The Osaka High Court in Japan upheld on Tuesday last week the death sentence for a 74-year-old woman accused of deliberately poisoning and killing her former lovers, including her most recent husband, to become the key benefactor of their fortunes.
The court has quashed with finality the appeal by suspect Chisako Kakehi, dubbed as the "Black Widow" and convicted of three murders and the attempted murder in 2017. She has confessed to fatally poisoning at least three men from 2007 to 2013 in Kyoto, Osaka, and Hyogo, according to the Tokyo Reporter.
Investigations began in 2013 following the death of Kakehi’s former husband Isao, 75, who collapsed in his home in Muko City, Kyoto Prefecture, less than two months after their wedding. Autopsy results revealed that the man had a lethal dose of hydrocyanic acid in his stomach and blood.
Kyoto Prefectural Police then arrested Kakehi over his death 11 months later.
The probe further unraveled that Kakehi had also killed three other men via lethal doses of cyanide, including former boyfriends Masanori Honda, 71, and Minoru Hioki, 75. She then attempted to kill an acquaintance, identified as Toshiaki Suehiro, 79, with the same poison.
Authorities raided her home after securing a search warrant, seizing medical books with extensive discussions on poisoning. Police also retrieved traces of cyanide and paraphernalia used to mask the lethal drug in food and drink from her residence.
The “black widow” Kakehi has been married four times, court documents show. Investigators believe she had been romantically linked to at least ten men, where she played a role in the deaths of eight of them. Her dating service applications then unveiled that she had required any potential matches to be elderly, ill, or childless.
CNN reported that police say most of Kakehi's previous partners, aged 54 to 75, died in the past two decades while they were in a relationship with her. Soon after these deaths, Kakehi would move to process inheriting their assets.
Reports suggested that she received up to 1 billion yen, which amounts to over US$9 million, in inheritance following the deaths of her previous partners. A large portion of the money, however, has been squandered on poor investments.
“Getting acquainted with elderly victims one after another using a dating agency and gaining their trust to drink poison is clever and ruthless,” presiding judge Yuko Miyazaki told Kakehi at the June 29 hearing.
The Kyoto District Court moved to order Kakehi's death sentence in 2017 following a four-month trial. At the time, the suspect admitted to killing Isao but later retracted her statement, The Daily Beast noted.
“I have no intention of hiding the guilt. I will laugh it off and die if I am sentenced to death tomorrow,” Kakehi told the court in 2017.
Her legal camp had previously argued she was suffering dementia, making her incapable of taking part in a criminal trial. Capital punishment remains a legal penalty in Japan with executions carried out by hanging.
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