Takahiro Shiraishi is handed the death sentence for murdering nine people in 2017 at the Tokyo District Court’s Tachikawa branch on Dec. 15. (Image drawn by Kageyoshi Koyanagi)
Convicted serial killer Takahiro Shiraishi dropped the legal appeal filed by his defense lawyers against the death sentence on Dec. 21, paving the way for him to be eventually hanged.
Shiraishi, 30, was found guilty of murdering nine people in 2017 at his apartment in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture.
He was indicted on multiple counts of murder, robbery and forcible sexual intercourse in connection with the dismembered bodies of eight women and one man, aged 15 to 26, found in his home.
A Flower Demonstration against sexual violence is held near Kokura Station in Kita-Kyushu on Dec. 11. (Mayuri Ito)
The Tokyo High Court on Dec. 21 handed a seven-year prison term to a father who raped his biological daughter from the age of 12, overturning a lower court ruling that viewed her testimony as untrustworthy.
It acknowledged that the girl s testimony was “substantially specific and realistic in a way that only a person who was victimized can give.”
The Shizuoka District Court acquitted the defendant of the rape charges in March 2019, concluding the girl’s testimony was unreliable. The father was indicted on charges of raping his daughter in 2017.