On this date, December 15, 2020, Takahiro Shiraishi (白石隆浩) AKA the ‘Twitter Killer’ was sentenced to death for the murdering and dismembering nine 'suicidal' people he met online in Kanagawa, Japan.
Takahiro Shiraishi (白石隆浩)
'Twitter killer' is sentenced to death in Tokyo for murdering and dismembering nine 'suicidal' people he met online
· Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, killed and butchered nine victims, 15 to 26, in Kanagawa
· Lawyers argued for prison time because the victims expressed suicidal thoughts
· He was sentenced to death after judge ruled victims did not consent to death
· Tokyo police found heads, limbs and bones when they searched his apartment
A Japanese serial killer dubbed the 'Twitter killer' was sentenced to death by a Tokyo court today for murdering and dismembering nine people he met online.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, admitted killing and butchering eight women and one man, aged between 15 and 26, who he met on the social media platform.
The female victims were also found to be have been sexually assaulted.
His lawyers had argued he should receive a prison sentence rather than the death penalty because his victims expressed suicidal thoughts on social media and so had consented to death.
But the death sentence was handed down to Shiraishi today after the court found him criminally responsible for their deaths.
'None of the nine victims consented to be killed, including silent consent,' Presiding Judge Naokuni Yano said, according to public broadcaster NHK.
'It is extremely grave that the lives of nine young people were taken away. The dignity of the victims was trampled upon.'
Yano described the murders as 'extremely vicious in crime history' and ruled Shiraishi was mentally fit to be held responsible for them.
The father of one 25-year-old victim said in court last month that he 'will never forgive Shiraishi even if he dies', NHK reported.
He said 'Even now, when I see a woman of my daughter's age, I mistake her for my daughter. This pain will never go away. Give her back to me.'
Police uncovered a grisly house of horrors behind Shiraishi's front door in Zama, Kanagawa, on the morning of Halloween in 2017.
Nine dismembered bodies, with as many as 240 bone parts stashed in coolers and toolboxes, had been sprinkled with cat litter in a bid to hide the evidence.
On Twitter, his profile featured a manga drawing of a man whose neck and wrist were scarred, with a rope around his neck, the Japan Times reported.
His Twitter handle roughly translated as 'hangman', and his bio described his expertise in the practice of hanging.
The profile explained: 'I want to help people who are really in pain.
'Please DM me anytime.'
In a post made on October 21, Shiraishi wrote: 'Bullying is everywhere, in school and at work.
'There must be many people in society who are suffering after attempting suicides, though their cases are not reported in the news.
'I want to help such people.'
Some 435 people turned up to watch the verdict today, even though the court only had 16 seats available for the public.
Reports in 2017 said his first victim was a woman whom he got in touch with via Twitter, offering to assist her suicide wish, then killing her boyfriend to silence him.
They said Shiraishi used similar tactics to kill seven other women.
The reports explained one of the women contacted Shiraishi via Twitter in late September, seeking a partner for a suicide pact and saying she was afraid to die alone.
The two were recorded by security cameras walking together outside railway stations near her residence and the suspect's apartment, the reports added.
Japan has the highest suicide rate among the Group of Seven industrialised nations, with more than 20,000 people taking their lives annually.
While the suicide rate has been falling since it peaked in 2003, it remain particularly high among young adults and schoolchildren.
The woman's brother reported her disappearance to police the next day.
When he sought information about his sister's disappearance on Twitter, an unidentified woman replied that she had met Shiraishi and agreed to cooperate with police by setting up a fake appointment.
Two investigators then followed Shiraishi back to his apartment and knocked on the door, public broadcaster NHK said.
When they asked him if he knew where the missing woman was, Shiraishi pointed to one of eight coolers, saying 'She is in here', NHK said, quoting investigative sources.
Japan is one of few developed nations to retain the death penalty, and public support for it remains high.
Years usually pass between sentencing and execution, and the last execution was in December 2019, when a Chinese man was hanged for the murder of a family of four.
Some 500 Japanese people under 20 years of age kill themselves each year and a Nippon Foundation survey last year showed that one in four people had seriously considered suicide.
In some cases, victims have committed mass suicide after meeting on so-called 'suicide websites', a phenomenon that has prompted the government to crack down on people using the internet to post their death wishes.
