Japanese Man Indicted for Killing 9 at Apartment

September 10, 2018

Tokyo- Public prosecutors indicted a 27-year-old man on Monday for the alleged robbery-murders of nine people at his apartment in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture, southwest of Tokyo.

Takahiro Shiraishi, 27, was arrested mainly on murder charges but prosecutors switched the charges to robbery-murders, for which more severe sentences are given, after he testified that he took money from the victims.

After pretrial conference procedures, he is expected to be tried by lay judges.

According to sources including the indictment by the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, Shiraishi invited the nine people aged 15-26 from Tokyo and four other prefectures to his apartment and choked them to death in August to October 2017. He became acquainted with the victims via Twitter posts mainly related to suicides.

After taking the victims' money, he is suspected of having dismembered and abandoned their bodies.

He was served a total of 10 arrest warrants on charges including of killing the nine people and abandoning their bodies.

According to investigative sources, he admitted the charges.

The prosecutors detained Shiraishi for expert evaluation for some five months from April because of the outlandish nature of his crimes, in which he allegedly killed the nine people in about two months and kept the dismembered bodies of the victims in coolers and other boxes at his apartment.

After a mental evaluation of the suspect, the prosecutors judged that Shiraishi was competent to take criminal responsibility for the murders. Jiji Press