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On the heels of Hiroshi and Akari's murders, the Azoth murders, considered one of Japan's most heinous and bizarre killings, occurred. Seeking solace and purification, the Takahashi women embarked on a journey to the shrine at Mount Yahiko in Niigata Prefecture, the same place Hiroshi had wanted to visit before his death.
On March 28th, Yumeko and the six young women, Byakuren, Chiemi, Daiya, Emiko, Fumiko, and Gekka, left Tokyo together for the shrine. They reached the Tsutaya Hotel that night and climbed the mountain the next day. From Yahiko, they took a bus to Iwamuro hot spring in Sado Yahiko National Park, where they stayed on the night of the 28th. The girls found the surrounding area beautiful and expressed a desire to extend their stay. However, Yumeko needed to visit her parents in Aizu Wakamatsu, which was not too far from Yahiko. As she didn't want to take all six girls with her, they agreed to remain and spend another night at the hot spring before returning to Tokyo on the 31st.
On the morning of March 30th, Yumeko left Iwamuro and arrived in Aizu Wakamatsu that afternoon, where she spent two nights with her parents. She then departed for Tokyo on April 1st, expecting to find the girls at home upon her return. However, when she arrived, no one was there, and they never showed up. Eventually, their bodies were discovered, each one in a different location, with missing specific body parts, just as Hiroshi's note had described. The killings were unspeakably gruesome. Yumeko was subsequently arrested on suspicion of murder. She was arrested as a suspect in the murder of Hiroshi. Yumeko, however, never confessed to the crime, which made sense, because both you and Ranpo knew that she wasn't the one to do it. She couldn't have been. Despite Yumeko's efforts to rearrange train schedules, she couldn't account for the whereabouts of the six young women after they left Tsutaya Hotel. The hotel employees confirmed their stay, but no one saw the girls after they departed. Due to the time it took to locate their bodies, the exact time of death couldn't be determined, but Byakuren was found earlier than the others and believed to have been killed between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. on March 31st. It was highly probable that the others met the same fate at the same time and place.
Yumeko's alibi was flimsy. Although her parents claimed she was with them on the evening of March 30th, family members' testimony was not always deemed entirely reliable. Moreover, Yumeko remained indoors the entire time she was with her parents, not wanting to draw attention to herself as her face was well-known from Hiroshi's murder. She stayed secluded on March 31st and saw no one, making it impossible to prove that she didn't return to Yahiko early that day.
Despite the lack of concrete evidence, it was likely that the police uncovered some information during their interrogation of Yumeko. From what you had found out today during a video call with the Tokyo Municipal Police Department earlier, they had discovered some rope with a hook tied onto it in her house, which meant she was definitely framed, not to mention the arsenic compound also found in the house. The cause of death for the six girls was determined to be arsenic poisoning, as their stomachs contained 0.2-0.3 grams of arsenious acid. The police were able to obtain an arrest warrant after confirming that the cause of death for the six girls was arsenic poisoning. The metals described in Hiroshi's note were found in the victims' mouths and throats, but were not the cause of death.
