Black Widow Serial Killer Dies on Death Row in Japan

I follow the crime news in Japan and am often amused by how some less serious crimes make the national news, because there are fewer crime cases to report about.  Today’s story is more serious than the stories I usually read.

Chisako Kakehi, a 78 year old death row inmate, was found dead in her prison cell in Osaka on Thursday. She had been convicted of killing her husband and two common law partners and attempting to kill another by poison over a decade ago. 

Her death penalty was finalized by the Supreme Court in 2021, after it upheld the lower court’s rulings that she murdered her 78 year old husband, Isao Kakehi, and her partners Masanori Honda, 71, and Minoru Hioki, 75, by giving them cyanide. The court also ruled that she attempted to murder a fourth man, Toshiaki Suehiro, who survived her attack, but later died in 2009 at age 79. The motive in all of these attacks was reported to be money. 

She was said to have died from illness, according to prison staff.  A doctor confirmed her death at the hospital, at 10 am on Thursday.  

This case was more serious than most cases, and usually the crimes I read about in the news involve men. The other thing that caught my attention was that she received a death sentence. About 50 countries still impose the death penalty, including the US and Japan. In Japan, it seems to be a big secret about when the convicted person will be put to death. In the US, the date is set and everyone knows the date.  Sometimes the date is pushed back, but there is a date. I often read about protests outside the prison in the US when a death sentence is being carried out. In Japan there is none of that.  We find out a death sentence has been carried out after it happens. Not knowing when the punishment will be carried out seems to be an extra bit of punishment for the convicted criminal.