Tokyo Court Sentences Takahiro Shiraishi to Death for Nine Murders in Zama
A judge in Tachikawa rejected the defense claim that the nine people killed in Shiraishi's apartment in 2017, most of whom had posted about suicide, had agreed to die.
Published
On Tuesday, December 15, 2020, the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court sentenced Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, to death for killing and dismembering nine people in his apartment in Zama, near Tokyo. The court found him guilty of the killings, of cutting up the bodies and of keeping them in the apartment. Most of the nine had posted suicidal thoughts on social media, and the case had shocked Japan.
Police arrested Shiraishi in 2017 after finding the bodies of eight females and one male in cold-storage cases in the apartment. According to the indictment, he strangled and dismembered the nine between August and October of that year. Investigators said he found them on Twitter, where he called himself "Hangman," promised to help them die and invited them to his home. They said he raped the women, some of them teenagers, before he killed them, and that he killed the boyfriend of one of the women to keep him quiet. The press had already named him the "Twitter killer."
Shiraishi pleaded guilty. The fight at trial was over consent. His defense lawyers argued that he had helped the victims carry out their own wish to die, but Shiraishi himself later said that he had killed them without their consent.
Presiding Judge Naokuni Yano rejected the consent argument. None of the victims had agreed to be killed, the judge said, according to media reports, and Shiraishi was fully responsible for their deaths. He found him mentally fit to answer for the murders. The public broadcaster NHK reported that the judge called the crime extremely heinous and said it had caused fear and concern in a society where social media had become an indispensable part of everyday life.
Shiraishi had said he would not appeal. Japan carries out executions by hanging and announces them only after they have taken place.
What was established on December 15, 2020. The convictions rest on Shiraishi's guilty plea and the court's findings; the account of how he approached the victims and what he did to them comes from investigators and the indictment as reported that day. "Twitter killer" and "Hangman" are a press label and the name he used online. The nine victims are not named in this story.
Sources
- Japan's 'Twitter killer' sentenced to death for dismembering 9 victims, Associated Press via NBC News
- Japan's 'Twitter Killer' sentenced to death for serial murders, Global News (Josh K. Elliott)