Death Sentence Upheld for Otaku Murderer

Date: 2006 January 23 10:34

Posted by Jeremy

Tokyo Supreme Court upholds death sentence for the Otaku Murderer.

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Anime News Network has reported that the Japanese Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for Tsutomu Miyazaki, also known as the "Otaku Murderer". Miyazaki, who had abducted and murdered four girls between the ages of 4 and 7 in 1988 and 1989, was first sentenced in 1997 after a seven year trial by the Tokyo District Court. The ruling was later upheld by the Tokyo High Court in 2001.

Believed to have been motivated by a sexual fetish and a desire to own a collection of video recordings of corpses, Miyazaki had sent remnants, pictures and postcards to the families of his victims after each murder. He had been arrested on an unrelated charge of sexual assault on a young girl. He earned the nickname of the "Otaku Murderer" after police found over six thousand pieces of pornographic anime in his house, thus giving otaku in general a bad name.

In each trial, Miyazaki's defense had argued for an insanity plea, as Japanese law allows for sentences of mentally ill criminals to be reduced. Though Miyazaki had been proven to have multiple personality disorder and to be schizophrenic, the courts accepted an evaluation by psychiatrists at Tokyo University that he had a personality disorder but was aware of his actions, as opposed to another evaluation that said he had a mental disorder.