Osaka Police Arrest Hiroshi Maeue, Who Lured Victims Through Suicide Websites With Fake Death Pacts
Maeue was arrested over the death of a 25-year-old woman, and a newspaper reported that he confessed to killing a 14-year-old boy and a college student the same way.
Published
Hiroshi Maeue found his victims on websites for people who wanted to die. On August 5, 2005, police in Osaka arrested him over the death of a woman he had lured with a fake suicide pact.
Maeue, 36, was arrested over the death of Michiko Nagamoto, 25, of Osaka. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, he found her name on a suicide website and sent her 20 emails urging that they die together. Instead, he killed her in a rented car. The Yomiuri reported that he told police he had then gone back to the suicide sites for more victims and killed a 14-year-old boy and a university student the same way, and that he filmed the killings. "I wanted to watch a face in agony," he was quoted as saying. Osaka police declined to comment.
The arrest came amid a widely reported spate of internet-arranged suicides in Japan, in which at least 65 people had died in pacts since the previous October.
On March 28, 2007, the Osaka District Court convicted Maeue of luring three people he met through a suicide website, smothering them and abandoning their bodies in the mountains, and of making threatening phone calls to the boy's father. The court found that he had killed for pleasure, held him fully responsible for his actions and sentenced him to death.
Sources
- 平成17(わ)4843 殺人，死体遺棄，未成年者誘拐，脅迫事件, Osaka District Court, via the Courts in Japan case database
- 3 die in fake net suicide pacts, The Sydney Morning Herald (AFP)
Related News
- March 28, 2007: Osaka Court Sentences Hiroshi Maeue to Death for Killing Three People He Met on Suicide Websites
- July 28, 2009: Japan Hangs Hiroshi Maeue, Who Killed Three People He Met Through an Internet Suicide Site