The issue first hit the headlines in 2005, with 91 people in total committing 'group suicide' after contacting each other online.
'It has long been a taboo in Japan to talk about death and suicide... but it's easy to talk about it on social media,' Akiko Mura, an executive member of Befrienders Worldwide Tokyo, told AFP in 2017.
She said Shiraishi would have likely gained the victims' trust by convincing them that he understood their desire to die.
'They might have thought he was the only person who would sincerely listen to their problems,' she said.
Although Shiraishi was able to exploit social media to target his victims, Mura warned that depressed people need an outlet for their feelings amid calls at the time to restrict suicide posts on social media.
'People need a place where they can be heard,' she said. 'Without it, I'm afraid the number of suicides might even increase.'
Four days after the bodies were found in Shiraishi's apartment in a Tokyo suburb, Twitter unveiled new rules stating that users 'may not promote or encourage suicide or self-harm' but it stopped short of banning tweets expressing a wish to kill oneself.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9054415/Japan-Twitter-killer-sentenced-death-nine-murders.html
The nine suspected victims of Japanese serial killer Takahiro Shiraishi, who dismembered them in his apartment. Picture: masamasakoro.com.Source:Supplied
Japan 'Twitter killer' sentenced to death for nine murders
16 December 2020, MVT 10:56
A Japanese man dubbed the "Twitter killer" was sentenced to death by a Tokyo court Tuesday for murdering and dismembering nine people he met online.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, admitted killing and butchering his young victims -- all but one of whom were women -- who he met on the social media platform.
His lawyers had argued he should receive a prison sentence because his victims, aged between 15 and 26, expressed suicidal thoughts on social media and so had consented to death.
But on Tuesday "the death sentence was handed down" to Shiraishi, a court official told AFP.
"None of the nine victims consented to be killed, including silent consent,"the judge said, according to public broadcaster NHK.
"It is extremely grave that the lives of nine young people were taken away. The dignity of the victims was trampled upon," the judge reportedly added.
NHK said 435 people turned up to watch the verdict, even though the court only had 16 seats available for the public.
Shiraishi used Twitter to contact users who posted about taking their own lives, telling them he could help them in their plans -- or even die alongside them.
The father of one 25-year-old victim said in court last month that he "will never forgive Shiraishi even if he dies", NHK reported at the time.
"Even now, when I see a woman of my daughter's age, I mistake her for my daughter. This pain will never go away. Give her back to me!" he said.
Japan is one of few developed nations to retain the death penalty, and public support for it remains high.
Years usually pass between sentencing and execution, and the last execution was in December 2019, when a Chinese man was hanged for the murder of a family of four.
Tokyo, Japan | AFP
INTERNET SOURCE: https://edition.mv/parliament/20953
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Takahiro Shiraishi, depicted here in a court sketch drawing by Masato Yamashita on September 30, has been sentenced to death
[PHOTO SOURCE: https://edition.mv/parliament/20953] |
Inside the mind of the Japanese serial killer who killed 9 people
Published
Nov 5, 2017, 5:00 am SGT
[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.businessinsider.com/takahiro-shiraishi-arrested-after-body-parts-found-in-japan-apartment-2017-10/?r=AU&IR=T]
What made Takahiro Shiraishi kill nine people and how did he lure them to their deaths?
Walter Sim Japan Correspondent In Tokyo
In June, one month after he was given a suspended prison term for being a scout for a prostitution ring, Takahiro Shiraishi told his father that he saw no meaning in life.
Jobless, the 27-year-old cocooned himself further in the dark recesses of social media. He used Twitter, a medium he once used to lure girls into the sex trade, to meet people with suicidal thoughts.
The gruesome Halloween find of nine human heads and 240 bones in his studio apartment in Zama city, an hour and a half from central Tokyo, has spooked Japan and again shone a light on suicide and mental health issues in a country that even has a "suicide forest".
Japan has the sixth highest suicide rate in the world. Some 21,897 killed themselves last year - a 22-year low, while there were 257 reports filed with the Internet Hotline Centre about suicide attempts.
Shiraishi grew up in Zama with his parents and a younger sister in a house roughly 2.5km from his loft apartment.
He was a quiet, inconspicuous boy who went to local elementary and junior high schools in the city, acquaintances told Japanese media.
