Japan Hangs Kiyotaka Katsuta, the Kyoto Firefighter Who Killed Eight People
Katsuta, 52, known in prison as Kiyotaka Fujiwara, was executed at the Nagoya Detention House on the same morning as two other condemned men.
Published
Kiyotaka Katsuta, a firefighter from Kyoto Prefecture, killed eight people between 1972 and 1982. On the morning of Thursday, November 30, 2000, Japan hanged him at the Nagoya Detention House. He was 52.
His first victim was a bar hostess in Kyoto, whom he robbed and murdered in 1972. His last, in 1982, was a truck driver he shot with a pistol he had taken from a police officer he ran down with a car. In 1983 police overpowered him in the parking lot of a Nagoya bank after he threatened a customer with a gun, and he confessed to the murders in custody. A court sentenced him to death in March 1986 for the eight murders and a series of robberies, and the sentence became final in January 1994. By the time he was hanged he had lived under it for fourteen years and nine months.
He died under another name. In 1994 he was adopted into a family and took its surname, and the prisoner executed that morning was Kiyotaka Fujiwara. His adoptive sister had published a book about his life on death row.
Two other condemned men were hanged the same morning: Takashi Miyawaki, 57, convicted of murdering the parents and sister of his former wife in 1989, also at Nagoya, and Kunikatsu Oishi, 55, sentenced in 1983 for the murder of three people, at the Fukuoka Detention House. They were the first executions in Japan since December 1999 and the first since Yoshiro Mori became prime minister. Amnesty International condemned them the next day. "Prisoners in Japan are executed at a moment's notice, and are not even allowed to say goodbye to their families," the organization said. "It is an affront to the dignity of the human being. The death penalty must be abolished."
Japan's Justice Ministry announced only the number of prisoners executed. The three men's names were made public by groups opposed to the death penalty.
Sources
- Serial killer, two other murderers hanged, The Japan Times
- Japan: Secret executions of three prisoners, Amnesty International