How well do you know your neighbors? Inside a luxury condominium lived a seemingly ordinary woman who, at the age of 33, had just committed her first kill.
Kijima Kanae, The Konkatsu Killer, was convicted of murdering four men between 2007 and 2009 and is suspected of killing more. For years, no one had any idea that Kijima, who lived under the alias Yoshikawa Sakura, drove a Mercedes-Benz, and claimed to be the daughter of a University of Tokyo professor, was both a fraudster and a murderer.
It wasn’t until August 6, 2009, when 41-year-old Oide Yoshiyuki was found dead in his car, killed via carbon monoxide poisoning in a staged suicide, that Kijama’s web of lies started to fall apart. Saitama Prefectural Police launched an investigation that led them to Kijima, Oide’s then-girlfriend.
Police discovered that several of Kijima’s previous boyfriends, who she met online, had died in suspicious ways. Kijima was indicted for murder and later convicted of killing 70-year-old Fukayama Sadao, 53-year-old Terada Takao, 80-year-old Ando Kenzo, and 41-year-old Oide Yoshiyuki. In addition to killing these men, she defrauded them out of a total of 97.6 million yen (approximately $887,272.73 USD).
Kijima is also suspected of killing three other men: 47-year-old Yabe Kazumi (supposed fishing accident) and 53-year-old Maruyama Hideki (suffocation) in 2009, and an unnamed journalist who was hit by a train in 2004.
Kijima was sentenced to death for her crimes, a conviction that The Tokyo High Court and Japan’s Supreme Court upheld when Kijima attempted to appeal her sentence.
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