A court in Japan has sentenced to death a man dubbed the “Twitter killer” for the murders in 2017 of nine people whom he befriended online after they had expressed suicidal thoughts.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, admitted strangling and dismembering his victims, eight of whom were women, over the course of three months. The youngest was 15 and the oldest 26.
“None of the nine victims consented to be killed, including by silent consent,” said the judge, Naokuni Yano, according to the 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.”
NHK said 435 people had queued up for the 16 seats in the public gallery, eager to see the conclusion of a case that alerted a shocked country to the dangers social media can pose to young people struggling with mental health issues.
Shiraishi, who spent five months undergoing psychiatric tests before being indicted in 2018, used Twitter to identify people who had discussed ending their own lives.
Via direct messages he reportedly promised them he could help them carry out their plans and even die alongside them, according to media reports.
His Twitter profile included the words: “I want to help people who are really in pain. Please DM me anytime.”
The father of one of the victims, a 25-year-old woman, told the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo district court he would never forgive Shiraishi, who scouted women to work in Tokyo’s commercial sex industry before moving to Zama, south-west of the capital.
“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!” the woman’s father said.
Defence lawyers had called for Shiraishi to be spared the death penalty, arguing that he should instead be found guilty of the lesser charge of homicide with consent, citing messages from his victims they said amounted to tacit approval that their lives be ended.
Shiraishi’s crimes came to light in October 2017 when police officers visited his apartment and found coolers and tool boxes containing human remains during a search for a 23-year-old woman who was later identified as one of his victims.
Japan has resisted international pressure to abolish the death penalty, which remains a popular in opinion polls. Condemned inmates typically spend years on death row and are given little notice of their execution, prompting criticism from human rights groups.
