In the 1980s, the Japanese food giant Ezaki Glico was blackmailed by a mysterious group of apparent super villains, calling itself the Monster with 21 faces.
It started with two armed men who broke into the home of the president of Glico, kidnapping him in front of his family. The men held the executive in a warehouse, calling the company and demanding 100 million Yen and 100 kilos of gold bullion. The victim escaped the warehouse before he could find out whether or not his company was willing to pay to ransom his ass. None of the bad guys were caught and that's too bad, because the "Monster" wasn't through.
Artist's rendition.
A couple of weeks later, several cars in the company parking lot were set on fire. Then, the "Monster" began to send letters.
"Dear Glico, How have you been? I'm fine, but this weather is crazy right? Guess that's why it's called global warming. Hahaha. We set your car on fire."
In the first letter (sent in a plastic container along with hydrochloric acid because why the hell not?) the Monster claimed they had poisoned Glico's candies, which resulted in Glico losing $21 million dollars worth of product that had to be pulled from shelves. The number may be a coincidence, but then again, who knows? The Monster taunted the police by detailing in a letter its method of entry, what typewriter it used to write the message and where it found the container with the acid in it. It didn't matter; cops scoured the country for them and came up empty.
Soon enough, just to prove they were toying with everyone, the Monster suddenly sent a letter stating its forgiveness of Glico, and moved on.
"We forgive you!"
It Gets Weirder:
The Monster then turned its attention to another food company: Morinaga. Another letter was sent, similar to the Glico one, only this time, investigations turned up a total of 21 packages laced with the highly toxic sodium cyanide. Being the polite kind of shadowy creepy terrorist/terrorist group, the boxes were helpfully labeled with "Contains Toxins," an example all criminals should follow.
Warning: Contains Bomb.
The police, getting desperate, thought they caught a glimpse of the mastermind behind the Monster during a money drop (the group had demanded cash from another company). An officer described the criminal mastermind as a man having "eyes like those of a fox," which would give him the nickname "The Fox-Eyed Man."
Clearly the man is a Bond villain waiting to happen.
The same mysterious man was spotted again later, in a car during a sting operation. He escaped, but the cops found the car, and a radio transceiver that he had been using to listen into all of the police communications during the sting.
So finally they've got a description of one of the bad guys! That resulted in... nothing. The Monster tormented several corporate giants for years, mocked the police, walked the streets as some of the most wanted men in the world and not a single one of them ever got caught. A police superintendent got so frustrated by being outmaneuvered by the Monster that he resigned in disgrace. Oh, wait, we misread that. He actually, committed suicide by fucking setting himself on fire.
Before disappearing into the night like goddamned Keyser Soze, the "Monster" released a letter mocking the dead man, and announced it would stop torturing food companies, apparently taking this entire thing as some sort of childish game. The Monster's final words to the public:
We are bad guys. That means we've got more to do other than bullying companies. It's fun to lead a bad man's life.
- Monster with 21 Faces.
P.S. See you soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment