AICHI (TR) – Nearly two decades after the murder of a female office worker in Nagoya, the mother of the 31-year-old victim has opened up about the case, revealing her daughter’s defiant final message to her killers, reports CBC TV (Sep. 3).
The case garnered nationwide attention since the killers of Rie Isogai met her via an underground internet bulletin board.
On August 24, 2007, office worker Rie Isogai was abducted from a street near her home in Chikusa Ward by three men who had conspired to commit robbery and murder.
The assailants forced Isogai into a vehicle, robbing her of roughly 60,000 yen in cash. Before murdering her, the men relentlessly threatened her with a kitchen knife, demanding the four-digit PIN to her bank account.
Facing imminent death, Isogai desperately resisted. Ultimately, she gave her captors a fake number: 2-9-6-0.
In Japanese numerical wordplay (goroawase), the digits 2-9-6-0 can be read as “Ni-ku-mu-wa,” which translates to “I despise you” or “I hate you.”
“She used to play around with number wordplay a lot,” her 75-year-old mother, Fumiko Isogai, said in a recent interview. “I felt she entrusted her true feelings into that message. It showed she absolutely would not forgive them. I took it to mean I had to avenge her.”
Bank account
Rie was protecting a bank account containing approximately 8 million yen. It wasn’t until after the incident that Fumiko learned the heartbreaking reason behind her daughter’s fierce determination to guard the funds.
Having lost her father at a young age, Rie was raised by her single mother. Fumiko initially assumed the 8 million yen was her daughter’s savings for her own future or retirement. However, Rie’s boyfriend later revealed the truth: she had been secretly saving the money to buy a house as a surprise gift for her mother.
“Incredibly sad”
Following the tragedy, Fumiko led a relentless campaign seeking the death penalty for her daughter’s killers. To honor Rie’s final wish, she eventually used the 8 million yen to purchase a condominium.
“It’s incredibly sad that she never even got to step foot inside, but I live here with the feeling that I am managing the home she entrusted to me,” Fumiko said, noting she sometimes still feels her daughter’s presence in the rooms.
Living alone, Fumiko continues to speak to her murdered daughter every day.
“I say ‘I’m home,’ or ‘Welcome back,’ or ‘What do you want to eat, Rie?’ just like when she was alive,” Fumiko said. “But the sad reality is, I have to reply to myself. I speak alone, and I answer alone.”
