Twitter Killer Awaits the End on Death Row in Japan

Article content

From the fleeting end of summer to mid-October 2017, a serial killer painted the streets of a sad ex-Toyko burb crimson.

Article content

By the time the killer finished his macabre deed, a man and eight women and girls were dead. They were between 15 and 26 years old.

Killed in the most vile way, the police and Japanese newspapers called their suspect The Twitter Killer.

***

In addition to the bigmouth smarties that infest social media like termites in a plywood shack, 2021 neighborhood bars are also home to armies of the lonely, desperate, and vulnerable.

Takahiro Shiraishi lived in a seedy apartment in Zama, a dormitory community in Tokyo. His profession was equally dirty: Shiraishi worked as a scout luring young women to the sex trade in the city’s largest red light district.

Locals warned young women about a “spooky scout” who lures women and girls to brothels.

Article content

In his lair, he began tracking Twitter, targeting suicidal young women. Shiraishi would help them commit suicide while he watched. This was tried and true territory for the twisted young man who strangled girls during high school sex.

***

One by one, the women disappeared.

A concerned brother began investigating the disappearance of his 23-year-old brother and, with the help of a friend, made a fake date with Shiraishi, along with detectives.

The 27-year-old confessed immediately. He pointed to the freezer.

“There is no doubt that I tried to hide the body of the person I killed,” Shiraishi told detectives, according to Kyodo News. “I dismembered him in the bathroom, throwing some body parts in the trash.”

Article content

Inside the horror house, investigators found nine bodies. All had been dismembered and their legs, arms and heads had been put into three coolers and five storage boxes.

Cat litter was used to cover the smell.

***

The missing woman, now dead, met Shiraishi via Twitter in her search for someone to join her in a suicide pact. She had posted on her Twitter that she wanted to die but was “afraid of dying alone” and was “looking for someone to die with me.”

***

For the detectives, it was a game, a set, and a match. But who was his murderer? And why did he turn into a killing machine?

Later, his father told investigators that Shiraishi had told him that he felt his life was meaningless. The motive was sex, and vulnerable young women were easily manipulated. Shiraishi would sexually assault women who reveled in his darkest fantasies.

Article content

As for the women, they would not be around long enough to go to the police.

***

On October 1, 2020, the killer pleaded guilty to all nine murders. On December 15, 2020, he was sentenced to death and has said that he will not appeal his sentence.

There are currently about 112 prisoners on the country’s death row. Only on the day of the execution do the condemned receive the bad news.

And then they are hung around the neck until they die. The last hanging was in August 2019.

A surprised neighbor who knew Shiraishi told Kyodo News that he is “a cheerful, kind and polite man.”

I should have added damned.

[email protected]

@HunterTOSun