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A ONE TIME millionaire dubbed the Black Widow, who tricked elderly lovers into drinking cyanide and then pocketed millions in insurance payouts and inheritance, was sentenced to death in Japan today.
Kyoto District Court condemned Chisako Kakehi, 70, to the gallows for the murder of three men, including a husband, and for the attempted murder of another, ending a high-profile case that has gripped the country.
Kakehi became notorious after using poison to dispatch a number of elderly men she was involved with, drawing comparisons with the spider that kills its mate after copulation.
“The accused made the victims drink a cyanide compound with a murderous intention in all four cases,” Judge Ayako Nakagawa told the court, according to public broadcaster NHK.
“The cases were well prepared in advance. They were cunning and malicious. I have no choice but to impose the ultimate penalty.”
Nakagawa rejected defence lawyers’ arguments that Kakehi was not criminally liable because she was suffering from dementia.
More than 560 people queued for 51 seats in the courtroom to witness the outcome of the marathon trial, which lasted 135 days.
It was the second-longest court case involving a jury since Japan introduced a joint judge-jury system in 2009.
Gray-haired Kakehi, wearing a hearing aid headphone, asked the judge to speak loudly. She showed no emotion when the judge handed down the sentence.
The court said she killed the men after they made her the beneficiary of life assurance policies that reportedly ran into millions of dollars.
“For the love of money,” the accused poisoned the victims who fully trusted her, the judge said.
Kakehi reportedly amassed one billion yen ($8.8 million) in payouts over 10 years but subsequently lost most of the fortune through unsuccessful financial trading.
She had relationships with many men, mostly elderly or ill, meeting some through dating agencies, where she reportedly stipulated that prospective partners should be wealthy and childless.
Kakehi initially refused to speak when her trial began in June but later stunned the court by admitting killing her fourth husband in 2013.
“I killed him… because he gave other women tens of millions of yen but did not give me even a penny,” she told the court, according to Jiji Press.
She had earlier told judges she was ready to hang.
“Even if I were executed tomorrow, I would die smiling,” Kakehi told judges.
After today’s ruling, her lawyers immediately appealed to a higher court, suggesting the high-profile trial could yet drag on.
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If she was tried in Ireland it would be a suspended sentence and a special on the late late!
@Spongebobdub: The appearance on the ‘Late Late’ being the toughest part of the sentence!
@Spongebobdub: I think you’ll find the Japanese imposed a suspended sentence too.
@Etherman: haha i like it….. suspended sentence..
@Spongebobdub: no she wouldn’t she admitted murder therefore she would get life. And rightly so.
Veronica won’t like this story…
@Avina Laaf:
No chance of Veronica turning up here. It wouldn’t suit her agenda
@Avina Laaf: What, a murderer being put to death? I’m not a fan of the death penalty myself.
I wonder if yous’ll ever understand the difference between something happening all the time, versus something that happens extraordinarily rarely. I’m gonna assume not though, as it’s apparently been too difficult to grasp thus far.
@Veronica: extraordinarily rarely? That’s an exaggeration even by your standards.
@Veronica: Ah bless, the open sewer that is the Journal’s comments section! Personal attacks that are void of any merit courtesy of those who live under bridges. Veronica, you’d do well to learn to stop feeding the trolls, they just drag you down and beat you at the level they are most practiced at.
@Jane: how many female serial killers do you think there are Jane?
@Veronica: there have been a few cases of a female killing someone recently. female violence is getting more and more common unfortunately.
@gjpb: What makes you suggest that? And what female serial killers or even regular killers are you talking about?
@Veronica: I just checked Carol Anne Davis’s “Women who kill”. She looks at cases dating back to 1760. Thirteen female serial killers.
Not counting Gjpb’s modern cases. It’s a lot fewer than the male count all right. Her second book is very hard to read. Children who kill. They were all horribly abused and generally by rigidly strict religious parents. As she remarks, it’s almost surprising that more abused people survive and don’t turn killer. The facts of the children’s early lives in her second book are grim reading indeed.
@Patrick Kearns:
I’m not trolling any more than Veronica is when she says that women don’t engage in domestic violence.
Brutal “justice” system there, like their WW2 days.
@Ser Barristan Selmy: EU doesn’t support your view.
@Jay Lane: Unfortunately
@Jay Lane: the EU are a soft touch.
