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Police arrested him later that year after finding the bodies of
eight teenage girls and women as well as one man in cold-storage
cases in his apartment.
Investigators said Shiraishi approached the victims via Twitter,
offering to assist them with their suicidal wishes. He killed
the three teenage girls and five women after raping them. He
also killed the boyfriend of one of the women to silence him.
“The case caused the extremely serious outcomes and dealt a
major shockwave and unease to the society,” Justice Minister
Keisuke Suzuki told an emergency news conference. He said he
signed the execution earlier this week, but did not witness
Shiraishi’s hanging.
The execution was carried out as calls grow to abolish capital
punishment or increase transparency in Japan after the acquittal
of the world’s longest-serving death row inmate Iwao Hakamada
last year.
Suzuki justified the need for the execution in Japan, noting a
recent government survey shows an overwhelming majority of the
public still supports capital punishment, though opposition has
somewhat increased.
“I believe it is not appropriate to abolish execution,” Suzuki
said, adding there is growing concern about serious crime.
Shiraishi was hanged at the Tokyo Detention House in secrecy
with nothing disclosed until the execution was done.
Japan now has 105 people on death row, including 49 seeking
retrials, Suzuki said.
Executions are carried out in secrecy in Japan, where prisoners
are not even informed of their fate until the morning of their
hanging.
Since 2007, Japan has begun disclosing the names of those
executed and some details of their crimes, but disclosures are
still limited.
Japan and the U.S. are the only two countries in the Group of
Seven leading industrialized nations that retain capital
punishment.
Japan's most recent execution, in July 2022, was of a man who
killed seven people in a vehicle crash and stabbing rampage in a
crowded Tokyo shopping district of Akihabara in 2018.
Japan’s crime rate is relatively low, but it has seen some
high-profile mass killings in recent years.
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