His grades were not stellar, but he was a conscientious student who did not miss a day of school. News pictures show a scrawny teenager with thin-rimmed spectacles who joined his junior high's baseball team as a freshman, and then the track team as a senior.
He went on to study at the prefectural high school in the city of Yokohamaand it was around this time that things fell apart at home. His parents divorced, and his mother and sister moved out.
After graduating from senior high, Shiraishi took on a series of odd jobs - including at a supermarket, food factory and pachinko parlour - before becoming a scout for a prostitution ring.
He was active in Shinjuku's seedy Kabukicho district, and was once described as an "ambitious, dangerous man who is capable of betrayal".
One woman, who cohabited with him for three months earlier this year, said Shiraishi was "unusually more gentle than ordinary people" despite a morbid fascination with death and suicide.
He had sent her messages such as "Let's commit suicide together", and once texted "I have killed a hostess who said she wanted to die", which the former girlfriend dismissed as a joke.
Shiraishi was close to his father, who works at an automotive design workshop, neighbours said. The son frequently helped out at the workshop, and occasionally had dinner and drinks with his father.
In August, he confessed to his father that he had met the love of his life and would urgently like to have his own space. His father acted as guarantor for an apartment in the neighbourhood that rents for 19,000 yen ($227) a month.
On Aug 22, Shiraishi moved into the 13.5 sq m apartment which Japanese media has described as the "house of horrors".
While living on his own, Shiraishi built up a small following on Twitter through at least two accounts - "I want to die" and "A professional at hanging".
Under the first account, he cast himself as a forlorn victim seeking company for his misery. "I want to forget everything," he wrote in an Aug 25 post. "I want to disappear."
Under the second account, he took on the persona of someone who is skilled at helping people die. "I want to spread my knowledge in hanging," he said. "I really want to become the source of strength for everyone who is in pain."
"If you are at a dead end, please consult me," he wrote.
He also sought out his victims using the hashtag "suicide recruitment" on Twitter, preying on young girls who wanted to take their own lives. He told them via direct messaging on Twitter: "Let's die together."
To ensure his victims would not back out at the last minute, he would arrange to meet them at a train station near their homes, then travel together to his apartment.
He said he gave them alcohol, tranquilisers and sleeping pills "to make them relax", before assaulting them.
He confessed to killing one person in August, four in September and four in October - mostly on the same day he met them. Eight of the nine victims were women, mainly in their late teens to early 20s.
"It was difficult at first. It took me three days to get rid of the first body, but after that I could deal with them within one day," Shiraishi told the police.
He said his motives had been sex and money. He is alleged to have choked his victims - whose real names and ages he did not know - until they passed out, before sexually assaulting some of them.
"There is no doubt that I sliced up the bodies in my bathroom with the intention of destroying evidence," he said.
Police have recovered two kitchen knives, scissors, a saw, binding rope and a gimlet, all with traces of blood on them.
Shiraishi said: "I disposed of their flesh and internal organs like garbage, but kept their bones out of fear that I would be caught."
<< GOT USED TO IT
It was difficult at first. It took me three days to get rid of the first body, but after that, I could deal with them within one day.
TAKAHIRO SHIRAISHI, speaking to the police.
>>
Police also found three cooler boxes and five large storage boxes in his apartment. They checked the eight boxes and found body parts, including heads, legs and arms, in seven of the boxes.
He reportedly used cat litter to cover the body parts to mask the smell.
His neighbours in the two-storey, 12-unit apartment block said they had neither seen nor heard anything amiss, despite complaints of a persistent "pungent smell" emanating from his apartment.
One of them pointed out that it was strange that his bathroom ventilation fan was kept on at all times.
Shiraishi even brazenly used the neighbourhood garbage collection point to dispose of the evidence. A neighbour has noted - in hindsight - his frequent trips to the chute.
It was the online trail he left on social media which eventually led the police to his doorstep.
The brother of his ninth and final victim - a 23-year-old woman from the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji - hacked into her Twitter account, and was offered help by a woman who had met Shiraishi before.
She agreed to be the bait to lure Shiraishi out for the police, who then followed him home on Oct 30.
When asked if he knew where the missing 23-year-old woman was, he pointed at a chiller box near the entrance and said: "In there."
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/inside-the-mind-of-a-serial-killer
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死刑日本 [PHOTO SOURCE: https://theme.udn.com/theme/story/6775/2582583] |
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