From the mid 1980s through the late 1990s, Futoshi Matsunaga lived by deception, posing as a businessman, scamming millions, and using electrocution, starvation, and fear to bend people to his will. At his side was Junko Ogata, once a gentle preschool teacher, gradually broken down into his accomplice and forced to take part in murders that claimed nearly her entire family. By the time police finally caught the pair in 2002, investigators had tied them to seven killings and years of abuse so horrific that prosecutors declared the case without precedent in Japan’s history.