Nov 07 (Japan Today) - A Japanese court on Tuesday sentenced to death a one-time millionairess dubbed the "Black Widow", who tricked elderly lovers into drinking cyanide and pocketed millions in insurance payouts and inheritance.
Kyoto District Court condemned Chisako Kakehi, 70, to the gallows for the murder of three men -- including a husband -- and the attempted murder of another, ending a high-profile case that has gripped the country.
More than 560 people queued for 51 seats in the courtroom to witness the outcome of the marathon trial, which lasted 135 days.
It was the second-longest court case involving a jury since Japan introduced a joint judge-jury system in 2009.
Kakehi became notorious after using the poison cyanide to dispatch a number of elderly men she was involved with, drawing comparisons with the spider that kills its mate after copulation.
"The accused made the victims drink a cyanide compound with a murderous intention in all the four cases," Judge Ayako Nakagawa told the court, according to public broadcaster NHK.
Nakagawa rejected defense lawyers' arguments that Kakehi was not criminally liable because she was suffering from dementia. The court ruled that she did not suffer dementia when she committed the last crime in December 2013.
Prosecutors said she killed the men after they made her the beneficiary of life assurance policies that ran into hundreds of millions of yen.
She reportedly amassed one billion yen in payouts over 10 years but subsequently lost most of the fortune through unsuccessful financial trading.
Kakehi first married when she was 24, but after her husband died in 1994, she had relationships with many men, mostly elderly or ill. She met some through dating agencies, where she reportedly stipulated that prospective partners should be wealthy (with an annual income of more than 10 million yen) and childless.
Kakehi, who is also known as "The Poison Lady", is said to have stashed some of her cyanide in a plant pot she later threw out.
The poison was found in the body of at least two of the men she was involved with and police reportedly found traces of cyanide in the rubbish at her Kyoto home.
They also found paraphernalia for administering drugs and medical books at an apartment she kept south of Kyoto.
Source: ANNnewsCH
