The suspect in a series of computer hackings and threats of mass murder at some of Japan’s most important national landmarks has reversed course and admitted his guilt.  It’s a twisted tale of wrongly elicited confessions and innocent people framed by what appears to be a real goofball.

32-year old Yusuke Katayama’s facial expression appeared to fluctuate between a self-satisfied smile and the verge of tears as police led him off between a throng of gawking reporters to the chief prosecutor’s office.  The spectacle seemed fitting to crown what he had just put the country through.

It started with a series of threats posted to an Internet bulletin board more than two years ago – threats to bomb the famed Ise Jingu Shrine and other landmarks, and bomb threats to the national airline JAL.  But the worst were threats to commit mass murder at a school and on the streets of Osaka.

Cops in Tokyo, Osaka, and two other prefectures separately arrested four men between June and September 2012.  Two of the men even confessed, for whatever reason.  Japanese police are notorious for not taking “no” for an answer, but they realized the confessions were flawed.  In each case, the suspects were released after a month in custody when investigators found their computers had been hacked.  In each case, police were forced to apologize.

And in January 2013, things got weird(er).  Someone claiming to be the real perpetrator contacted police and the media, daring them to solve “riddles” that tested their technological prowess.  Cops arrested Katayama a month later, but the former IT worker insisted he was innocent, framed like the others.  As his trial commenced this year, the “real culprit” surfaced again on 16 May, sending emails that appeared to exonerate Katayama, who denied sending them.  After all, he was in court at the time.

But when Katayama wasn’t in court, he was under police surveillance.  On 15 May – a day before the latest red herring emails went out – Katayama was observed milling about a riverbank.  When police combed through the area later on, they found a buried smart phone – the one that sent the latest emails, with a delayed ‘send’ function, which cops say had Katayama’s DNA on it. 

The jig was up.  Katayama slipped past surveillance and dropped out of sight until Tuesday morning.  He had gone to the mountains west of Tokyo, and tried to work out how he would kill himself. 

“He told me he considered hanging himself with his own belt or throwing himself under a train, but couldn’t bring himself to do either,” said his attorney Hiroshi Sato, who insisted that he was fooled by his client’s claims of innocence all along.  Sato says there’s no chance of Katayama’s mother getting back the 10 Million Yen (A$106,000) the elderly woman put up for bail.

Katayama confessed to his lawyer that he hijacked computers of the first four suspects “just out of curiosity” and took perverted satisfaction when police made false arrests. 

“I think I’m a psychopath, because lies just come out of me naturally,” Katayama reportedly told his attorney, who is considering asking the court to order his client be given a psychiatric examination.