 Halloween's coming early this year kids. Hello, and welcome back to Dapper History where I tell you about historical events that they won't teach you about in class And it's very fitting that Halloween is right around the corner because the subject of today's video is Sweets! Oh, confectionaries to be exact. If any of you weaves are familiar with Pocky, then you might recognize the name Glico. Izaki Glico is the Japanese multinational food company best known for their sweets and confectionaries. Why am I telling you all this? Because we have a mystery on our hands. You see in 1984 Glico was tar- If anyone knows a good lawyer, um, I'm looking to hire. You see in 1984 Glico was targeted by a group of criminals who called themselves the monster with 21 faces. This remains one of the most baffling crime sprees of all time, and believe it or not, it's still unsolved. Is what I would say if I hadn't single-handedly cracked the case a few weeks ago. And for those of you asking Julia You're not a detective. Why did you feel the need to solve this case? Well because it had monster in the title and I don't know if you know this about me But monsters are kind of my thing. Now, I'm not gonna tell you the exact culprits because I'm not a show-off But I will take you through this bizarre twisted tale and show you how I came to my conclusions. Ready? Let's go. Our story truly begins March 18, 1984 When two armed men broke into the house of Katsuhisa Izaki, the president of Glico and kidnapped him. During the intrusion, Izaki's wife offered the kidnappers money, but they brushed her off saying be quiet. Money is irrelevant. Although I couldn't find any like solid confirmation of this. It's speculated that these men's guns were toys. Meaning they never had the intention of actually killing anyone. Anyway, Izaki's kidnappers demanded a ransom of 1 billion yen and 100 kilograms of gold in order for him to be released safely. And if that amount of money sounds kind of ridiculous Don't worry. We'll get into that later. Before anyone could even start organizing a yard sale to raise a billion yen, Izaki just Shows up. Yeah. Three days later he escaped. Apparently his kidnappers tied him up But then proceeded to leave him unsupervised in a room for long periods of time So he was able to break out of his ropes and escape. It's almost like the monster Wanted him to escape, but the monster was only getting started and they told the world this in the most direct way possible. I need to even this out. I can just only taste food coloring. So the monster had this habit of writing letters directly to the police Essentially just to bully them. The first letter was received on April 8th, and here are just some excerpts from it. To the Japanese police fools, are you stupid? There's so many of you. What on earth are you doing? All the letters took on this abusive tone. They were just berate the police for being stupid, crooked, generally pathetic. All the letters opened with some variation of like to the Japanese police fools or like Dear dumb police officers. And as a show of their confidence in these letters the monster would give clues Nothing groundbreaking that would immediately crack the case just enough for them to say, oh, I'm sorry. Is this too hard for you? Would you like a clue? You fucking baby. I want to make this very clear that I am not Defending the monster with 21 faces in any way. The things that they did to Izaki and so many other innocent people are Reprehensible and I find all of it abhorrent. That being said, they're kind of really funny. They're this genuinely dangerous group of Organized criminals and they're talking to the police like a 14-year-old bitching about his math teacher. Also similar to a 14-year-old boy, when they didn't get what they want, they escalated things. The monster started sending letters directly to the news media, which of course they published. This accomplished two goals for the monster. Terrorizing the public and further humiliating the police. Now everyone knows that there's a group of criminals threatening violence and the police are failing to stop them. At this point you might be thinking to yourself, hey, you know besides kidnapping and traumatizing that one innocent guy, This monster is kind of cool. They have some real anarchy, fight-the-system, Tyler Durden, Joker, Rage Against the Machine, Fuck the police vibes, and I'm loving it. But what happened next is Staying true to their 14-year-old boys ways. They took things a little too far. On May 10th, both Glico and the media received a letter from the monster. It wasn't a threat, It was a warning. The monster claimed that they were going to tamper with some of Glico's products that were going to be sold to the public, lacing them with cyanide. Okay guys, it's not funny anymore. Before anyone could even suggest that they were bluffing, security cameras in a shop caught footage of a guy placing Glico products on two shelves. Don't be afraid of Cordova. We are frightened of Cordova. Glico proceeded to do the right thing and did a full recall of their products across the entire country. This whole ordeal