Japan executes ‘Twitter killer’ Takahiro Shiraishi who murdered and dismembered 9
Takahiro Shiraishi lured his mostly young, female victims through social media, dismembering their bodies after killing them
Japan executed a man on Friday who killed nine people after contacting them on social media, the first use of capital punishment in the country in nearly three years.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 34, had been sentenced to death for his 2017 strangling and dismembering of eight women and one man in his flat in Zama city in Kanagawa near Tokyo. Shiraishi was dubbed the “Twitter killer” as he contacted victims via the social media platform now known as X.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorised Shiraishi’s hanging, said he made the decision after careful examination, taking into account the convict’s “extremely selfish” motive for crimes that “caused great shock and unrest to society”.
Shiraishi admitted murdering all nine, having made contact with suicidal victims on Twitter and offered to help them die, before stashing bits of bodies in coolers around his small flat, according to media reports.
Japan and the United States are the only two members of the Group of Seven industrialised economies to retain the death penalty.
There is overwhelming public support for the practice, and a 2024 Japanese government survey of 1,800 respondents showed 83 per cent saw the death penalty as “unavoidable”.