Tomomasa Nakagawa was a senior member of the religious group Aum Shinrikyo and one of the thirteen of its members sentenced to death in Japan. A Tokyo court sentenced him to death on October 29, 2003, for a series of murders that included the 1995 attack in Tokyo, and he had already pleaded guilty to the killings of three members of one household in Yokohama in 1989. He was convicted in 11 crimes in which more than 20 people were killed. He was executed on July 6, 2018, at the age of 55.
Nakagawa was a physician who rose to a senior position in Aum Shinrikyo. He was 41 when sentenced in 2003 and 55 at his execution, which puts his birth around 1962. The group, founded by Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto), was the subject of a long series of prosecutions after 1995. Among the roughly 190 members found guilty, 13 received death sentences.
On November 4, 1989, three members of one household in Yokohama were killed: Tsutsumi Sakamoto, aged 33, Satoko Sakamoto, aged 29, and a one-year-old child. Four members of the group were convicted in the case, among them Nakagawa. At his 2003 trial he pleaded guilty to these killings. For the child, the conviction was murder, with other charges.
In 1995 an attack on the Tokyo subway killed thirteen people and injured thousands. Nakagawa was convicted for his role in the series of murders that included this attack. His lawyers argued at trial that he had not known how the group's work would be used, that he had no criminal intent and that he had acted on orders from superiors. The court did not accept that argument.
On October 29, 2003, a Tokyo court sentenced Nakagawa to death. He was the tenth member of the group to receive that sentence, and the other nine had already appealed. The verdict came a day before closing arguments in the trial of Asahara himself.
On July 6, 2018, the Ministry of Justice carried out death sentences on seven members of the group: Asahara, Yoshihiro Inoue, Tomomitsu Niimi, Tomomasa Nakagawa, Kiyohide Hayakawa, Masami Tsuchiya and Seiichi Endo. The seven were put to death at detention centers in Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukuoka. The city of Nakagawa's own execution is not on record. Amnesty International issued a statement the same day describing the seven as among 13 people sentenced to death in connection with the Tokyo attack and other offenses.
Asahara was sentenced to death in February 2004, and his sentence was finalized in September 2006. The cult was blamed for 27 deaths in all.
The death toll of the Tokyo attack was revised from twelve at the 2003 verdict to thirteen in later accounts.
November 4, 1989: three members of one household killed in Yokohama.
1995: the attack on the Tokyo subway.
October 29, 2003: a Tokyo court sentences Nakagawa to death.
July 6, 2018: executed, with six other members of the group.