cost them an estimated twenty million dollars, and it devastated their stocks. But here's the kicker. So Glico obviously wanted as much information as possible, and so they sent some of the recalled products to a lab to be tested and Get this. None of them were poisoned. It was all a prank. And then completely out of nowhere on June 26th, the monster released a letter announcing that the beef was squashed. They had forgiven Glico for whatever apparent sins they had committed, and they were moving on to their next big adventure, and it just so happens that their next adventure was targeting other food companies. In the time following this, they harassed a lot of confectionary companies, but the two most notable ones were Morinaga and Morodi. In October of 1984, a letter was sent to the Osaka news agencies addressed to the Moms of the Nation. It informs them that the monster was back, and this time they were going to poison 20 packages of Morinaga candy with cyanide, very original guys, but unlike with Glico, this time the monster wasn't bluffing. Morinaga products started showing up in stores with an extra sticker warning that this product was poison. All of the products with the stickers on them tested positive for cyanide, and the monster warned that next time they weren't going to be kind enough to give a warning. Thankfully, all the products were pulled from shelves before anyone got hurt, but I think this marked a notable shift in the monster's attitude and actions. They were becoming more aggressive and more sadistic. Like all it would have taken was one person not taking the warning label seriously, and someone could have actually died. The other notable company targeted was Morodi. The monster reached out to Morodi demanding a ransom in exchange for being left alone, and Morodi immediately agreed. I love how they're just like, yeah, I actually don't have time to fuck around with supervillain Tananigans. I'll just pay you. The instructions were to send a Morodi employee onto the subway. He would ride it until he saw a white flag. At that point, he would get off at that stop and deliver the ransom. But instead of a Morodi employee, they decided to send an undercover cop. I see no way this could go wrong. So the cop boarded the subway with the ransom in a briefcase, but he quickly noticed that someone seemed to be following him. He described his stalker as being a man with short, permed hair, larger build, and glasses. Most notably, he remarked that this man seemed to have the eyes of a fox. This is the sketch they were able to come up with based on the description of him. Wait, um, is it just me, or like, is he... is he a dill? Wait, no, I can explain. Hear me out! No, just hear me out! Weirdly enough, the white flag meant to indicate the drop-off location never appeared, and the fox-eyed man was able to get away before they could question him. If you're keeping track, this is the second time the monster has demanded a ransom and then not collected the ransom. And while that may be weird, the most baffling and disturbing part of the story is how it ended. After hunting for the monster for a year and a half and being met with only humiliation and torment, it became too much for one man. In 1985, Superintendent Yamamoto of the Japanese Police Department tragically took his own life. Five days after his suicide, the monster released their final letter, which basically consisted of them saying, Gigi! If that sounds insane to you, it's because it is. The letter was just one final roast, and then they were done! Here are some excerpts from it. What have they been doing for as long as a year and five months? Don't let bad guys like us get away with it. No career Yamamoto died like a man, so we decided to give our condolences. How nice of them. We decided to forget about torturing food-making companies. If anyone blackmails any food-making companies, it's not us, but someone copying us. We are bad guys. That means we're bad people. We're bad people. We're bad people. We're bad people. We're bad people. We are bad guys. That means we've got more to do than bullying companies. It's fun to lead a bad man's life, the monster with 21 faces. And I kid you not, that was the last we've ever seen or heard of these scumbags to this day. So what is all of this about? I'm so glad you asked. I'm going to take you through some of the points of this case that I found to be the most notable and why I think they're important. So if you know anything about kidnappings or if you're even kind of observant, I'm sure you've already noticed that this case is very abnormal. First of all, the amount of money they demanded for ransom was ridiculously high. Like I get it, he's a CEO. It is feasible that his family could have access to 1 billion yen. But 100 kilograms of gold too? Ah yes, and how would you like your gold, sir? In a treasure chest or in giant bags with dollar signs on them, Scrooge McDuck? I find it funny that during the kidnapping, Izaki's wife was like, is it money that you want? I'll give you money. And they were like, shut up, we don't want your money. But then like an hour later