Chisako Kakehi, Condemned for Poisoning Three Men With Cyanide, Dies in an Osaka Detention House at 78
Japan's justice ministry said she was found lying in her cell. A request to reopen one of her cases was still pending in an Osaka court.
Published
Chisako Kakehi was sentenced to death for killing three men with cyanide, including her husband. On December 26, 2024, she died at the Osaka Detention House at 78, without having been executed.
Kakehi was found lying in her cell, and her death was confirmed at a hospital that day, a justice ministry official told AFP; the cause had not yet been determined. She had been convicted of murdering three elderly men and trying to kill a fourth in Kyoto, Osaka and Hyogo prefectures between 2007 and 2013. She was sentenced to death in 2017, and on June 29, 2021, the Supreme Court rejected her final appeal, which argued that dementia left her unfit to stand trial.
Presiding Justice Yuko Miyazaki called the killings "a calculated, cruel crime based on a strong intent of murder." In September 2022 she asked the Kyoto District Court to reopen the case involving her common-law partner in Hyogo; the court rejected the request in March 2024, and her appeal to the Osaka High Court was still pending when she died.
Kakehi met many of the men through marriage agencies, and she reportedly received about 1 billion yen in insurance payouts and inheritances over a decade but lost most of it in failed financial trading. Police opened their investigation after her husband, Isao Kakehi, 75, died less than two months after their wedding in 2013, and an autopsy found cyanide in his body. She was arrested 11 months later. Most of the earlier deaths of men close to her had been attributed to illness, without autopsies.
AFP and CNN described her fourth conviction as attempted murder, while the weekly Bunshun reported that the charge was attempted robbery-murder.
Sources
- Japan's 'Black Widow' death-row inmate dies, Gulf News (from AFP)
- Japan's "Black Widow" death row inmate, Chisako Kakehi, dies at 78, CBS News (from AFP)
- 〈死亡〉「私は死刑は覚悟してる。やっぱり…」11人の死亡で数億円の遺産、筧千佐子死刑囚（78）が獄中で明かした言葉, Bunshun Online
- 連続殺人事件の筧被告、最高裁で死刑確定, CNN.co.jp
Related News
- November 19, 2014: Kyoto Police Arrest Chisako Kakehi After Cyanide Is Found in Her Husband's Blood
- November 7, 2017: Kyoto Court Sentences Chisako Kakehi to Death for Three Cyanide Murders