Japan’s 'Twitter Killer' Who Drugged And Dismembered 9 Suicidal Victims Sentenced To Death

A man, who used Twitter to lure people with suicidal thoughts into his home in Japan and then murdered them, was sentenced to death Tuesday.

Takahiro Shiraishi, dubbed the “Twitter killer,” trapped victims by inviting them home under the pretext of assisting them in committing suicide. The victims were then drugged, robbed, raped, and killed. The investigation found out he had dismembered the bodies of nine victims he had murdered, reported BBC.

The serial killings came to light in 2017 when the police discovered dismembered body parts at Shiraishi’s apartment while they searched for a 23-year-old victim.

The Japanese media called his apartment “house of horrors” after police discovered nine human heads and 240 bones stored in cooler boxes, BBC reported.

The murders took place between August and October 2017. Among the nine victims, eight were women and one was a man. The murdered man was a friend of one of the women, and was killed because he was about to discover the crimes.

He approached his victims through two Twitter accounts in the year 2017. In one, he posed as a “suicide guru” who promised to help people commit suicide. On the other, he posed as a depressed man seeking company in committing suicide, news outlet The Strait Times reported.

He met his victims at train stations near their homes and traveled with them to his apartment to make sure that they do not back out from the pact.

He was found guilty of drugging the victims before assaulting and strangling them.

The crimes surfaced when the brother of the ninth victim discovered disturbing messages from a Twitter handle in his sister’s account.

Shiraishi pleaded guilty to all charges against him during his trial in October. His lawyers had claimed he killed his victims with their permission and argued he deserved a lesser charge of “murder with consent.”

He also underwent mental health evaluation after his defense lawyers argued he was mentally unstable. The court found Shiraishi mentally stable after five months of psychiatric tests.

“None of the victims agreed to be killed. The defendant was found to be fully responsible,” Naokuni Yano, the presiding judge, said as he sentenced Shiraishi to death, The Strait Times reported.

“All the murders were well-planned and the modus operandi makes it one of the most malicious murders ever in the history of crime. It caused massive shock and anxiety to a society where the use of social media is commonplace,” Yano said in court.