A Japanese man dubbed the “Twitter killer” has withdrawn an appeal of his guilty verdict and death sentence over the murder of nine people, a court official said yesterday.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, on Monday “submitted the motion” to drop the appeal filed by his lawyers, a court spokesman said.
Shiraishi lured people who posted online comments about suicidal thoughts to his home, where he killed and butchered his young victims. All but one of those murdered were women, and they ranged in age from 15 to 26.
During his trial, he did not contest the charges against him, although his lawyer attempted to reduce his sentence, saying that the suicidal thoughts expressed by the victims indicated their willingness to die.
Shiraishi was detained three years ago, as police investigated the disappearance of a 23-year-old woman who reportedly wrote on Twitter about wanting to kill herself.
Her brother gained access to her Twitter account and eventually led police to Shiraishi’s residence, where investigators found nine dismembered bodies stored in coolers and toolboxes that had been sprinkled with cat litter in a bid to hide the evidence.
Shiraishi told the court during his trial that he had no plan to appeal any ruling against him, and he told a local newspaper that the verdict had been “obvious.”
Despite the death sentence, he told the Mainichi Shimbun that he wanted to “meet an ordinary girl” and get married while in jail.
Shiraishi’s crime reignited debate about suicide prevention in Japan, which has the highest suicide rate among G7 nations.
Efforts to reduce suicides had led to a decline in the past few years, but numbers have been rising again in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Japan is one of the few developed nations to retain the death penalty, with more than 100 inmates on death row, and public support for it remains high.
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