On November 25th, 1988, Junko left School and was walking home (although some reports say she was walking to her part-time after school job.) She never made it home.
She was kidnapped by a group of young men, including a 17-year-old who was identified as ‘Jō’ and would be later given the surname Kamisaku. They kept her captive in the house owned by the parents of Kamisaku, in the Ayase district of Adachi, Tokyo.
That was the beginning of her 44 days of torture. She didn’t know her abductors, they had no grudge against her and there was nothing specific that they were after. They attacked her because they could, embarking on weeks of atrocities because they could, and because they wanted to.
To forestall a manhunt, the kidnappers coerced Furuta into calling her mother and telling her that she had run away from home, but was with “a friend” and was not in danger. He also browbeat her into posing as one of the boys’ girlfriends when the parents of the house where she was held were around, but when it became clear that the parents didn’t care either way, he dropped this pretext.