Japan executed convicted serial killer Takahiro Shiraishi—known as the “Twitter killer”—on Saturday morning for the 2017 murders of nine individuals.
According to the Justice Ministry, Shiraishi was sentenced to death in 2020 after he lured victims via Twitter, most of whom had expressed suicidal thoughts online.
He sexually assaulted and killed eight women and a man at his apartment near Tokyo, hiding their remains in cold-storage containers.
Investigators discovered the bodies of eight teenage girls and adult women, along with one male victim, during Shiraishi’s 2017 arrest.
He used Twitter to contact vulnerable individuals by offering to assist them in their plans to commit suicide, only to assault and murder them.
Among the victims were three teenage girls and five women whom Shiraishi raped before killing; he also murdered one victim’s boyfriend to silence him.
The execution was carried out secretly at the Tokyo Detention House with no public statements issued until after completion.
The case renewed calls to abolish the death penalty or improve judicial transparency in Japan, especially after the exoneration of the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, Iwao Hakamada, last year.
Currently, 105 inmates remain on death row in Japan, including 49 appealing for retrial.