John Zegrus

Documentary accounts place Zegrus's entry into Japan in October 1959, with arrest roughly three months later and trial before Tokyo District Court; on 10 August 1960 he was sentenced to one year in prison. Investigation by Tokyo Metropolitan Police/Public Security (including work by Atsuyuki Sassa in TMPD memoirs cited in summaries) determined that the passport he presented was counterfeit, that seals in the document were fabricated, and that the biographical claims he made about nationality, military service, and employment could not be corroborated by contact with the countries he named. After serving his sentence he was deported to Hong Kong; his wife was deported to South Korea. Later press and occult writers transformed and embellished these events into the 'Man from Taured' narrative, producing date and location variants (some placing the incident in 1954 or at an airport) that diverge from the police and court record.

Primary press and police records provide no detailed physical description beyond noting that Zegrus traveled with a Korean wife and carried travel documents (passport and cheques). Contemporary sources focus on his paperwork and claimed biography rather than corporeal features; cinematic or folkloric physical attributes appearing in later retellings do not appear in the documented record.

No supernatural abilities are attested in primary reporting. Contemporaneous behaviors documented in police and press accounts include presenting a passport later judged counterfeit, attempting to cash substantial cheques and traveller's cheques at banking offices in Tokyo (including a ¥200,000 cheque and traveller's cheques, and a ¥100,000 cheque at a Bank of Korea office), giving an elaborate and internally inconsistent personal history (claims of US birth, UK education, RAF service, captivity, work in Latin America, spy and pilot roles in multiple countries), and attempting suicide by cutting his veins with a piece of glass after sentencing. Folkloric attributions—vanishing from guarded hotels, originating from a country called 'Taured', or being an interdimensional traveler—are later embellishments traceable to newspaper errors and occult/urban-legend retellings, not to the documented investigation.