Oct 01 (NHK) - A 29-year-old man has pleaded guilty to killing nine people at his apartment.
The remains of eight women and one man, aged 15 to 26, were found at an apartment in the city of Zama of Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo in October 2017.
Shiraishi Takahiro, who lived at the apartment at the time, was charged with murder, theft of the victims' belongings and abandoning the victims' remains in coolers. He is also alleged to have sexually assaulted the victims.
The lay judge trial on the case began on Wednesday at the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court.
Shiraishi, wearing long hair, glasses and a white face mask, appeared calm as he admitted to the charges.
His lawyer argued that the victims had agreed to be killed, so the charge against Shiraishi should be homicide with consent.
The lawyer also claimed Shiraishi either could not be held criminally responsible, or was extremely frail mentally at the time.
The prosecution explained that Shiraishi opened a Twitter account in March 2017 to contact women contemplating suicide, whom he saw as easy targets.
They said he pretended to also be planning to kill himself, and began exchanging text messages with several women.
Source: ANNnewsCH
