Japan has executed Takahiro Shiraishi, the notorious serial killer dubbed the “Twitter Killer,” whose 2017 murders of nine individuals—mostly young women—shocked the nation and sparked a global reckoning over online suicide forums and digital safety.
The execution, confirmed by Japan’s Justice Ministry on Thursday, marks the country’s first use of the death penalty since 2022.
Shiraishi, then 30, used Twitter (now X) to prey on vulnerable individuals contemplating suicide. Masquerading as a confidant, he lured victims to his apartment in Zama, near Tokyo, with promises of helping them die or offering to die alongside them.
Instead, he strangled and dismembered them—storing body parts in coolers and toolboxes, turning his flat into what the Japanese media grimly dubbed a “house of horrors.”
The gruesome crimes came to light in October 2017, when police, searching for a missing woman, uncovered the remains of nine victims aged between 15 and 26. Shiraishi later confessed, stating he acted purely out of “sexual and financial motives.”
Although his lawyers argued that the murders were carried out with the victims’ consent—citing his interactions with suicidal individuals—Shiraishi refuted those claims in court, stating he killed without consent. In December 2020, he was sentenced to death following a highly publicized trial that drew hundreds of spectators.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorized the execution, said the killings were committed “for the genuinely selfish reason of satisfying his own sexual and financial desires” and had “caused immense shock and anxiety in Japanese society.”
The case also prompted a major policy shift on social media. Twitter, where Shiraishi found and manipulated his victims, updated its community rules to explicitly prohibit content that promotes or encourages suicide and self-harm.
Japan remains one of the few developed nations to retain the death penalty, and public support for capital punishment remains high, particularly in cases involving extreme violence.
