A serial murder trial in Japan took a cinematic turn this week when the accused, nicknamed the Black Widow by the news media, confessed in open court to having fatally poisoned her husband.
The case of Chisako Kakehi, now 70, has gripped Japan since her arrest in 2014, when the last of her four husbands, Isao Kakehi, a 75-year-old retired salaryman, was found dead at his home in Muko, a city near Kyoto, the latest in a string of her partners to have died.
“I killed my husband,” Mrs. Kakehi said from the witness stand Monday. “I have no intention of hiding the guilt. I will laugh it off and die if I am sentenced to death tomorrow,” she said, according to The Japan Times.
According to the authorities, Isao Kakehi was one of six men who died soon after marrying or dating Mrs. Kakehi, the onetime proprietor of a T-shirt printing business. Mrs. Kakehi has been on trial since June 26, accused of killing Mr. Kakehi and two other boyfriends and attempting to kill another man she had dated.
When she took the stand on Monday, Mrs. Kakehi initially said she would remain silent, but when asked by the prosecutor whether she had poisoned Mr. Kakehi, she confessed, adding there was “no mistake” about her role in his death.
“I wasn’t given any money after I married him,” Mrs. Kakehi said. “I felt like Isao was discriminating against me in comparison to the last woman he was in a relationship with, and I got angry,” she added, according to news reports.
Mrs. Kakehi said she got the cyanide, with which she is believed to have poisoned her partners, from a business associate.
Mrs. Kakehi’s attorneys have said she has dementia and is incapable of accurately remembering details from the time of the men’s deaths.
