved motor scooter to my first job in Shinjuku. BZZZZZ! Off I went on a route not around Kamiyacho at all since I was on my scooter. I was thinking, MAN am I glad it ain’t raining, I can get to work without a hassle of steps and rush hour people. So I get to my Berlitz out service English teaching job in Shinjuku at 8:30 sharp and the students rush out to see me. ‘What? Why aren’t you guys just waiting in the room?’ I go, so they go ‘HEY KAREN!!! ARE YOU OKAY???’ And they tell me what happened and I was like ‘DAYAM that was CLOSE.

    No internet or SNS of course, so the phone lines were JAMMED. No class of course, the guys sent me back to Berlitz HQ in Akasaka, so I buzzed over there on my scooter and when I got there it was like ‘KAREN!!!! ARE YOU OKAY?? HOW DID YOU GET HERE?? WE TRIED TO CALL YOU…’ etcetera. All the staff, teachers and students were all over the TV and radio trying to hear what the HELL’d just happened.

    When Mom finally got through to me on my home phone she said ‘JAPAN IS ONE DANGEROUS PLACE. COME HOME NOW.’

    Obviously didn’t listen to her, now did I.

    The mainstream news was all we had over here in those days and was it EVER DRENCHED with weird details about that story. One station got into a world of trouble for repeating the cult chants over and over in the background while supposedly reporting on new findings regarding Asahara and his cult. All the stations went over all the compounds Asahara had and his Russia connections. One YouTube piece went into loads of detail on an Australia connection which I had no idea about until seeing that about five years ago.

    Asahara got the death penalty nearly 15 years ago at least, yet it’s important to remember the death penalty is not carried out quickly here in Japan. This is regardless of religious affiliation. It usually takes 20+ years for a death sentence to be carried out, if the person doesn’t die in the interim.

    Good points about religion and reluctance to stop cults. but both Brett and Jack are missing the fact that from 1945 till 1952 Japan was under conditions of total surrender and occupation by US forces. All that happened in terms of leniency or a blind eye to religions / cults during these years was the doing of the American GHQ as Japan had no authority to rule itself then. After 1952, a good number of American soldiers and / or their families remained in various walled up compounds throughout Tokyo and other areas. These walled up areas, which included schools, churches, commissaries and other conveniences were off limits to the then poor, war beaten Japanese people and considerable animosity resulted from the people being blocked from access to their own lands. Okinawa was a US territory until 1972. Americans were going through their own winter of discontent hell during the ’60s and ’70s, and so were the Japanese. We got Jim Jones, the Japanese got the Red Army and other cults of destruction. Aum started right around this time and gradually got bigger and bigger while the slow Japanese judicial system lost lost of ground to them.

  4. I do the same thing when I’m drunk and around people who don’t speak English, I speak the only other language I kinda know – SPANISH! My drunk brain thinks, “Well, if they dont’ speak English, the only other language ANYWHERE is spanish, so let’s try that!” Great episode guys.

  5. Would love to see some experts on who can talk about the effects of pain & violence on the human brain & related psych topics!

  6. Very interestingly! I was rounding out my junior year in high school at a prep school so I would have thought I would have heard a lot about it as they prided themselves on the students being almost mini adults and therefor aware of current events– but I only vaguely remember details of it so I appreciate MWF covering it. I didn’t realize it had members in Russia and would never have thought that many!

  7. I live in Japan and actually spoke to Brett on Twitter before his last trip here. There is so much more to this story that was left out (probably due to time constraints). For example, this incident took place in 1995 (over 20 years ago) and yet a couple of its members, who were involved in the crime, where caught just recently. I think the very last person to be caught was in 2013 or 2014. Had he not been caught, and was able to hide out a bit longer, the statute of limitation would have ran out, and he would have been able to walk free.

    Naoko Kikuchi, another member of the cult, was caught a short time earlier. She was in her early 20’s when at the time of the crime, and when they found her, her appearance had changed so much from the wanted poster, that she pretty hid in plain sight. I forgot what gave her away, but apparently someone recognized her and turned her in.

    1. Yeah MiraiZ remember that guy Hirai who a couple of years ago just casually walked over to the Shinagawa police station, pointed to himself on the most wanted poster and asked the cop standing there at the entrance to arrest him? So the cop thinks he’s joking and, without even trying to investigate sends the guy back on the streets. So then the guy comes around MY neighborhood of Kamiyacho (where the station manager died from the sarin gas released there), takes the subway to Ebisu and tries again to get that police station to arrest him. I think he had to go to one more place before the cops finally blinked and believed him. Hirai was, like Kikuchi, one of the big names on the list.

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