@Dave Murray: New York & several states don’t either so move to Alabama if it suits you better.
@John Arc: Funny how hundreds of millions signed up for it.
@Ser Barristan Selmy: But you be first to not want to leave EU.
@Ser Barristan Selmy: The right to life is EU & ECJ first rule.
@Jay Lane: I don’t see what moving to Alabama has to do with an execution in Japan, surely you should be telling me to move there?
@Dave Murray: Thought an injection would be easier than hanging for you.
@Jay Lane: Death by a thousand cuts with a rusty blade would be my punishment for murderers and serial killers but it probably wouldn’t happen.
@Jay Lane: ah well that’s that so… oh by the way , thanks for the insight , I was always under the impression that all sides involved in WW2 were involved in brutality , now you tell us ”twas only the Japanese , well well.
@Gerry Campbell: except he never said that, did he?
@Jay Lane: The people don’t support some of the views of the EU.
@Jay Lane: The European Convention on Human Rights has nothing to do with the EU and contrary to popular belief does make provisions for lawful executions in Article 2 ( deals with right to life ). The EU on the other hand has a broader view on the right to life and by members’ consensus has a prohibition on the death penalty as one of it’s membership criteria. That might just have a thing or two to do with the dictatorial past of some of it’s member states and the abuses of the justice system that entailed.
@Steven Moens: The ECJ & right to life rules over the EU & EEA & EFTA as u can’t be a member of any of these groups without signing up to the right to life and that rightfully includes no death penalty.
@Steven Moens: Nearly 20 years ago the ECHR banned the death penalty in any circumstance by ammendement to A2 (not popular belief – fact) and is a requirement for all states. And the ECHR was enacted by the then council of Europe in the 50′s which is now the EU. How does the ECHR have nothing to do with the EU?
Could they not find a quicker way to end her life.
@Alan Scott: The slower the better.
@Alan Scott: its karma no sympathy for someone so evil
@JJ: Exactly-the lads she poisoned died a much slower and agonising death.
@Alan Scott: Her innocent victims didn’t get that luxury.
@Alan Scott:
You can’t get much quicker than hanging. It’s instantaneous
@Luke Moore: Ah you guys have no mercy in your hearts lol
@Glascott Richard Symes:
Nail on the head. I’m against the death penalty, but I always find it ironic that some people complain about the ‘brutality and savagery’ of a Saudi-style beheading by a sword blow (which looks messy but is instant for the victim) compared to the western world’s ‘civilised’ executions by electrocution or lethal injection (which is clean but can result in prolonged suffering).
@Alan Scott: maybe they should force her to drink cyanide
@Avina Laaf:
It always baffles me why the person is not anaesthetised before the actual execution. Its relatively simple, painless and 100% effective as proven in hospitals around the world everyday
@Alan Scott: lol
@Nick Allen:
A local or general?
Grotesque. Hanging a 70 year old woman. Civilised humanity should not partake in ‘Legal Murder’. Killing begets killing.
@Soft Wind Roses: What does “killing begets killing” even mean?
@Soft Wind Roses: what do you do with a dog that takes the face off a child..you put that dog down…when humans act like animals just like this evil Japanese woman..you put her down.
@Noel O Mahony: If a dog bites a child, it is the owners fault.
@Unpersoned: dog still gets put down.
@Soft Wind Roses: But she doesn’t even regret it. What horrible deaths for those men. They trusted her enough to marry her and she poisoned them for money which she no doubt would have inherited anyway. She didn’t want them around and did that. Okay, put her to sleep if it would disturb you to see her hanged, but come on, she was and is a cold-blooded murderer. Unlike most people who treat each other decently. Why should she get the benefit of being one of them when she’s not?
What is the problem with the comments section of the Journal these days. As I scroll down I start to see the comments repeated. Sort the problem Journal staff.
Of course it’ll drag on. The lawyers will squeeze her and the system dry, then hang her…
If they brought back hanging here they wouldn’t have enough rope .
She sounds like one hell of a gal,
@Glascott Richard Symes: I doubt she was allowed to keep the money! She murdered for it! Poor men.
She seems nice.
@Ronan Sexton: she shouldn’t be hung. That’s too quick. She should spend the rest of her life in general population in prison.
Lenient if you ask me.
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