Japanese man pleads guilty to killing, dismembering nine people in flat
- Takahiro Shiraishi, who dismembered eight women and one man and stored their bodies in cooling boxes, admitted that the allegations against him were ‘correct’
- But his lawyers argued the charges should be reduced because the victims, who had expressed suicidal thoughts on Twitter, gave their consent to be killed
A Japanese man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering, dismembering and storing the bodies of nine youths in his flat near Tokyo in a 2017 case involving victims who had expressed suicidal thoughts through Twitter.
Takahiro Shiraishi, the 29-year-old defendant, told the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court that the allegations against him were “correct.”
His defence team, however, taking a different stance from Shiraishi, argued that he killed the victims – eight women and one man aged 15 to 26 – with their consent as they had expressed suicidal thoughts on social media, and therefore was guilty of the lesser charge of homicide with consent.
According to the indictment, Shiraishi strangled and dismembered his victims from Tokyo and four other prefectures from August to October in 2017. Their bodies were discovered inside containers such as cooling boxes in his flat in Zama, Kanagawa prefecture.
Shiraishi is alleged to have stolen cash from them and sexually assaulted all the female victims. He owed one of the women around 360,000 yen (US$3,410).
After five months of psychiatric tests, prosecutors concluded Shiraishi can be held criminally liable and indicted him in September 2018.