When police discovered the body of Yoshiyuki Oide slumped on the back seat of his rented car near Tokyo this summer, they quickly assumed he had killed himself.
The car contained the paraphernalia of a growing number of suicides in Japan, although investigators were puzzled to find there were no keys in the ignition.
But their bafflement turned to suspicion when it emerged that Oide apparently had everything to live for. Less than 24 hours before his death the company worker from Tokyo had spoken of his joy at the prospect of getting married.
“At 41, I’m actually looking forward to getting married, and today I’ll meet my partner’s family,” he wrote on his blog.
“Recently, we’ve spent all our time looking for a new place to live and talking about our new life together. This evening we’re going on a two-night, three-day holiday,” he wrote.
An autopsy showed that Oide had died from carbon monoxide poisoning, but that his blood also contained traces of sleeping pills. Just before his death he had transferred ¥5 million (US$55,700) to his “fiancee’s” bank account.
In a case that has gripped Japan, the woman Oide thought he was about to marry is suspected of murdering him and as many as five other men she befriended via online marriage sites.
The suspect, named by Japanese Web sites as Kanae Kijima, allegedly squeezed millions of yen out of her would-be suitors before drugging them with sleeping pills and disguising their deaths as suicides or accidents.
The copious column inches and air time devoted to the case since her arrest late last month portray the 35-year-old as a calculated serial killer who preyed on vulnerable men ranging in age from 27 to 80.
Described as a friendly woman who made sweets for her neighbors and ran a food Web site, Kijima reportedly compensated for her plain looks by charming customers at the bar in Tottori, western Japan, where she had worked until earlier this year.
Since her arrest, the list of possible victims has grown to include other men she dated in recent years, including a journalist who was hit by a train, a police officer who was found hanged and a man who appeared to have drowned.
Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Kijima also worked as a home help for Kenzo Ando, an 80-year-old man who died in a house fire in May and whose body contained traces of sleeping drugs. She had visited his home the same day and was filmed withdrawing money using his cash card.
Kijima, a mother of five now inevitably nicknamed the “black widow,” would reportedly agree to marriage and then claim to be in desperate need of cash to complete her studies before she could tie the knot.
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