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A 22-year-old university student who was arrested on suspicion of killing a 36-year-old woman at a love hotel in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district last month also planned to help a teenage girl kill herself after contacting her on a social networking services (SNS) site for people expressing a desire to commit suicide, police said Tuesday.
Mizuki Kitajima, of Iruma, Saitama Prefecture, has admitted to killing Hiromi Araki at the hotel in Ikebukuro on Sept 12, but claimed she wanted to die, Sankei Shimbun reported. He is suspected of strangling Araki sometime between 6 and 8 p.m. that day. Araki's body, with her ankles tied, was found inside a large plastic bag by a hotel employee.
Araki left her home in Tokyo's Koto Ward at around 3 p.m. after telling her family she was going to a hospital. Police investigations showed that Kitajima checked into the hotel room at around 3:40 p.m. Security camera footage showed a woman entering the room at 5:50 p.m. Kitajima then left the hotel by himself at 7:40 p.m., police said.
Police said Kitajima told them he had been using Twitter, looking for people expressing a desire to commit suicide. He said Araki was such person and that he met her for the first time on the day of her death.
Kitajima also told police that another time before he met Araki, he had been in contact with a teenage girl who expressed a wish to commit suicide. Kitajima and the girl arranged to meet up, but when he arrived at the appointed location, with a cord to strangle her, the girl never showed up and her SNS account had been suspended.
The National Police Agency has been struggling to come up with ways to deal with so-called suicide sites on social media since a notorious series of murders in 2017 when a man admitted to killing and dismembering nine people aged between 15 and 26 at his apartment in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture. All the victims had posted suicidal thoughts on Twitter before being approached by him online.
© Japan Today
13 Comments
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Chip Star
Set up a cyber crimes unit that looks for and blocks these types of sites.
JJ Jetplane
He is clearly a serial killer in the making. He can try to justify it as assisted suicide but it's plain murder. Furthermore, strangling is a horrible way to go. This guy is sick for preying on these people to live out his fantasies.
rgcivilian1
There is always a workaround, that is how it is. It's finding the sicko's who get thrills of doing it for them, but they forget one thing it's murder not assisted suicide.
Chip Star
So we shouldn't try to limit these sites?
WilliB
Even if he did meet her on a suicide site, it is still murder. I do not see how his claim (regardless if true or not) works as a defense.
Chip Star
It's not clear from the article if he is trying to use it as a defense.
Do the hustle
This is not the first time this scenario has arisen in Japan. There was another creep last year who killed 8 women using the sane scenario. TIJ! The land of creepy internet stalkers.
Wesley
The authorities need to educate Japanese people that suicide is NEVER ok. That life is always worth living.
sir_bentley28
I think Japan should adopt the same method as "To catch a predator", have someone pretend to be someone who wants to commit suicide, get all the transcripts in order for proof, meet the person who agreed to carry out the act and arrest them for conspiracy to commit murder. This would shutdown these sites.
Norman Goodman
Oh. You mean blatant entrapment and violations of justice to enforce the taboo of the hour. Pass.
Madden
She got what she wanted, obviously I don't condone killing someone and stuffing them in a garbage bag, but for all we know she was completely calm and happy with the whole thing. You don't go meeting someone who says they'll help you commit suicide unless you're ready to go through with it.
WilliB
Madden:
Have you ever been strangled? Not death, obviously, but to a point? It is extremely unpleasant, as the body desperately wants to breath. No, I do not buy the "completely calm and happy" thing.
Norman Goodman
You are conflating things. Madden was not saying the death was calm and happy, but rather her acceptance and even desire for what was about to happen was calm and happy. Its like being calm and happy before a roller coaster ride. It does not mean someone rode the coaster looking like they were in a Zen trance.