they're like, wait a minute, where's my billion yen? Second, the way Izaki escaped the kidnapping was absolutely absurd. It makes zero sense that his kidnappers left him alone for long periods of time. People who have survived being kidnapped or held hostage always report either being constantly monitored or regularly checked in on by their captors. The kidnappers do this for the exact reason we see here. If you leave someone alone for long enough, they'll probably figure out a way to break out. It's almost like they wanted Izaki to escape. It's almost like they made the ransom amount so ridiculous because they knew it was never going to get paid. It's almost like this was never about the money to begin with, it was about sending a message. Number two, I am completely convinced that the monster never intended on actually killing anyone. They had so many chances that if they actually wanted to, they could have done it. Instead, they went out of their way to prevent people from getting hurt. Doing things like warning the media about the poisoning, putting labels on the poisoned candy, and holding Izaki hostage at a location where he would easily be able to find help after he escaped. Number three, I believe they weren't expecting Superintendent Yamamoto to take his own life. Their final letter is weirdly out of character. It almost seems rushed. Like they've been talking nonstop for over a year about how bad they want to fuck up the police, but then when a cop dies, suddenly they're giving their condolences and calling a ceasefire. Also, the reason they gave for calling the ceasefire makes no sense. They said, we're bad guys, we have bigger fish to fry than messing with food companies. But like, that's not true. They've already shown that they have all the time in the world for messing with food companies. In fact, at the time it seemed like they were gearing up for a whole new harassment campaign, but then dropped it when Yamamoto died. So now that we've reviewed everything, here is the conclusion I've come to. The members of the monster with 21 faces are made up of drumroll please, businessmen. And here's why. The easiest way I can prove this is by pointing out the monster's two main attacks. Poisoning candy and strongly worded letters. So let's start with the poisoning. Why did they do that multiple times? We know that in both cases, no individuals actually got hurt from the poisoning. The only real damage was done to the pockets, stocks, and reputations of the two companies. Think about it, Glico lost 20 million dollars from recalling their products, and it was all for nothing. If I'm a cutthroat businesswoman, what is the worst thing that I can do to my competition? Waste their time and waste their money. If you really look at their actions, you can see that the monster seems to have a lot of experience and knowledge of the world of business. Now on to the strongly worded letters. After reading all these letters a billion times over, I noticed something very strange. If you ignore the insults and the crude way that they talk about the police, all of the letters are weirdly...formal? Like, this isn't how average criminals threaten people. They're talking about taxation, reputation, signing their letters with their names. It's like at any given time they're one sentence away from just saying to whom it may concern. Furthermore, they show their PR knowledge in some of their letters. When warning about the Moranaga poisoning, they addressed the letters to Moms of the Nation. Why would they do that? Because they knew that the main consumers of confectionaries were Moms who buy it for their kids. By scaring mothers, they threatened to take a huge chunk out of Moranaga's customer base. The monster thinks like a marketing agent. When you really step back and just look at the actions of the monster, honestly it's what I think all businesses would do if the law wasn't in their way. Play dirty, blow low, and never let anyone see your face. It seems a lot like the monster was just the perfect mask for some CEOs to have a field day. And they thought they were going to get away with it and it would all be fine because no one was going to get hurt. And then they drove a man to suicide. Playing cops and robbers is all fun and games until you get real blood on your hands. Now that I'm thinking about it, their final letter kind of reads like a PR apology. What the- wait a second. We give our condolences and our thoughts and prayers are with the victim's family. We see you, we hear you. We're not going to poison candy anymore. Boom. Burn the paper trail. So what do you think? Do you have any ideas of who the monster could be or where they are now? If you don't agree with the solution I came up with, that's fine. But I am forced to assume that you know that it's not true because you are part of the monster with 21 faces. And I will be reporting you to God. Thank you so much for watching. Subscribe if you want to. Don't if you don't. We have another horror analysis video coming up next just in time for Halloween. And I'll see you next whenever I upload. Ever wanting to do that this whole time.