A Japanese serial killer hunted for the most vulnerable of potential victims on social media, targeting young, suicidal women from his suburban apartment under the Twitter handle of “hangingpro” with promises of helping them ease their suffering.
Actually, Takahiro Shiraishi was luring these young women to a grisly end.
Japan, a country with one of the lowest murder rates in the world, was rocked by the the grisly discovery of nine dismembered bodies in Shiraishi’s suburban apartment in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture on Tuesday. Police searched the premises after the 27-year-old unemployed man was arrested earlier that day on suspicion of mutilating a corpse and storing it in a cold-storage container sometime in the past month, according to the country’s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.
Authorities said several of the bodies, which included remains of one male and eight females, showed signs of forced strangulation, and Shiraishi reportedly told investigators that he had planned to rob and rape several of his victims.
The Japan Times reported that Shiraishi is believed to have used multiple Twitter accounts to find those victims. The bio of his “hangingpro” Twitter profile read: “I want to help people who are really in pain. Please DM me anytime.”
One tweet, posted on Oct. 6, tried to isolate potential prey from their loved ones. “It is not good to tell friends, family members and social networking sites that you are going to die before committing suicide,” he reportedly wrote.
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